Ancient Economic Thought: Money

Name of Movement:  Ancient Economic Thought, the origins of money Principle subscriber & other followers:  The Babylonians and other ancient peoples Main Thesis (4 or 5 sentences "be concise"):  The concept of money and interest rates Context:  post-Agrarian Societies

"Economic organization in the earliest civilizations of the fertile crescent was driven by the need to efficiently grow crops in river basins. The Euphrates and Nile valleys were homes to earliest examples of codified measurements written in base 60 and Egyptian Fractions. Egyptian keepers of royal granaries, and absentee Egyptian landowners reported in the papyri. Historians of this period note that the major tool of accounting for agrarian societies, the scales used to measure grain-inventory, reflected dual religious and ethical symbolic meanings. The Erlenmeyer tablets give a picture of Sumerian production in the Euphrates Valley around 2200-2100 BC, and show an understanding of the relationship between grain and labor inputs (valued in "female labor days") and outputs and an emphasis on efficiency. Egyptians measured work output in man-days. The development of sophisticated economic administration continued in the Euphrates and Nile valleys during the Babylonian Empire and Egyptian Empires when trading units spread through the Near East within monetary systems. Egyptian fraction and base 60 monetary units were extended in use and diversity to Greek, early Islamic Culture, and medieval cultures. By 1202 AD, Fibonacci's use of zero and Vedic-Islamic numerals, motivated Europeans to apply zero as an exponent, birthing modern decimals 350 years later.

The city-states of Sumer developed a trade and market economy based originally on the commodity money of the Shekel which was a certain weight measure of barley, while the Babylonians and their city-state neighbors later developed the earliest system of economics using a metric of various commodities, that was fixed in a legal code. The early law codes from Sumer could be considered the first (written) economic formula, and had many attributes still in use in the current price system today: codified amounts of money for business deals (interest rates), fines in money for 'wrong doing', inheritance rules, laws concerning how private property is to be taxed or divided, etc.

Earlier collections of (written) laws, just prior to Hammurabi, that could also be considered rules and regulations as to economic law for their cities include the codex of Ur-Nammu, king of Ur (ca. 2050 BC), the Codex of Eshnunna (ca. 1930 BC) and the codex of Lipit-Ishtar of Isin (ca. 1870 BC)."

Discussion Points:

The concept of money has been around for some time, and it wasn't started by the Jews (although likely expanded and improved). It does appear that money has been around nearly as long as civilization itself. Is it possible to have a society without money? What is the impact of money on the interactions between individuals and then relating to the society as a whole? I think we'd like to believe a society without money is possible, but it probably is not. Money afterall, is a measure of consequences, and on some basic level, a great deal many people need to be threatened by consequence to be motivated into useful endeavors.

I am going to propose that we split the remaining sections of unit 1 (Ancient Economic Thought) among the other three bloggers. Indian Concepts, Muslim Concepts, and Chinese Concepts remain. After that we can move onto Greco-Roman, the Republic, and Aristotle. Use this article as reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_economic_thought#Ancient_Near_East

Troy Davis: Death Penalty

The story of Troy Davis can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_Davis_case

Briefly, case from 1989 were Mr. Davis was accused of killing an off-duty police officer. No gun or hard evidence was found. The prosecution used eye witness accounts to place Mr. Davis at the scene of the crime, although Mr. Davis' mother testified he was at her house at the time of the killing.

Davis was found guilty. Since then a number of witnesses have recanted their accounts and juror members have spoken out in Mr. Davis' defense.

So, we know the atrocities of this case. What, if any, are the reasons the death penalty should be used? What criteria are needed to sentence an individual to death (e.g., hard evidence, eye witness, video footage)? What are the broader impacts of the death penalty in our society (i.e., original intent was to keep individuals from committing the worst crimes)? Is the death penalty still relevant?

Book Review: The Colony

Title

The Colony

The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai

Author

John Tayman

Publication Information

Simon & Schuster: 2006

318 pages

Reason for Reading

I was thinking about doing a paper on the quarantining of people living with HIV/AIDS for a class last fall (which ended up changing to something completely different). While I was doing some background research on the topic, I happened upon some information related to a leper colony (aka Hansen's Disease) in Hawaii that was enforced for over 100 years ending in 1969. The story intrigued me and I started reading this book over the semester break last Christmas. I didn't finish it when the semester started, so I re-read it this summer.

Synopsis

The book details the entire history of the colony on the island of Moloka'i, located on the island between Oahu and Maui. Throughout this time, it details the key people involved in the formation and maintenance of the colony, as well as notable people living in the colony itself. The most famous of these appears to be Father Damien, who essentially became known worldwide as the healthy white man who ventured to live alongside the lepers to do God's work, for which he was eventually honored as a saint. He follows through the end of the colony's official status as a place of exile and through the early 2000's when a few remaining exiles still maintained residence on the island.

Review

I very much enjoyed the book. Writing the history of something like this could prove difficult to write in a manner that doesn't occasionally get bogged down in details, but I never found that to be the case. The author made it quite easy to keep track of the figures he decided to include in the history so the book is a relatively fast read.

Quotes

"For 103 years, beginning in 1866, the Hawaiian and then American governments forcibly removed more than eight thousand people to a remote and inaccessible peninsula on the Hawaiian island of Molokai, and into one of the largest leper colonies in the world. The governments did so in the earnest belief that leprosy was rampantly contagious, that isolation was the only effective means of controlling the disease, and that every person it banished actually suffered from leprosy and was thus a hopeless case. On all three counts, they were wrong." (1)

"Hawaiians of the era had several descriptive phrases for leprosy, but perhaps the most apt was 'the sickness that is a crime.' " (8)

"Although Leviticus contains no explicit moral diagnosis, scholars have determined that priests likely viewed any skin disorder as a sign that someone had offended God, and had been punished with a sinful mark. In the context of the Bible, this blurring of boundaries between medical and ethical diagnoses had one critical consequence: almost all skin conditions became stigmatized." (97)

Justice with Michael Sandel: This Land is My Land / Consenting Adults

Okay, I've had some notes for a while, but haven't gotten to revising and putting up something well written. Instead I'm just going to concede and put this up as is.

Locke's arguments:

First: There are unalienable rights to life, liberty, and property.

A quote Dr. Sandel displays:

"...every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labor of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his."

John Locke

Questions I have:

How are any of the three concepts Locke lists unalienable? In nature, anyone can take another life, can subject another to slavery, and can force someone off the land they may claim. In order for any one to claim these rights, there must be an entity to enforce them. I am not sure this need be government, but I am not sure what other entity would do this.

Somewhat related to the first question is how much of the concept of property is strictly cultural? Was there any concept of ownership prior to domesticating farm animals (forgive me if my historical accuracy on that topic is not entirely accurate, I'm just thinking off the top of my head)?

Second idea: Consent

He discusses how anybody can be the judge and executor of the laws of nature as if those actions are justified, but those of the "aggressor" are not. I think this is a little problematic because who's to say the "aggressor" didn't already feel attacked by the other.

One girl brings up another point I've thought of when thinking of consent and the social contract. Especially at this point in time, where I don't think there is a whole lot of land left that isn't claimed by one government or another. How does one decide to leave the social contract?

AES - Michael Sandel: Restributive Taxation and Progressive Taxation

Continuing from arguments of utilitarianism, Sandel moves to the antithesis in Libertarianism citing Robert Nozick (1) throughout.

The main arguments in part 1:

Libertarian Government:
No one harmed, no one's rights violated
1) No paternalistic legislation ex car seat belt
2) No morals legislation ex gay marriage
3) No redistribution of wealth from rich to poor, as this is a type of coercion which violates the fundamental Libertarian Principle of Self-Possession (2).

What does this government look like?
Can have limited govt for (per Nozick) "what everybody needs, natl defense, police, judicial to enforce contracts + prop rights, but that's it"

Self Possession chain of reasoning to slavery
Nozick's argument against taxation: "taking of earnings" any form of taxation essentially forced labor = slavery principle of self-possession therefore utilitarianism is false ipso facto.

part 2

Objections to Libertarianism

1) The poor need the money more

2) Taxation by consent of the governed is NOT coerced

3) The successful owe a debt to society

4) Luck is involved in success

The exotic-looking girl puts it well, "... because I live in a society I cannot [kill another as this would be a logic end of self-possession]... it's self possession to an extent because I have to take into account I live in a society and there are people around me."

Sandel obviously himself, while attempting to remain impartial, is for this kind of re-distributive taxation or at least against Libertarianism.

When listening to the arguments and assumptions for Libertarianism, I find the idea to be just as fantastical as socialism yet more appealing to the average idiot because it has a subtext of anti-government, anti-establishment and appeal to selfishness which in my experience works very well on the average person. It's difficult to make a set of two or three assumptions by which man is supposed to live and then have a society expand on those assumptions, but in this case clearly the assumption of self-possession as an absolutism is absurd. And I'm not sure if I'm mis-understanding it, but it would seem to treat commerce itself as something different than I see it. Let's not romanticize the average person; while certain rights should necessarily be maintained, no one in a stable state of mind would think that the lone ant is not part of a larger community in the ant colony and as unpalatable as it is to say, we are all slaves to that community to some extent but hopefully we benefit more than we lose by being a part of it.

1) Nozick wiki access 5/19/11 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nozick

2) Self-ownership access 5/20/11 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-ownership

Podcast Review: Wall Street Journal This Morning

Title
Wall Street Journal This Morning

Publisher

wsj.com

Host

Gordon Deal

Publication Information
Daily Podcast 6x per week (not Sundays)

~35 minutes in length

Reason for Listening
I've started listening to podcasts regularly again since I have a home computer instead of using my work computer. Driving to Lansing for my internship on a daily basis, I'm getting plenty of opportunities to listen to a bunch of them, so I'm trying to get a good assortment of news. This seemed an obvious choice to try as I hoped it would give me a decent summary of business news.

Review

Overall I've been pretty disappointed with almost every aspect of this podcast. The presentation is much like any general morning show on a regular music radio station. The host Gordon Deal makes frequent stupid jokes and the topics covered vary from legitimate important news to total fluff (in my opinion). Granted, a lot of the fluff is stuff that's also covered on other news channels, but it seems like they stay on them longer than others.

Overall Opinion

Like I said, I haven't been very impressed with this podcast. I'll keep trying it for another week or two just to give it an honest shot. But if I find another source that's also good, I may replace it sooner.

Justice with Michael Sandel: How much is a life worth?

In this week’s lecture Michael Sandel asks the broad question to what extent is Bentham’s utilitarianism a good way for a society or an individual or a company to make decisions. The tool he uses is “cost-analysis”, or the process of weighing the benefits against the detriments for decision making. The cost-analysis for a company is primarily financial while the cost-analysis for an individual is weighing what action will deliver the greater pleasure. Here, Sandel asks the audience to consider what is most pleasurable; for instance, the instant gratification of a low-brow comedy, or the thought-provoking words of Shakespeare. He then suggests that education is essential to cultivating the higher human faculties which make such a distinction possible. In the end, the “cost of a life” remains unsettled.

To open the discussion I will pose the question, “what is a life worth” to this audience. Who has the right to decide what a life should be a worth (i.e., a company, a government)? What factors should be considered for putting a price on life: how much the person contributed or has left to contribute to society, how many dependents does this person have, how rich or poor is this person, is this person’s life at risk due to personal choices or circumstances outside his/her control?

I’m interested to hear a doctor/future doctor’s take on this, as it seems highly likely similar decisions are made daily in hospitals across the world.

Justice with Michael Sandel: The Morality of Murder

For reference - a link to to lecture and associated readings:
The Morality of Murder and Cannibalism

I'm not entirely sure how we should arrange these discussions, but I suspect as we go on, we'll come to some normal format for the initial posts, much like our book reviews. For now I'll just start by formulating my thoughts/responses to the lecture and readings. Feel free to respond to anything you think worth discussing or bringing up any other points you think are worthy of discussion.

In regards to the lecture, I guess I had a few main thoughts. First among these is that the initial scenario suggested is extremely simplistic. In terms of making a point or starting a discussion, I consider that a perfectly valid method. However, where I think it becomes problematic is in the transition to asking what is the right thing to do. Framing the initial problem as a simple scenario and asking what's right or wrong implies a simple answer. I don't think that's necessarily the case. An example of this is shown shortly thereafter in the second scenario Dr. Sandel presents. The question is asked, are the men in the lifeboat guilty of murder, and people are supposed to answer whether they consider these men guilty of murder or not, essentially as if they were on the jury for them. I'm having a difficult time articulating what I want to say, so I'll just roll with it as is. The thought I had while listening to that discussion is that I consider there to be a difference between saying what is the right and wrong thing to do, and convicting another person of commiting the wrong thing to do. In the situation described, I don't think it was necessarily right to kill the weakest member. However, I don't think I could convict another person to murder for that act. I think that's a moment of extreme duress of which no member of the jury could have the faintest knowledge unless they'd been in one just like it themselves. In that regard, was any member of the jury truly one of the defendant's peers? To me the scenario and consequential trial are much more complicated than the initial discussion point.

Another thought I had was that in all the discussions, the audience was essentially considered to be an observer rather than an active participant. No consideration was given in the train scenario with the fat man over the bridge that the person making the decision jump in front of the train themselves. But going back to the train scenario, I think the manner in which the questions were framed make it a little difficult. For the changing tracks part of the question, why is it framed as murdering the one at all? Essentially the person is faced with the choice of one dies or five die. Given the circumstances, it seems to me that turning toward the one is more a matter of minimizing an accident than it is killing one to save five. Whether or not that is just semantics, I can't really say.

Going on to the Bentham reading on utility, I thought the argument presented was also a little simplistic. It kind of needs to be, but at the same time, to categorize things into either pain or pleasure, along with a scale of how much they provide doesn't seem like an easy thing to do, along with who determines these things if making community level actions. The way the paper is written, it seems there is no value in pain, and always value in pleasure. Similarly, evil is framed as in the manner that it produces pain so it is to be avoided, but no consideration is given to the pleasure one might enjoy in certain kinds of evil.

Also, is utilitarianism then an argument against minority rights within a democracy? Hypothetically if five can gain at the expense of three, is that the just thing to do?

Sorry this post isn't very well organized, but I still had a busy week last week even after I was done with finals, and didn't want to delay any further in getting this initial post up.

Upcoming Academic Earth Series

Each week throughout the summer one of us will be leading a discussion on the following topics.  This is largely an effort to keep the blog interesting (and alive for that matter).  The tentative schedule is listed below.

Sunday, 4/24:The Morality of Murder (Steve Discussion 4/25-4/30)  

Sunday, 5/1: How Much is a Life Worth? (Jarrod Discussion 5/2-5/7)  

Sunday, 5/8: Redistributive Taxation and Progressive Taxation - Freedom to Choose (Brent Discussion 5/9-5/14)  

Sunday, 5/22:Natural Rights and Giving Them Up (Steve Discussion 5/23-5/28)  

Sunday, 5/29:Avoiding the Draft and Avoiding Parenthood (Jarrod Discussion 6/30-6/4)  

Sunday, 6/5: Motives and Morality (Brent Discussion 6/6-6/11)  

Sunday, 6/12:Lying and Principles (Steve Discussion 6/13-6/18)  

Sunday, 6/19:What's Fair and Deserved? (Jarrod Discussion 6/20-6/25)  

Sunday, 6/26:Affirmative Action and Purpose (Brent Discussion 6/27-7/2)  

Sunday, 7/10:The Good Citizen and the Freedom to Choose (Steve Discussion 7/11-7/16)  

Sunday, 7/17:Obligations and Loyalties (Jarrod Discussion 7/18-7/23)  

Sunday, 7/24:Same Sex Marriage (Brent Discussion 7/25-7/30)

http://www.academicearth.org/lectures/redistributive-and-progressive-taxation