Observations on Credit and Lending Practices in Ur III Mesopotamia (2004) [pdf]

https://www.sfu.ca/~poitras/jesho_UR_14.pdf

by throw0101b • 3 years ago

87 34 3 years ago

mriet• 3 years ago

Sounds like it's related to Graeber's book, "Debt, The First 5000 Years".

Mistletoe• 3 years ago

Another book in this vein is The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest by Edward Chancellor if anyone is looking for one.

throw0101b4• 3 years ago

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/ho...

syndicatedjelly• 3 years ago

Is that worth reading for someone casually interested in economics and its history? Or is it pretty dense and technical

rubidium• 3 years ago

I found it to be good for casual people economic history. Wasn’t overly “economics” in the technical sense.

abdullahkhalids• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

There are single sentences in that book that have half a dozen factual errors.

So, you decide if that is worth reading.

malfist• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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.

bboygravity• 3 years ago

Debt-slavery which interestingly was banned under Ceasar if I'm not mistaking.

dfee• 3 years ago

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.

alejohausner2• 3 years ago

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.

gwern• 3 years ago

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.

random3• 3 years ago

You seem to be describing working capital (business focused) rather than payday loan (consumer focus).

anovikov• 3 years ago

Difference between the two probably only appeared when fixed salaries became a thing.

082349872349872• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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.

nologic01• 3 years ago

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.

Terr_• 3 years ago

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• 3 years ago

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.

pyinstallwoes• 3 years ago

The beginning of the Luddite revolution

Observations on Credit and Lending Practices in Ur III Mesopotamia (2004) [pdf]

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