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What things cost in ancient Rome

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Re: What things cost in ancient Rome

#41

Post by fauigerzigerk »

swombat wrote: post #25
tptacek wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that help you? The price of different foodstuffs varies wildly both in ancient Rome and today.

Exactly. Think of it as "scarcity distribution" if you will. The typical food basket cost a different amount then than now. And there are plenty of times when most people could barely afford to eat (e.g. the early industrial age, when most factory workers were barely paid a living wage). A good example of the differences that make this discrepancy so large is the price of salt. Just now, the department in charge of r…

I don't deny the difficulties at all and these difficulties are hotly debated among economists even today when comparing say China or Cuba with the US. There is no completely satisfactory solution, but concepts like purchasing power parity are not completely meaningless even when different types of goods are consumed.

I agree that it gets very vague when societies are as different as ancient Rome and a modern industrial country. But knowing what share of a person's income is spent on biological necessities (basic food and shelter) is meaningful and can be expressed in dollar terms to make it more understandable.

Re: What things cost in ancient Rome

#42

Post by mnemonicsloth »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #31
dmix wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ancient Rome had a population of roughly one million people. That's quite a large market for a government to attempt to manipulate back then, especially before any financial system had matured. Now with populations a hundred times the size and economies many times more complex, its interesting how they are still trying.

Did you check out the penalty? Death. You sell a loaf of bread for a proscribed price and they come and kill you. I would imagine the arresting, jury, and trial took only a very short amount of time. There's a human urge to try to micromanage economics. It all looks so simple. You just set the price of bread so that everybody can afford a loaf each day. How much easier could it get? Or if people are poor, just up the…

Law enforcement in the ancient world was all local (communication being space-shuttle expensive), and the standard of living was too low to support any kind of expenditure on criminals. So most punishments were fast (flogging), irreversible (exile), or stigmatizing in some way (branding "thief" on the forehead).

Bear in mind too that most of Rome's million inhabitants were originally family farmers who went broke trying to compete with big plantation-farmers under Rome's weird political institutions. Lots of urban unrest, gang violence, riots, and so on. Gruesome public executions were an effective (and maybe even necessary) means of keeping the peace.

Re: What things cost in ancient Rome

#44

Post by davidw »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #31
dmix wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ancient Rome had a population of roughly one million people. That's quite a large market for a government to attempt to manipulate back then, especially before any financial system had matured. Now with populations a hundred times the size and economies many times more complex, its interesting how they are still trying.

Did you check out the penalty? Death. You sell a loaf of bread for a proscribed price and they come and kill you. I would imagine the arresting, jury, and trial took only a very short amount of time. There's a human urge to try to micromanage economics. It all looks so simple. You just set the price of bread so that everybody can afford a loaf each day. How much easier could it get? Or if people are poor, just up the…

> economics is the most non-intuitive.

Especially if you go beyond the sort of "Economics 101" where everything is supply and demand, and markets always self-regulate and yadda yadda yadda.

Politics can and does have positive effects on markets, too. The internet that we're using to post these messages, was of course created with US taxpayer dollars. As you say, it is complex, and simplistic things like "those silly politicians should just leave it alone and it would be ok", or "Buy American!" are appealing, but wrong.

Re: What things cost in ancient Rome

#45

Post by DanielBMarkham »

davidw wrote: post #44
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you check out the penalty? Death. You sell a loaf of bread for a proscribed price and they come and kill you. I would imagine the arresting, jury, and trial took only a very short amount of time. There's a human urge to try to micromanage economics. It all looks so simple. You just set the price of bread so that everybody can afford a loaf each day. How much easier could it get? Or if people are poor, just up the…

> economics is the most non-intuitive. Especially if you go beyond the sort of "Economics 101" where everything is supply and demand, and markets always self-regulate and yadda yadda yadda. Politics can and does have positive effects on markets, too. The internet that we're using to post these messages, was of course created with US taxpayer dollars. As you say, it is complex, and simplistic things like "those silly…

Yes, "leave it alone" does not work, but we can reason about that: buyers must be assured that sellers have the goods they are selling. contract law must be enforced for trades to happen.

The "fuzzier" the reasoning to put controls in, the more they seem due to failure. That means that emotional arguments, based on "fairness" are out: practical arguments based on things that simply have to exist for an open market to exist are in.

It's complex, but we have clear limits on each end. Total lack of control won't work, but control based on politics or emotional appeal won't work either. The criteria has to be "things that make the market more efficient"

Re: What things cost in ancient Rome

#46

Post by supahfly_remix »

iamelgringo wrote: post #17
bprater wrote: post #7

How much is a denarius worth in today's US dollars?

Using the prices listed and assuming a 10 hour work day, one denarius was worth: 1/4 of a decent beer, or 1/2 of a Egyptian beer 1/2 an ounce of Pork Mincemeat 1/12th of an Italian pound of Venison 1/2 a bath With a 10 hour day, laborers made: 2.5 denarii an hour for farm labor 5 denarii an hour for carpentry 2.5 denarii an hour for data entry (scribing) 1.5 denarii an hour for entry level teaching (assuming 10 pupil…

Thanks -- it's interesting that the professions presumably requiring some form of literacy (scribing, teaching) pay less than carpentry.

Re: What things cost in ancient Rome

#47

Post by smhinsey »

supahfly_remix wrote: post #46
iamelgringo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using the prices listed and assuming a 10 hour work day, one denarius was worth: 1/4 of a decent beer, or 1/2 of a Egyptian beer 1/2 an ounce of Pork Mincemeat 1/12th of an Italian pound of Venison 1/2 a bath With a 10 hour day, laborers made: 2.5 denarii an hour for farm labor 5 denarii an hour for carpentry 2.5 denarii an hour for data entry (scribing) 1.5 denarii an hour for entry level teaching (assuming 10 pupil…

Thanks -- it's interesting that the professions presumably requiring some form of literacy (scribing, teaching) pay less than carpentry.

i have no real basis for making this claim, but i suspect that it's more along the lines of "master carpenter" or the equivalent.
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