In reply to Rob Tye's interesting reference to my post and to the literature:

certainly it would be naive to think that at Heracleitus' time all the
necessities (_chremata_) were exchanged in Ephesos against gold
(_chrysos_) in the form of bullion  because of a literary reading of
Heracleitus' words.

 To me at least it seems obvious that we must translate from
Heracleitus' literary form (here: alliteration) to the economic
content implied and that means that we can infer from his lines that
even at his time it was understood that "gold" stood for means of
payment. The essential point is that it was understood that there was
a circular flow of a lasting  _stock_ of means of payment as
counterpart for a _flow_  of "necessities" which are consumed and
produced, which vanish and re-appear. But if Rob thinks that that
stock  was gold bullion at Heracleitus' time, OK. It does not make a
great difference with regard to the issue of the thread: were ancient
market economies  similar to  black market economies in modern
centrally planned economies? I think Rob agrees that they were not.

There is also his interesting reference to
 "Commercial stamp seals  already 3,000+ years old."
But what does that mean? Why did that use not continue?  One of many
possible explanations  is that there was too much fraud involved: a
seal was given as "key" to a valuable deposit. When the entitled
person opened the deposit it did not contain what was claimed that
there was. Therefore the next time  a payment obligation had to be
met, the payment-seal itself had to be of the agreed value, thus
avoiding recourse to a potentially fraudulent deposit. Thus payment by
credit (belief-money using seals or documents on clay tablets) might
have   become payment by  precious coin money, its main characteristic
being that the seal itself becomes the valuable deposit, the seal
imprint being  on electron or gold or silver.  But once established,
precious coin money could become  token money, even  as a creation of
a _democratic_  political system (literature: Aristophanes,  Plato)
Michael Ambrosi

2012/12/21 Rob Tye <[log in to unmask]>:
> Keith,
>
> I trust we agree that Michael is confusing gold bullion used as money with
> actual gold coin.  Payments by weight in gold, silver and copper “bullion”
> were all routinely being used in various places by around 2000 BC.  Coin is
> very specifically to do with making the metal into a form efficiently and
> rapidly usable for smaller payments.  Happens around 610 BC, first
> specifically mentioned c. 460 BC as far as I know
>
> I am a fan of Percy Ure, much of my suggestion was originally put up by him
> in 1922 (Origins of Tyranny - now free on the web).  Ure was a classicist
> with a sense of humour, if you track his footnotes etc, he seems to want to
> make William Jennings Bryan a kind of reincarnation of Peisistratos.
> Certain his case is that coin issue was a strengthening of the position of
> the small man against big business in Ancient Greece.  Which raises the
> question, why did Finley and Polanyi ignore what Ure had earlier put?  I
> have been tracking the funding streams and associations of Finley and
> Polanyi for 20 years now, and new troubling revelations keep on appearing.
>
> Thinking about the Lydian invention of coin – the metallurgy (salt
> cementation etc) was already about 1,500 years old.  Commercial stamp seals
> already 3,000+ years old.  Exact official weight systems for metals were
> already 1,500+ years old.  Markets, and use of metal for payments - already
> 1,500+ years old.  What was there to invent?
>
> The idea that coins were created to pay mercenaries too is just speculation,
> popular around Finley’s associates, such as Kraay.  That idea was very
> effectively criticised by Howgego (1995)
>
> Of course I agree we are all forced to speculate.  The facts that most
> impress me are that throughout the subsequent historical periods of coin
> use, reactionary elites very regularly seem to intervene to curb coin issue
> and market access for the general population.  And radical reformers equally
> regularly appear to reverse the tendency.  Looking for a similar pattern
> just before history starts seems to me a legitimate application of Occam’s razor
>
> Rob Tye, York, UK



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Prof. em. Dr. Dr.h.c. G.M. Ambrosi
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