The ancient economy

What Hacker News says

1. lkrubnerOct 2022
   Before 1800, and especially before 1500, the monetary economy was so small, and the barter economy was so large, that these economies did not have recessions as we understand them today. A modern recession, as we've understood them for the last 200 years, can only exist in a society that has largely converted all economic activity to the monetary economy, and thereby made it vulnerable to the money cycle. If you're interested in the emergence and development of the monetary economy the best books ever written on the topic are Fernand Braudel's history:

   https://www.amazon.com/Civilization-Capitalism-15th-18th-Cen...

   https://www.amazon.com/Wheels-Commerce-Civilization-Capitali...

   https://www.amazon.com/Perspective-World-Civilization-Capita...

   I strongly recommend these books.

   If you're interest is more about the classical Western period, I recommend:

   https://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Economy-Sather-Classical-Lect...

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2. DubiousPusherAug 2022
   > Finley sought to demonstrate that the ancient economy was not ‘proto-capitalist’ in its orientation but rather a decidedly alien economy where economic relations were structured by status, legally enforced class and slavery more than money or profit.

   This is one of those things Marx really nailed with the idea that a "mode" of production wasn't just determined by labor and material but that it is also determined by the relationships between the participants in a political economy or the "relations" of production.

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3. QuesnayJrJul 2021
   Communists actually do say that. Marx called it "primitive communism".

   The trend in economic history has been the opposite of what you say. In the 70s it was fashionable to emphasize how different ancient economies were from modern. See for example Moses Finley's Ancient Economy. The trend of recent scholarship has been to show that things in the old days are more like today than we thought. It's made the Industrial Revolution harder to explain, because all of the institutional details that seemed like they were important get pushed further and further back in time.

   Anyway, I thought the quote was odd because it was such a large worry for such a small point. It's interesting that standardized weights and measures didn't require a central government. I have trouble believing that this would radically change anyone's perception of the trade-offs between governments and markets, but the authors are clearly worried that their research is going to give ammunition to someone they don't like.

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4. pjc50Jun 2017
   Describing Rome as "capitalist" in the modern sense is a gross misrepresentation of what is known about the ancient economy, ignoring the work of Finley and Polanyi.

   (Also, you spotted that Rome was a slave society, but failed to make the obvious conclusion that slavery precludes free exchange of labour!)

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5. Consultant32452Jun 2017
   >Describing Rome as "capitalist" in the modern sense is a gross misrepresentation of what is known about the ancient economy, ignoring the work of Finley and Polanyi.

   Government took only 5%.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_economy#GDP_and_income_d... In the Scheidel–Friesen economic model, the total annual income generated by the Empire is placed at nearly 20 billion HS, with about 5 percent extracted by central and local government.

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