Many of these non-economists have unwittingly adopt their prejudices and approach ancient as well as modern history with a bias. Yet many generations of linguists, historians and even anthropologists have absorbed the economic discipline's anti-social individualistic world view and imagine that the world must always have been this way. Or, they would have defected to rival attackers who promised to cancel their debts, liberate the bondservants and redistribute the land. The citizens would have run away, or else backed a local reformer or revolutionist to overthrow the ruler who listened to such economic advice. Economies would have polarized - as Rome did, and as today's Western economies are doing. If some Milton Friedman or Margaret Thatcher had persuaded Sumerian, Babylonian or other ancient rulers to follow today's neoliberal philosophy, civilization could not have developed.
Denarius calculator how to#
Suppose that he would have convinced ancient chieftains or rulers how to organize their trade, money and land tenure on the basis of "greed is good" and any public regulation is bad. The reality is that civilization could never have taken off if some free-market economist had got into a time machine and travelled back in time five thousand years to the Neolithic and Bronze Age. Yet this basic approach has led mainstream economists to insist that civilization could and should have followed this pro-creditor policy from the very beginning. We are seeing the same debt dynamic at work today.
The only role acknowledged for government is to enforce the "sanctity of contracts" and "security of property." By this they mean the enforcement of debt contracts, even when their enforcement expropriates large numbers of indebted homeowners and other property owners. Today's mainstream economists look at neoliberal privatization and free-market ideals as leading society's income and wealth to settle at an optimum equilibrium without any need for government regulation - especially not of credit and debt. They are trained to think abstractly and use a priori deduction - based on how they think societies should develop. Economists have been characterized as autistic and anti-social in the popular press for good reason. Port scene Pompeii fresco It may seem strange to invite an economist to give a keynote speech to a conference of the social sciences.
0 kommentar(er)
