{"id":40749,"date":"2019-12-12T01:00:55","date_gmt":"2019-12-12T06:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=40749"},"modified":"2022-04-25T15:23:00","modified_gmt":"2022-04-25T19:23:00","slug":"qotd-economic-sophistication-in-ancient-greece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/12\/12\/qotd-economic-sophistication-in-ancient-greece\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Economic sophistication in ancient Greece"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left; padding: 0px 15px 0px 0px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>Let us take the case of Thales of Miletus (c620-c546 BC), one of the earliest of Greek philosophers. This story is told of him by Aristotle:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>There is the anecdote of Thales the Milesian and his financial device, which involves a principle of universal application, but is attributed to him on account of his reputation for wisdom. He was reproached for his poverty, which was supposed to show that philosophy was of no use. According to the story, he knew by his skill in the stars while it was yet winter that there would be a great harvest of olives in the coming year; so, having a little money, he gave deposits for the use of all the olive-presses in Chios and Miletus, which he hired at a low price because no one bid against him. When the harvest-time came, and many were wanted all at once and of a sudden, he let them out at any rate which he pleased, and made a quantity of money.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Whether this is a true story about Thales, or even of market conditions in Miletus, is of no importance. What is important is the unvoiced background to the story. It cannot easily be taken as an instance of the predatory capitalism that Polanyi and Finley are willing to grant to the ancient world. Thales decided that there would be a good olive crop. He did not buy olive presses. Instead, he took out options on them. He and those who dealt with him, seem to have understood the nature of the deal made. When it turned out that Thales had predicted right, he seems to have had no trouble enforcing his contracts. This assumes a familiarity of the courts with such contracts, and a commercial state of mind either among the peoples of Chios and Miletus, or \u2014 assuming the story is apocryphal \u2014 among Aristotle&#8217;s Athenian audience.<\/p>\n<p>Many of the Greek city states were considerable trading centres. They lack any detailed commercial histories. Certainly, no ancient writer thought it consistent with the dignity of history to describe their economic structure and the causes of their commercial greatness. But this casual anecdote must stand in place of the unwritten histories as evidence for thriving and sophisticated financial economies.<\/p>\n<p>Sean Gabb, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.seangabb.co.uk\/market-behaviour-in-the-ancient-world-an-overview-of-the-debate-2008-by-sean-gabb\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Market Behaviour in the Ancient World: An Overview of the Debate&#8221;<\/a>, 2008-05.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let us take the case of Thales of Miletus (c620-c546 BC), one of the earliest of Greek philosophers. This story is told of him by Aristotle: There is the anecdote of Thales the Milesian and his financial device, which involves a principle of universal application, but is attributed to him on account of his reputation [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,62,1526,7,41],"tags":[571,441,576,1468],"class_list":["post-40749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-europe","category-greece","category-history","category-quotations","tag-investment","tag-marketsineverything","tag-philosophy","tag-seangabb"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-aBf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40749"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53442,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40749\/revisions\/53442"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}