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Trade, merchants, and the lost cities of the Bronze Age (2019) [pdf]

keremcosar.uvacreate.virginia.edu

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Re: Trade, merchants, and the lost cities of the Bronze Age (2019) [pdf]

#51

Post by Michelangelo11 »

spudlyo wrote: post #2

It's interesting that commerce/business was this sophisticated in the Bronze Age. I guess it's not that surprising given the famous customer service complaint[0] cuneiform tablet to Ea-nāṣir about receiving the wrong grade of copper ingots and his servant receiving rude service. It's also no wonder that the thing a theory describes exists long before the theory itself. We had language well before we had grammarians,…

Right, and that's also true of physical inventions that you might think are a straightforward application of scientific knowledge. The steam engine is a good example -- it was produced by tinkering, and we devised a theory of how it works much later.

Probably for the vast majority of human inventions, the thing exists long before the theory of the thing. I think that feels counterintuitive in part because examples to the contrary are very conspicuous -- e.g., the A-bomb. But inventions like that, where a theory is meticulously worked out then applied, probably only happen when you have to follow that path for whatever reason -- for the A-bomb, because of enormous capital expenditures. Yet there are countless inventions that came to be only because someone noticed an interesting effect and built something around it (off the top of my head, the microwave is another example), without creating a theory beforehand.

Re: Trade, merchants, and the lost cities of the Bronze Age (2019) [pdf]

#52

Post by Terr_ »

moontear wrote: post #27

So what’s a better form than the current capitalistic (?) model? Surely we would say the market is efficient, but at the same time it can’t be good for society that so much capital is localized with a few people (bezos, musk etc.). If the roots for capitalism or similar market economies are so old, what would be better for society?

> the current capitalistic (?) model? Surely we would say the market is efficient

I'd like to highlight a a fundamental contradiction between "free[ly moving] markets" versus "free [to do what you want] markets."

1. The mathematically efficient market involves perfect information and restrictions on what you can do. No secret prices, no hidden NDA'ed transactions, no hidden ownership for straw-trades, etc.

2. The do-what-you-want market does allow you to "freely" do those things, but it isn't the efficient kind because of all the chicanery.

I often see an equivocation going on, where people use the features of #1 to promote what is actually #2.

Re: Trade, merchants, and the lost cities of the Bronze Age (2019) [pdf]

#53

Post by Gimpei »

Terrible article title and framing. This is just about a QJE article, the QJE by the way is famous for being a little more out there. The article takes a standard gravity equation from economic geography and finds that it fits well to a dataset they created from Bronze Age slates. In general the gravity equation is one of the successes from economics so this isn’t super surprising, but it is welcome and notable. That’s pretty much it.

Re: Trade, merchants, and the lost cities of the Bronze Age (2019) [pdf]

#54

Post by arter45 »

Gimpei wrote: post #53

Terrible article title and framing. This is just about a QJE article, the QJE by the way is famous for being a little more out there. The article takes a standard gravity equation from economic geography and finds that it fits well to a dataset they created from Bronze Age slates. In general the gravity equation is one of the successes from economics so this isn’t super surprising, but it is welcome and notable. That…

Also, a gravity-like model makes even more sense in ancient times which were really constrained by distances, unlike modern economies for which this is more true for goods than services (although there are gravity effects for services, too). In a 100% goods economy, with information itself traveling at the speed of a man or a horse, everything becomes gravity-like.

Re: Trade, merchants, and the lost cities of the Bronze Age (2019) [pdf]

#55

Post by arter45 »

imtringued wrote: post #34
moontear wrote: post #27

So what’s a better form than the current capitalistic (?) model? Surely we would say the market is efficient, but at the same time it can’t be good for society that so much capital is localized with a few people (bezos, musk etc.). If the roots for capitalism or similar market economies are so old, what would be better for society?

The interesting part about saying the market is efficient is that currently, the market is headed for optimal extinction. The better model has always been to treat money as a zero net worth system that cannot be used to carry value into the future at no cost because such an idea inherently contradicts the biological reality that human societies and their economies are built upon. The consequences of using money as a…

>Meanwhile the economic model says, it is impossible for the condition of the car to get worse through a mere passage of time

Source?

Re: Trade, merchants, and the lost cities of the Bronze Age (2019) [pdf]

#56

Post by arter45 »

SturgeonsLaw wrote: post #44
imtringued wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interesting part about saying the market is efficient is that currently, the market is headed for optimal extinction. The better model has always been to treat money as a zero net worth system that cannot be used to carry value into the future at no cost because such an idea inherently contradicts the biological reality that human societies and their economies are built upon. The consequences of using money as a…

Isn't depreciation the financial system's way of acknowledging that physical things deteriorate over time?

Not just that. Inflation and purchasing power are other concepts describing price and the "value" of your money over time.

Re: Trade, merchants, and the lost cities of the Bronze Age (2019) [pdf]

#57

Post by metalman »

I think it is very important to point out that cuniform tablets which contained business contracts and day to day corespindence, were mailed useing perfect security envelopes, making reading it durring transit impossible without destroying the seal, as the envelope was made of clay, sealed with the unique unfakeable seal of the sender, giving there business activities security and a sense of trust that we dont have anymore.

Re: Trade, merchants, and the lost cities of the Bronze Age (2019) [pdf]

#58

Post by teliosix »

squidbeak wrote: post #31
imtringued wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far I know economists are neither historians nor do they perform any management or business function. Considering how necessary economies are and how economists claim economists are unnecessary to run an economy, I wonder why economists even exist. The first thing a rational economist would do is tell the government to fire all economists and stop accrediting economics degrees.

> Considering how necessary economies are and how economists claim economists are unnecessary to run an economy, I wonder why economists even exist. Biological processes are also 'necessary', and work just as well without biologists. Do you also wonder why Biologists exist? Or more broadly, should we give up trying to understand processes and systems if they run without intervention?

I think a better framing is trying to understand biology before the microscope.

While the methods may look ridiculous to us today, the microscope doesn't just spring into being spontaneously. There needs to be a field of inquiry and ignorance that the tool evolves from in order to answer questions.

The reality that economics in 2026 is a type of folk science lacking its microscope or telescope doesn't mean the inquiry is useless.

"Economics is bullshit, the end" is not useful at all.

Re: Trade, merchants, and the lost cities of the Bronze Age (2019) [pdf]

#59

Post by amanaplanacanal »

dosisking wrote: post #28
cwnyth wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone points to Ea-nasir, but that's a meme. Meanwhile, Diocletian outlawed price gouging and standardized prices across a variety of goods: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_on_Maximum_Prices From Polanyi, Finley, and Weber to Austin and Malkin, we've come a long way in recognizing the sophistication of ancient economic thought.

I guess Diocletian was the first Communist, before there was such a thing as Communism. The price fixing was a failure, as would be expected. I am not sure if 'sophistication' is the right word to describe it.

I thought communism was about central ownership of the means of production?

But yeah, long term price fixing always fails.

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