At 16:09 12/07/2010 -0300, Mike Spencer wrote:
Keith Hudson wrote:
> But the basic nature of economic transactions remains exactly the same as
> then -- and probably the same as in 75,000BC when sea-shell necklaces were
> traded over long distances.
Only the extent that getting food is the same to day (eating a
hamburger at McD's is the same as eating a rabbit you killed with a
stick) or that shelter is the same today (a 70-storey condo keeps the
rain off just like a grass hut did) as 75,000 BC. C'mon, Keith, nothing
that humans do today is the same as it was, say, 12,000 years ago --
before Sumer -- except biology itself.
To the extent that your allegation has any merit whatsoever, it's so
simplistic that it's very nearly vacuous.
Well, please yourself, if that's what you want to believe. I rest my case
on the evidence that anthropologists are increasingly finding in early
sites. Indeed, there is some evidence that trade was occurring at around
100,000BC -- which is pretty well at the dawn of modern man.
Keith
Most entities that engage in trade today aren't even people, they're
corporate entities and most of the people of which these entities are
composed have never seen the material objects or substances traded and
know virtually nothing about them but their prices. For such people,
the "real" world is paper, computer data, hand-shake deals and legal
constructs. What you and I think of as the real world is for them a
sort of virtual or conceptual figment.
Digressing somewhat, I wonder if the "conceptual art" movement wasn't
some kind of social precursor or indicator of this trend. Around 30
years ago, when I was still trying to dance with the art
establishment, I thought of applying to the Banff Centre for a
residency. So I talked to someone there, asking about their sculpture
studio and how well it was equipped for my kind of metalwork. The
Banff rep seemed uncertain about how this should matter to me. She
said, "Well, you know, most of our sculptors don't actually make
*objects*."
Ah, right. Sculptors who, yew know, just have *ideas* and then market
themselves into prominence. That, in itself, is a sort of conceptual
art piece about the people who make "economic transactions" in the
greater economy. Our biz is, well, business, y'know? Tangible stuff
like carrots or shoes or appendectomies are a bothersome externality.
My recently retired college room mate had a career as a banker. Not
in the executive suite, though. He once described his job as "in the
70s, traveling around the world selling money, and in the 80s,
traveling around the world trying to get it back." One story he told
me about "getting it back" involved an Alaskan fish processing
business that had defaulted on a big loan. So he flew to Alaska, only
to learn that the boss had simply vanished; the power company had shut
off the power months before so several huge commercial freezers were
full of rotting fish; and the individual skippers of the company-owned
boats had seen the writing on the wall and simply buzzed off into any
number of remote Alaskan coves, taking their boats with them. So my
friend personally had a look at the community with a collapsed
industry, with guys suddenly out of high-paying work but (for a few,
anyhow) newly acquired boats of dubious provenance, with a reeking
mess in the middle of town. But he was an exception, just, by
banker's standards, a low-paid minion. His bank, as an entity, only
cared or even wanted ever to know about, how much cash could be
recovered from the wreckage.
No, Keith, the economic transactions that make a difference today are
only superficially (or perhaps theoretically, in the least
complimentary sense) like the late Paleolithic trade in sea-shells.
--
Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~.
/V\
[email protected] /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
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