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, and we had music long before music theory existed. Adam Smith didn't invent moral sentiments or market economics, just as Pythagoras didn't invent music. The article weirdly makes a big deal out this.
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.
Fair! Chronologically, at least, Diocletian's time is closer to us, though not technologically or population-wise. And by Diocletian's time, inflation was already out of control. If anything, the political stability that came with Diocletian's reforms actually helped bolster the economy, though it wouldn't last, as soon the center moved to Byzantium, leaving Rome (and Italy) to whither and die over the next century.
A lot of people underestimate the bronze age and all the limelight goes to later Greeks and Romans because we have better records of them. But the bronze age and its empires were just as impressive in my opinion. Tin is not a very common metal to find and there are only significant deposits in a limited number of places around the globe. The trade routes required to support bronze production were thousands of miles long.
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.
Also, should we capitalize the "C" in "Capitalism"? One might think we should, because C is a capital letter. But capital itself is lowercase, and therein lies the paradox.
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, and we had music long before music theory existed. Adam Smith didn't invent moral sentiments or market economics, just as Pythagoras didn't invent music. The article weirdly makes a big deal out this.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-n%C4%81...
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.
People that trust each other just learned to set that current trust in stone, literally, in case it didn’t last
The regulators allow people that trust each other far less to do business and engage in the same agreements
In some fields, completely anonymous people that don’t trust each other at all, can now transact and pool capital spontaneously
These are things governed by protocols or regulators
This is pretty bad writing lol. Markets are as old as civilization itself, Adam Smith obviously knew this. General commerce != capitalism
https://asiatimes.com/2023/06/mystery-of-missing-indus-valle...
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/indus-val...
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.
And Pangram flags it, too.
https://www.pangram.com/history/126831e1-562f-4e65-9874-5250...