More Graeber

In his book Debt: The First 5000 Years, David Graeber sets out shatter a bunch of the icons of classical liberal economics.  Hardly any of these is more hoary than the notion that the state and market are fundamentally at odds.  The anthropological and historical record is not very kind to this idea, says Graeber.  In fact, stateless societies almost never have markets.  Markets themselves were usually created by the state.

How does a king go about creating a market?  It might often be a byproduct of a more pressing concern: feeding a standing army.  How does one go about the logistics of supplying an army with all its manifold needs?  One clever solution was discovered in ancient times.  The king takes possession of the mines - he does have an army, after all - and mints a bunch of coins.  He pays his soldiers with them.  He also institutes a tax on the people, payable in coin.  Now they are forced to scramble for coins to pay the tax, which they can get by trading useful goods to the soldiers, who are responsible for equipping and feeding themselves from their pay.  With a bunch of coins in circulation, and a supply of all kinds of goods needed for the army, a market emerges.

In some sense the state, and its army, created the market.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anti-Libertarian: re-post

The most pointed critique of social security and liberalism in general is the libertarian critique. The problem with libertarians, for a liberal, is that we have too much in common. We both believe in individual rights, tolerance of individual differences, and dislike government prescription of religion. The basic difference, it seems to me, is the different answers we give to Cain's (with thanks to the Captain - my original version had the corpse asking the question!) famous question: "Am I my brother's keeper?" That's not really my basic bitch against the libertarians though. My real complaint is the same as my complaint against most religion - its premise is a fraud. For those who can't stand to wait for the punchline, I believe that trying to implement libertarian principles leads to tyranny or social disintegration. Demonstrating that takes some historical (and pre-historical) context. For all but the last 15,000 or so of the 100,000 years the human spec
Read more

Uneasy Lies The Head

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown ........... Shakespeare Henry IV, Part II. So it is with us and our slightly distant primate cousins , so it seems. A 9-year study of wild baboons in Kenya by Princeton University and the Institute of Primate Research may turn conventional assumptions of alphas males upside down. The study found that alpha males have high testosterone levels, which allows them to dominate other baboons, get access to more food, and attract better mates. This is expected. Surprisingly, though, the alpha males also have high levels of stress hormone glucocorticoid, which scientists measured from their feces samples. In fact, the stress of alpha baboons was on par with low-ranking baboons. The convention wisdom is that access to food and females provides life security and thus less stress for dominant males. Conversely, weak males who are constantly threatened by starvation and physical violence from stronger males are thought to be more stressed. The st
Read more

We Call it Soccer

The US played its best, and maybe only good game of World Cup, but lost thanks to brilliant goalkeeping by the Swedish keeper and the bizarre method soccer uses to settle ties when three US stars could not put the ball on frame from the 12 yard spot.  At the end it came down to a blocked shot that spun in by maybe a couple of centimeters. Well, that's football - too much like life.   Which brings me to a modest proposal.  Replace the thirty minute overtimes with as many 7-player 15 minute periods as needed to settle it.  Scoring should be much easier with fewer players.
Read more