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Trade, merchants, and the lost cities of the Bronze Age (2019) [pdf]
41–50 of 84 posts
Re: Trade, merchants, and the lost cities of the Bronze Age (2019) [pdf]
#42Isn't this the underlying phenomena as to why free markets outperform managed markets. Because theoretically the controlled market can be much more efficient than the free market, you know, because people don't have to fight each other for their share of the market all the time. But they never are. Why? Because nobody has to understand the market for it to work, everybody just pushes and the market molds itself into…
In practice, markets were managed since the Bronze Age. Back then, authorities set wages and prices through palace and temple institutions, standardized weights, etc.
Re: Trade, merchants, and the lost cities of the Bronze Age (2019) [pdf]
#43This is a very interesting discovery. I'm fascinated by ancient economics. But... >The full apparatus of commercial civilization, operating without a theorist in sight. I don't get this framing. Who thinks that markets are a product of theory? Why does the author keep hammering this point? In any case... there are lots of commercial/numerical tablets available. Most of them, I believe. And... the records go all the w…
The prompter of the LLM that authored the article thought that should be the central point of it. Conclusion that they were going for: we don’t need economics today and everything should be left to its own devices.
Interestingly, an LLM can totally dismantle this line of thinking (try with Claude).
Re: Trade, merchants, and the lost cities of the Bronze Age (2019) [pdf]
#44So 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…
Isn't depreciation the financial system's way of acknowledging that physical things deteriorate over time?
Re: Trade, merchants, and the lost cities of the Bronze Age (2019) [pdf]
#45I hope people get the right message from this, which is: The way people talk about "Capitalism" is most often silly and counterproductive because most of the time -- the person that hates capitalism and the person that loves capitalism are talking about nearly entirely different things.
I think it’s productive because it serves to stabilize the society by giving it an ideological underpinning.
Roughly: there’s no better alternative to capitalism and we have capitalism therefore we have reached optimal society.
Re: Trade, merchants, and the lost cities of the Bronze Age (2019) [pdf]
#46It'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,…
> It's interesting that commerce/business was this sophisticated in the Bronze Age.
That trade would have records is not surprising. That trade would follow patterns based on distance is not surprising, especially since transport costs were very high in that era. Hence the "gravity model".
The surprise here is in organizational form. The article describes a limited partnership contract, with partner investments and a cap table. It's impressive to see that so early. It requires a legal system, or strong social pressure, able to enforce a private contract that complex.
Most early commercial organizations were built around families. Corporations are generally considered to have first appeared in the 1300s, and were rare until the 1700s. I don't think the Roman Empire ever developed the concept of a corporation. Traders, bankers, and merchants existed, of course, but not private organizations larger than one owning family. Although it's hard to tell; not much Roman business info survives.
Re: Trade, merchants, and the lost cities of the Bronze Age (2019) [pdf]
#47So 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…
This is sadly a very ignorant and shallow comment. There's just so much literature that you seem to be unaware of. For starters, copy-paste your reply and ask an LLM about the Euler equation, or to find weak spots in your reasoning.
Re: Trade, merchants, and the lost cities of the Bronze Age (2019) [pdf]
#48It'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,…
Another Bronze Age civilization with sophisticated commerce system is Indus Valley Civilisation [1],[2],[3].
The wikipedia entry somehow is outdated [4]. Perhaps some of the new findings are too controversial for the editors, meanwhile reseacher receiving death threat [5].
[1] The Indus Script and Economics. A Role for Indus Seals and Tablets in Rationing and Administration of Labor:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.00049
[2] Indus civilisation reveals its volumetric system:
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/Indus-civilisation-re...
[3] The Indus Script-Computational Analysis and Interpretations (2020) [video]:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF_nJ4vfG-A
[4] Indus Valley Civilisation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_Valley_Civilisation
[5] Rajesh Rao: Computing a Rosetta Stone for the Indus script [video]:
Re: Trade, merchants, and the lost cities of the Bronze Age (2019) [pdf]
#49I hope people get the right message from this, which is: The way people talk about "Capitalism" is most often silly and counterproductive because most of the time -- the person that hates capitalism and the person that loves capitalism are talking about nearly entirely different things.
Capitalism was a term coined by Marx, so not really surprising that most using it are anti-capitalist.
According to Wikipedia the term basically wasn't used by Marx at all, and was coined by other anti-capitalists.
Re: Trade, merchants, and the lost cities of the Bronze Age (2019) [pdf]
#50Isn't this the underlying phenomena as to why free markets outperform managed markets. Because theoretically the controlled market can be much more efficient than the free market, you know, because people don't have to fight each other for their share of the market all the time. But they never are. Why? Because nobody has to understand the market for it to work, everybody just pushes and the market molds itself into…
In practice, markets were managed since the Bronze Age. Back then, authorities set wages and prices through palace and temple institutions, standardized weights, etc.
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