It is sprawling, sometimes meandering, anthropological work covering concepts of debt from 3000 BC to the present. I say meandering, because much of the book, so far, is spent on non-financial topics. However, that is probably the point. Debt and credit systems appear to have arisen before money systems, with barter always more of a fringe activity, as opposed to the primary means of trade.
Despite the effort required, I ran across quite a few illuminating observations. One has to do with private property, codified in Roman law, and how humans relationships to private property. The concept really is not so much about the relationship of people to things, as it is a relationship of people to everyone else on the planet with respect to things. It is a three way relationship that prohibits everyone else but the property owner from determining the disposition of said property. This was a novel way of looking at it to me. It also created conflicts with and highlighted the inconsistency of slavery.
From the book,
This is why I developed the concept of human economies: ones in which what is considered really important about human beings is the fact that they are each a unique nexus of relations with others.If you think about it, a debt is also just a relationship between people (if you include the way the Supreme Court or Mitt Romney define people). Debts and private property both define relationships between and among people and things. Neither debts or private property, as concepts, are tangible. Only certain objects, those that form part of the private property relationship, are tangible.
Another interesting tidbit I found was the deep historical link between the word "debt" and "sin" in many religious and philosophical writings. Think of the dual meaning of forgiveness (of debt and of sin), of redemption (of bonds and sin), and payment (of a monetary debt or a debt to society).
Just interesting food for thought.
As I like saying, politics got mixed with economics when someone first took some land and said, "this is mine."
ReplyDeleteWe've been immersed in the current land tenure system from birth, and like fish in water we cannot easily see how it is so pervasively shaping our lives.
Finally finding the economic and philosophical observations of Henry George blew my mind earlier last decade. How the world was really operating, and how much meaner a place it was thereby, became clearer to me as I read his stuff.
Troy,
ReplyDeleteOne of the arguments in this book is that money systems grew up around war economies to support more or less anonymous transactions between soldiers/mercenaries and the local populations. There was no basis for the trust required of credit with a passing army, but coinage allowed transactions to take place.
I'll check out Henry George. Thanks.