Ancient Tablets Show Markets Worked 4k Years Before Economists Explained Them

It's interesting that commerce/business was this sophisticated in the Bronze Age. I guess it's not that surprising given the famous customer service complaint[0] cuneiform tablet to Ea-nāṣir about receiving the wrong grade of copper ingots and his servant receiving rude service.

It's also no wonder that the thing a theory describes exists long before the theory itself. We had language well before we had grammarians, and we had music long before music theory existed. Adam Smith didn't invent moral sentiments or market economics, just as Pythagoras didn't invent music. The article weirdly makes a big deal out this.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-n%C4%81...

A lot of people underestimate the bronze age and all the limelight goes to later Greeks and Romans because we have better records of them. But the bronze age and its empires were just as impressive in my opinion. Tin is not a very common metal to find and there are only significant deposits in a limited number of places around the globe. The trade routes required to support bronze production were thousands of miles long.

Should we be surprised that economics preceded economists?

So what’s a better form than the current capitalistic (?) model? Surely we would say the market is efficient, but at the same time it can’t be good for society that so much capital is localized with a few people (bezos, musk etc.).

If the roots for capitalism or similar market economies are so old, what would be better for society?

Here's the original paper if you want to skip the slop: https://keremcosar.uvacreate.virginia.edu/publications/BCCH-...

I’m glad they have evidence, the glamorization is inaccurate

People that trust each other just learned to set that current trust in stone, literally, in case it didn’t last

The regulators allow people that trust each other far less to do business and engage in the same agreements

In some fields, completely anonymous people that don’t trust each other at all, can now transact and pool capital spontaneously

These are things governed by protocols or regulators

“The word “capitalism” would not be coined for another 3,800 years. Adam Smith was 3,700 years from picking up his pen.”

This is pretty bad writing lol. Markets are as old as civilization itself, Adam Smith obviously knew this. General commerce != capitalism

I hope people get the right message from this, which is:

The way people talk about "Capitalism" is most often silly and counterproductive because most of the time -- the person that hates capitalism and the person that loves capitalism are talking about nearly entirely different things.

This is AI generated slop.