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217 sats \ 2 replies \ @SimpleStacker 3h \ parent \ on: "Ancient tally sticks across three civilizations challenge myths about money" econ
I get really annoyed at these guys. They go straight from "ledgers were used to track tax obligations" to "money is created by the nation state and taxation should be used to manage the supply." Seriously, if you actually read the linked article, that's what they say.
It's so mind-bendingly stupid that I have trouble even responding.
The most likely truth is that both things developed concurrently:
- ledgers for tracking obligations, and those ledgers may have been enforced by some sort of chieftain or authority
- commodity based moneys for facilitating barter and exchange
I really don't see how any of that leads at all to the claims of the MMTers. And there's no way in hell that the chieftains recording obligations on ledgers had any notions that they were doing this to stimulate or manage the economy.
These guys are mush heads.
Even as I was writing my response, I was thinking about how so many of the obligations in small communities would have been informal: i.e. I helped you rescue a goat last spring so now I need help fixing my roof, and even there it wouldn't be consciously calculated and tracked.
As society gets bigger, it's harder to keep track of that stuff and some people are more prone to score keeping than others, so they may have started keeping tallies. It also becomes easier to freeride, so people take more notice of who isn't pitching in, which is easier to do if you give some token of value when someone helps you.
There was also probably an informal tribute system with the upper class who provided protection or salvation or whatever. Those gifts/taxes may have been loosely tracked but a universal numeraire would be needed to compare the worth of a tribute of wheat with a tribute of wool. Once that numeraire exists, the farmer may give wheat plus other assets in tribute during lean harvests.
etc. etc.
Money solves so many problems that it's just not surprising for money-like things to pop up.
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What's really bothering me is that this is the behavior of activists masquerading as academics. Take something that the data plausibly shows, then irresponsibly extrapolate it to their desired policy position.
Examples include:
- Academic documentation of historical discrimination faced by transgenders --> Men should be allowed in womens' bathrooms
- Academic observations of rising global temperatures --> We need to phase gas cars out by 2035 or face extinction
- Academic documentation of discrimination faced by women in the workplace --> All differences in labor market outcomes between men and women must be attributable to discrimination
So irresponsible, but very dangerous and persuasive to some people, because the first part of each of those arguments are true and well grounded in fact. It's the extrapolation that's false, but also since the activists have a veneer of academic respectability, it's hard for a layperson to argue back.
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