Earlier quoted context omitted.
play the Game of Life if you want a real classic ;P
That game sucks.
I'm losing
How 12th-century Genoese merchants invented the idea of risk
11–20 of 29 posts
Re: How 12th-century Genoese merchants invented the idea of risk
#12Interest, risk, insurance etc. are such intrinsic economic concepts that it is hard to believe they didn't naturally originate in some form in the earliest human societies. While I'm sure the word risk and formal methods of actuary can be traced to the era mentioned by the author, I'm more hesitant to believe that the "idea of risk" was invented there.
Ancient greeks had actually a very similar system of participation on maritime endeavors.
They even supported poets in order to create fiction and propaganda about the amazing things and riches that were abroad. Making young people travel also relieved demographical pressure.
If you lost a ship by shipwreck, you lost it all, but it was very profitable if the ship returned. Like anything in life, the were "naturals" that will return and succeed, people that were really good at it for whatever reason.
Re: How 12th-century Genoese merchants invented the idea of risk
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps we didn't have as much economic activity in the earlier human societies or perhaps those methods have been lost to time (just like those societies). As an ex actuary student what I can tell you is that at least from a mathematical tools perspective, we didn't have those available till around the 17th century.
There are Babylonian tablets where merchants are complaining about other merchants not delivering on their contractual obligations :)
One of them even became a meme: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/complaint-tablet-to-ea-nasir
Re: How 12th-century Genoese merchants invented the idea of risk
#14Re-invented, anyway. It was well-understood in India a thousand years before, and in Sumeria thousands of years before that. it got re-invented each place and time it was needed.
Re: How 12th-century Genoese merchants invented the idea of risk
#15Re-invented, anyway. It was well-understood in India a thousand years before, and in Sumeria thousands of years before that. it got re-invented each place and time it was needed.
agree,
the abstract idea of risk can be traced way before the label "risk".
Written register of the idea can also be found in Hammurabi's code.
Re: How 12th-century Genoese merchants invented the idea of risk
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are Babylonian tablets where merchants are complaining about other merchants not delivering on their contractual obligations :)
One of them even became a meme: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/complaint-tablet-to-ea-nasir
There's something incredibly surreal about a dispute over trading standards between two people who have been dead for literal millennia and couldn't possibly have conceived of the internet and the technology that makes it possible becoming a meme. I wonder if there's any correspondence out there today which will amuse people 3500 years in the future?
Re: How 12th-century Genoese merchants invented the idea of risk
#17Re-invented, anyway. It was well-understood in India a thousand years before, and in Sumeria thousands of years before that. it got re-invented each place and time it was needed.
I guess that's how abstractions work in general. You start reasoning in them explicitly when the need (or benefit) to do so is sustained for some time. Then you discard them when they're not needed anymore.
Re: How 12th-century Genoese merchants invented the idea of risk
#18wow, 'risk' has arab origin! Again. Like sifr (=0) became german "Ziffer" (=digit)
Re: How 12th-century Genoese merchants invented the idea of risk
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of them even became a meme: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/complaint-tablet-to-ea-nasir
There's something incredibly surreal about a dispute over trading standards between two people who have been dead for literal millennia and couldn't possibly have conceived of the internet and the technology that makes it possible becoming a meme. I wonder if there's any correspondence out there today which will amuse people 3500 years in the future?
>I wonder if there's any correspondence out there today which will amuse people 3500 years in the future?
I really hope RickRolling is still a think in 3500 years
Re: How 12th-century Genoese merchants invented the idea of risk
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps we didn't have as much economic activity in the earlier human societies or perhaps those methods have been lost to time (just like those societies). As an ex actuary student what I can tell you is that at least from a mathematical tools perspective, we didn't have those available till around the 17th century.
There are Babylonian tablets where merchants are complaining about other merchants not delivering on their contractual obligations :)
Haha I had forgotten about this meme! I wonder if they had insurance for merchants back then and if so how did they even figure out the premium on it...