Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

keremcosar.uvacreate.virginia.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 84 posts

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

#61

Post by microgpt »

spudlyo wrote: post #11
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.

We are about ~300 years closer to Diocletian than Diocletian was to Ea-nasir. Too bad he didn't have access to Adam Smith, who could have told him that price fixing wouldn't work and might have pointed to Roman currency debasement as one of the major causes of inflation. Of course greed is always a factor I suppose.

Lots of people say lots of things. I don't see why Adam Smith is special. Price fixing can work within reason.

Did you know that the communism-themed Fusion Festival fixes the price of a meal, across all 100+ vendors, currently at 7€? This is presumably negotiated between the festival organisers and the food vendors as a reasonable price. (Some of them make a point of advertising 6.50€ but that doesn't actually make a difference. If you like the food you would've bought it for 7€ and if you don't like the food you aren't going to change your mind over 0.50€. They're just throwing away money.)(Some stands that sell more "snacky" items like crepes or smoothies use lower prices.)

Because the price is the same everywhere you don't have to comparison-shop and can just pick the food you like.

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

#62

Post by microgpt »

Terr_ wrote: post #52
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-…

This is also the contradiction between "free markets" (which has always meant markets that move freely, with low friction, and has never meant you were free to add friction to the market) and "capitalism" (which is a system where much of society is controlled by whoever has the most capital).

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

#63

Post by microgpt »

kubb wrote: post #42
somat wrote: post #33

Isn'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.

Standardisation can be useful but the standard has to concord with reality. The IETF model of networking works, because their approach was to build some networks, see how they work, and then standardize that. The OSI model never worked, because the OSI approach was to think really long and hard about how a network would work, standardize it, and then build some networks following the standard.

If you see a variety of food vendors with prices between $6-$8 you might push for standard price of $7. You shouldn't push for a standard price of $1 or $100 because that just won't work, no matter how hard you try - best case everyone ignores you, worst case no one trades food within your zone of authority any more.

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

#64

Post by microgpt »

kubb wrote: post #45
jrm4 wrote: post #10

I 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.

just in case anyone else misunderstood this comment on their first reading, kubb is not praising capitalism here

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

#65

Post by addaon »

usernamed7 wrote: post #26
AbrahamParangi wrote: post #5

This is AI generated slop.

it started out alright, but then it just became obvious. > Wall Street calls it securitization. The merchants of Assur called it Tuesday. was the give away for me.

Woulda given the AI credit if it had gone with "The merchants of Assur called it Nergal."

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

#66

Post by jrm4 »

kubb wrote: post #45
jrm4 wrote: post #10

I 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.

I think you're doing the thing I'm literally railing against; I believe the tendency to turn a relatively simple concept like "we should have a society that has peace and also favorable trades" into IDEOLOGY is precisely how we end up with overreach.

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

#67

Post by jrm4 »

microgpt wrote: post #64
kubb wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

just in case anyone else misunderstood this comment on their first reading, kubb is not praising capitalism here

Eh, he's either praising or being condescending, seems like?

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

#68

Post by kubb »

jrm4 wrote: post #66
kubb wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you're doing the thing I'm literally railing against; I believe the tendency to turn a relatively simple concept like "we should have a society that has peace and also favorable trades" into IDEOLOGY is precisely how we end up with overreach.

Ideology isn't something you can avoid. It's always present in a society to support the power structures. Conflating "just having markets" with the current form of capitalism in western countries is exactly the kind of work needed to uphold the "obvious truths" that keep things going.

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

#70

Post by dang »

chr15m wrote: post #24

Here's the original paper if you want to skip the slop: https://keremcosar.uvacreate.virginia.edu/publications/BCCH-...

Thanks! we've switched the link to that from https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/ancient-clay-tablets-sho... above.
Post reply on HN