[HN Gopher] Observations on Credit and Lending Practices in Ur I...
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Observations on Credit and Lending Practices in Ur III Mesopotamia
(2004) [pdf]
Author : throw0101b
Score : 74 points
Date : 2023-09-16 13:05 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sfu.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sfu.ca)
| mriet wrote:
| Sounds like it's related to Graeber's book, "Debt, The First 5000
| Years".
| syndicatedjelly wrote:
| Is that worth reading for someone casually interested in
| economics and its history? Or is it pretty dense and technical
| rubidium wrote:
| I found it to be good for casual people economic history.
| Wasn't overly "economics" in the technical sense.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| It is not technical at all. But it is more dense than a
| typical non-fiction book you read these days. Also heavily
| referenced like a scholarly work.
|
| I would highly recommend reading it, as it exposes you to the
| many biases in the orthodox framework of economic thought
| prevalent in the world today.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| There are single sentences in that book that have half a
| dozen factual errors.
|
| So, you decide if that is worth reading.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Another book in this vein is The Price of Time: The Real Story
| of Interest by Edward Chancellor if anyone is looking for one.
| throw0101b wrote:
| See also _Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing_
|
| * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50358103-money
|
| And _The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession_ (2e has
| an intro from Volcker):
|
| *
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/249245.The_Power_of_Gold
|
| With all the talk of the US dollar losing its status (highly
| unlikely due to no realistic alternative), _How Global
| Currencies Work: Past, Present, and Future_ on the history of
| various previously predominant currencies is also
| interesting:
|
| * https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691177007/h
| o...
| rnk wrote:
| There's no obvious alternative but there's nothing stopping
| other countries from using other currencies than dollars to
| do transactions, just the infrastructure that supports it.
| It feels like the dollar is more stable than other
| countries currencies, due in large part to our strong
| economy and strong military. China is big enough that they
| can probably do transactions in their currency, but any
| week they can significantly devalue it.
| throw0101b wrote:
| > _China is big enough that they can probably do
| transactions in their currency, but any week they can
| significantly devalue it._
|
| There are roughly as many CAD and AUD transactions as
| RMB/CNY:
|
| * https://data.imf.org/?sk=e6a5f467-c14b-4aa8-9f6d-5a09ec
| 4e62a...
|
| * https://www.statista.com/statistics/247328/activity-
| per-trad...
| malfist wrote:
| This is fascinating. It's interesting that most of their loans
| don't seem unlike payday loans i.e. advances to produce a good or
| service.
| everly wrote:
| Indeed - I did a double-take at the notion that creditors often
| wanted a borrower to default so they could then collect payment
| in the form of the debtors labor, basically debt-slavery.
|
| As you said, fascinating stuff.
| gwern wrote:
| Where does he say that? He spends the end explaining that
| clearly most of the lenders had no interest in such a thing,
| many of the debtors wouldn't be good for labor, and lenders
| and always tried to take repayment in cash etc.
| alejohausner wrote:
| Debt slavery was not life-long. Leviticus 25:8 requires that
| slaves be freed on Jubilee years, which occur every 7 years.
| That's the origin of modern laws on discharging bankruptcy
| after 7 years (bankruptcy comes with a penalty, because you
| can't borrow easily if you default on your debts, so it puts
| you into a kind of slavery).
|
| Jesus was the redeemer (one who buys off your debts) because
| he was going to cancel your moral debt of sin: the language
| of the gospels uses concepts familiar to his audience.
|
| According to Graeber, the jubilee year was introduced by
| Nehemiah (who had just returned from exile in Babylon, where
| he learned about it) not out benevolence, but because too
| many slaves meant the state had too few taxpaying farmers.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >According to Graeber, the jubilee year was introduced by
| Nehemiah (who had just returned from exile in Babylon,
| where he learned about it) not out benevolence, but because
| too many slaves meant the state had too few taxpaying
| farmers.
|
| Given the paucity of surviving texts from that place and
| era, that sounds like a chain of unsupported assumptions
| worthy of an evo psych paper.
| alejohausner wrote:
| He's got several references at the back of his book
| "Debt", on the topic of the jubilee. But you have a
| point: there's lots of room for interpretation.
|
| Still, the idea just seemed too delicious to pass up:
| debt cancellation does not arise from benevolence but
| from fiscal necessity.
| bboygravity wrote:
| Debt-slavery which interestingly was banned under Ceasar if
| I'm not mistaking.
| qwytw wrote:
| In Rome debt slavery was abolished almost 300 years before
| Caesar (not sure if it applied only to citizens or to all
| free people though)
| Telemakhos wrote:
| Solon, long before Caesar was ever born in Rome, abolished
| debt-slavery in Athens.
|
| There's a good book on Athenian banking:
|
| Cohen, E. 1992. Athenian Economy and Society: A Banking
| Perspective. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
|
| He goes into interesting evidence for bank money (ledger
| entries not backed by coins, as opposed to metal currency),
| fractional reserve lending, and inflation in ancient
| Athens.
| throw0101b wrote:
| > _There 's a good book on Athenian banking:_
|
| For a wider net, on the general legal framework(s) of
| that time, see perhaps _Ancient Greek law in the 21st
| century_ , Perlman, Paula Jean, editor:
|
| * https://utpress.utexas.edu/9781477315217/
|
| It turns out one of the largest banks in Athens was
| owned/run by some slaves: finance was not a 'respectable'
| profession--with farming/agriculture being the most
| 'noble'--so it was left to the lower classes and other
| riff-raff. Lots of slaves ran businesses, and the
| question often came up whether any associated debt belong
| to the business, the slave, or the slave's master
| (important when slaves were bought and sold).
| dfee wrote:
| Sounds terrible: get the money then do the work?
|
| These days we work, THEN get the money.
|
| Maybe capital has gotten smarter about when to pay labor -
| only after the fact.
| runeofdoom wrote:
| Has capital gotten smarter, or labor gotten dumber? I'm
| sure all the people The World's Richest Man, Elon Musk, is
| currently refusing to pay what he owes them would rather
| have gotten their money in advance.
| random3 wrote:
| You seem to be describing working capital (business focused)
| rather than payday loan (consumer focus).
| anovikov wrote:
| Difference between the two probably only appeared when fixed
| salaries became a thing.
| chaorace wrote:
| In their defense: the OP's deployment of the term "payday"
| is sloppy when discussing a world which predates salaries,
| bank transfers, and indeed... weeks[1]
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Mesopotamian_uni
| ts_of_...
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Does the shortage of labor discussed imply that some class was
| complaining "no one wants to work anymore" during the Ur III
| period at the end of the third millennium BC?
| bbor wrote:
| No! Maybe, but seeing Sloth as the ultimate sin is definitely a
| mania that's very heavily based in modern corporate capitalism.
| Consider some alternate (still very boomer) takes:
|
| "The gods have taken away the good workers!"
|
| "Women are taking the young men's attention away!"
|
| "This is a bad year for work."
| thechao wrote:
| I was idly wondering, today, if the capitalism was
| supercharged by the Protestant notion of idle-hands are
| sinful-hands? The refrain for most of history was that land
| owners couldn't get any (read: excess) work out of peasant
| labor: once they had hit their sustenance & rent requirements
| they just _stopped_. The Protestant ethos would be to be as
| industrious as possible; and, I think, capitalism capitalized
| on that zeitgeist.
|
| I dunno... if I still had a Reddit acct, I'd Ask Historians.
| softg wrote:
| >I was idly wondering, today, if the capitalism was
| supercharged by the Protestant notion of idle-hands are
| sinful-hands?
|
| German sociologist Max Weber was wondering the same
| question about a century ago and wrote a whole book about
| it called "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
| Capitalism". The part where he talks about the Protestant
| notion of calling comes very close to what you described.
|
| I read it a decade ago so the details are a bit fuzzy but I
| think the gist of it was it's super difficult to get into
| the heaven in Protestantism (it's actually pre-determined
| in Calvinism I think) and one needs to devote themselves to
| some task to avoid sinful earthly distractions. Also
| charitable works are kinda meaningless because only through
| faith you can be saved. So you have all these people who
| work all the time and who do not spend that much on poor
| people or themselves which helps with capital accumulation.
| Also with that mindset business becomes an end into itself
| that should be pursued for its own good so Weber thought
| this fostered the separation of personal affairs and
| business iirc.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > I find his description of the typical money lender especially
| attractive [...] a professional, often associated with the royal
| sector, who held a suku allotment and had the resources, in
| barley, silver, and draft animals, to cultivate his allotment and
| to pursue the control of additional allotments (Steinkeller 2002:
| 117). What this individual lacked, according to Steinkeller, was
| the necessary labor to work the land that he could acquire.
|
| I'm pretty sure I've seen a similar characterization of nobles in
| England: They possessed land, resource-privileges, and capital
| equipment, but had to seek out labor.
|
| I suppose it should be no surprise, given the asymmetry between
| being able to own those things versus _not_ being able to own
| labor in the form of slaves. (Though serfs can come close.)
|
| It's weird to imagine an opposite reality, a planet where
| ownership of land/capital/resource-rights is impractical or
| anathema, but slavery is normal and expected.
| diogenes4 wrote:
| This is central to the theory that modern financial markets
| (and certainly capitalism itself) originated in the wake of the
| labor market reorganization and mass migration symptomatic of
| the black death. The plauge had a multitude of effects on
| Europe, but chief among them was the severe contraction of the
| labor markets and the subsequent restructuring of of local and
| regional economies.
|
| Of course, events like the reformation and the thirty years war
| are just as influential, but relate less directly to the
| political economy.
| nologic01 wrote:
| Its fascinating that script seems to have been invented to serve
| as a credit contracts database and to support associated
| accounting and taxation functions.
|
| The central role of bean counting in pushing information
| technology repeated in rennaisance with paper ledgers and was key
| also in early commercialization of computers (IBM).
|
| Somehow the thread has been broken as of recent, with blockchain
| almost a parody of progress. We mostly still emulate age old
| patterns. A visitor banker from Ur III would very quickly find
| their way to the bad loan books.
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