There is an excellent book that I recommend:
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, by Jared Diamond, W. W. Norton &
Co., New York, London, 1997. He asks the question: Why did Eurasians conquer,
displace, or deciminate Native Americans, Australians, and Africans, instead of the
reverse? His analysis is a fascinating tour of the dynamics that lead to or retard the
growth of civilization.
Hugh McGuire
On 01/30/98 10:08:44 Keith Hudson wrote:
>
>Just a few comments to Ed Weick's excellent exchanges with Thomas Lunde:
>
>
>At 21:33 29/01/98 -0500, Ed Weick wrote:
>>Thomas:
>>
>>>Show me the first city without a countryside?
>
>(EW)
>>I'm not saying that there was not a countryside before there were cities.
>>But in the original countryside everyone produced only for themselves, or
>>for their local group, by a combination of own-use agriculture and hunting
>>and gathering. Such trade as took place was very limited and occurred on a
>>barter basis.
>
>It depends on what is meant by "limited". In the sense that the number of
>their products was very small compared with today, and also in the sense
>that trade was relatively infrequent, countryside tribes did indeed trade
>in a limited way.
>
>But consider this: without trade almost from the very beginning of mankind
>our species would never have been able to spread around the world because
>almost every habitat that he penetrated would have been deficient in one
>essential item or another. This is a field that has long been neglected by
>anthropologists but it is being increasingly recognised that pre-historic
>trade routes were very extensive indeed -- for some products (such as
>obsidian, a very hard flint), thousands of miles. Salt was essential for
>all tribes and seldom found in most territories. The earliest stone age
>tribes needed several different types of wood and stone for the optimum use
>of different sorts of tools. For example, the immediate precursor of the
>bow and arrow, required two types of wood -- a flexible launching stick and
>a rigid spear -- and suitable trees were not found everywhere. There were
>probably at least a dozen essential products that were traded long before
>the Bronze Age. Europe, Asia and North Africs would have been criss-crossed
>with hundreds of main trade routes and thousands of subidiary ones to reach
>all tribes. In short, relative to their way of life, and as a proportion of
>early man's total goods and services, "international trade" was just as
>important as today.
>
>Cutting to ....
>
>(EW)
>>The major difference between those times and now is that goods
>>do not have to be sold right away; they can be stored. As well, we no
>>longer need to rely on local production; during the winter agricultural
>>produce can be imported from regions able to produce year round.
>
>Ah! And this is almost certainly the reason why money -- a relatively dense
>type of wealth -- was invented. When the first sea traders started to trade
>between coastal cities and thus bypass many traditional intermediate inland
>market places (junctions of tribes/villages) they would have shifted
>relatively large volumes of produce. They needed to store it and trickle it
>out in order not to cheapen the price. Furthermore, a sea trader wouldn't
>have wanted to wait while his produce was slowly sold. He would have sold
>all of his goods immediately to a local entrepreneur, receiving gold or
>silver in order to return home and do more trading.
>
>(EW)
>>If I remember my economics, profit is not a reward to capital, but to
>>enterprise. It is the reward going to the entrepreneur, the person who is
>>successful in putting capital, labor and land together to some productive
>>purpose. Capital accrues interest, which is the price which must be paid to
>>the owner of the capital because, while it is in production, he cannot use
>>it for any other purpose. Marx did not buy this. He saw capital as
>>something like "congealed labor effort" which rightly belonged to the
>>working class, but which was stolen from it by the capitalist. And, of
>>course, medieval theologians, saw capital as something essentially devilish
>>because owners of capital could charge "usury". Why am I saying this? It
>>is because I believe that we are forever looking for scapegoats, someone to
>>blame when the world is not as we think it should be. Every age has done
>>this.
>
>Well said. The "modern" debate about free trade, globalisation and so forth
>is merely today's equivalent of the debate about usury that went on for a
>thousand years in the Middle Ages (and before that in Greek and Chinese
>times). Every time free trade resumes and prosperity revives, some
>authoritarian body wants to lay their hands on the profits -- the Church,
>principalities, guilds, more latterly nation-states -- and so they start to
>impose restrictions on trade by taxing it. This succeeds for a while but
>inevitably fails as the general population sinks into increasing poverty.
>
>A final word about the dirty word "profits". There is nothing wrong with
>profits. It is the benefit we receive by being more efficient in the use of
>energy. This is gained either by importing more efficient goods or by
>innovating one's own production methods. At the end of the day (despite
>what the economists say!), we have a free gift in the form of the vast
>amounts of solar radiation we receive and this, transformed along a myriad
>of different channels and processes ends up as profits in the hands of
>individuals. Profits is a good clean word and we should be thankful for it.
>Without perceived benefits (i.e.profits) none of us would exchange anything
>-- or indeed do anything at all except basic food-getting in what would in
>truth be a very small number of favoured localities in the world fortunate
>enough to have all basic necessities.
>
>Without profits and without trade our total world population would be
>unlikely to be more than, say, chimpanzees or mountain gorillas. And our
>standard of living would be similar, too.
>
>
>
>
>________________________________________________________________________
>
>Keith Hudson, General Editor, Handlo Music, http://www.handlo.com
>6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
>Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>________________________________________________________________________
>
>
