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Re:Death in the clouds: The problem of bodies on Everest (2015) by jessaustin on Saturday May 27, 2017 @09:32AM (#14429980)
There are a lot of unexamined assumptions here. Why would we assume that a prehistoric society had any particular system of economic interactions? It's not as if they wrote something we can read. In those cases in which tombs or whatever were left behind that we can examine, it typically seems that relatively rare "kings" were buried with all of the gold and other shiny rocks, and sometimes with some servants or wives for the afterlife who seem to have been ritualisticly killed for that purpose. Was that "capitalism"? Maybe!
Re:Death in the clouds: The problem of bodies on Everest (2015) by weberc2 on Saturday May 27, 2017 @09:59AM (#14430069)
We know that there were merchants and people bartered to exchange goods and services. The first written records in many societies are often ledgers of royal wealth transactions. Every prominent historian believes that capitalism is the original economic system.
Re:Death in the clouds: The problem of bodies on Everest (2015) by jessaustin on Saturday May 27, 2017 @12:23PM (#14430712)
"Royal wealth transactions", the foundation of capitalism! They must have competed for serfs and slaves in a voluntary market!
Re:Death in the clouds: The problem of bodies on Everest (2015) by weberc2 on Saturday May 27, 2017 @10:19PM (#14432851)
So you're upset that the Assyrian peasantry didn't invent accounting?