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.<p>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.<p>[0]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-n%C4%81%E1%B9%A3ir" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-n%C4%81...</a>
Everyone points to Ea-nasir, but that's a meme. Meanwhile, Diocletian outlawed price gouging and standardized prices across a variety of goods:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_on_Maximum_Prices" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_on_Maximum_Prices</a><p>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.
You forget to mention life and biology, earth and geology, universe and cosmology.
Should we be surprised that economics preceded economists?
“The word “capitalism” would not be coined for another 3,800 years. Adam Smith was 3,700 years from picking up his pen.”<p>This is pretty bad writing lol. Markets are as old as civilization itself, Adam Smith obviously knew this. General commerce != capitalism
I hope people get the right message from this, which is:<p>The way people talk about "Capitalism" is most often silly and counterproductive because <i>most of the time</i> -- 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.
This is AI generated slop.
Yup - pretty obvious.
What signs do you see?
Long sequences of short sentences. Not X, but Y.<p>And Pangram flags it, too.<p><a href="https://www.pangram.com/history/126831e1-562f-4e65-9874-52501f094b57" rel="nofollow">https://www.pangram.com/history/126831e1-562f-4e65-9874-5250...</a>