The wikipedia entry somehow is outdated [4]. Perhaps some of the new findings are too controversial for the editors, meanwhile reseacher receiving death threat [5].

[1] The Indus Script and Economics. A Role for Indus Seals and Tablets in Rationing and Administration of Labor:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1812.00049

[2] Indus civilisation reveals its volumetric system:

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/Indus-civilisation-re...

[3] The Indus Script-Computational Analysis and Interpretations (2020) [video]:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iF_nJ4vfG-A

[4] Indus Valley Civilisation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_Valley_Civilisation

[5] Rajesh Rao: Computing a Rosetta Stone for the Indus script [video]:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwYxHPXIaao

That trade would have records is not surprising. That trade would follow patterns based on distance is not surprising, especially since transport costs were very high in that era. Hence the "gravity model".

The surprise here is in organizational form. The article describes a limited partnership contract, with partner investments and a cap table. It's impressive to see that so early. It requires a legal system, or strong social pressure, able to enforce a private contract that complex.

Most early commercial organizations were built around families. Corporations are generally considered to have first appeared in the 1300s, and were rare until the 1700s. I don't think the Roman Empire ever developed the concept of a corporation. Traders, bankers, and merchants existed, of course, but not private organizations larger than one owning family. Although it's hard to tell; not much Roman business info survives.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_on_Maximum_Prices

From Polanyi, Finley, and Weber to Austin and Malkin, we've come a long way in recognizing the sophistication of ancient economic thought.

Ctrl+F "This matters"; of course it's because it's LLM-generated BS which is designed to produce sensationalist slop. (There are about 30 other tells reinforcing this but this one seems to be in literally every single LLM-generated article produced by current models)

Considering how necessary economies are and how economists claim economists are unnecessary to run an economy, I wonder why economists even exist.

The first thing a rational economist would do is tell the government to fire all economists and stop accrediting economics degrees.

I find it interesting that they only analyzed texts that mention at least two cities, like this one:

> From Durhumit until Kanes I incurred expenses of 5 minas of refined (copper), I spent 3 minas of copper until Wahsusana, I acquired and spent small wares for a value of 4 shekels of silver. (Tablet AKT 8/145, lines 24–29)

Because I know some local businesses here that are based in city X would not mention this fact in the books, at least not for every transaction. They would write something like 'Got shipment from Y' or 'Sent for repairs to Z' etc.

They also exclude texts that mention Assur, which is the largest city there

> We exclude Assur, the home city of the Assyrians, from our automated search. First, the word Assur is also the name of the main Assyrian deity and occurs very often as an element of personal names. Second, the city of Assur is often referred to as simply alum — “the City” (comparable in use to references to the financial district of London)

So very cool work, and it can be improved upon too!

Interestingly, an LLM can totally dismantle this line of thinking (try with Claude).

The better model has always been to treat money as a zero net worth system that cannot be used to carry value into the future at no cost because such an idea inherently contradicts the biological reality that human societies and their economies are built upon.

The consequences of using money as a "store of value" are so predictable and inevitable that I'm honestly tired of explaining it over and over again.

If you can carry money into the future but not the real physical equivalent it is the representative of, then the difference is a loss that is not yet reflected in the state of money. Your decision making will be suboptimal as a direct consequence.

This isn't something that can be swept under the rug or hand waved away.

It's no different than rust eating itself through your car. If you ignore the damage when it is small, the repair will be more expensive later on.

Meanwhile the economic model says, it is impossible for the condition of the car to get worse through a mere passage of time as that violates the idea of pure time preference theory and the idea of interest being a reward for abstaining from consumption. All of these are purely ideological wishful thinking. They basically claim that everything must get better through the passage of time and that rust doesn't exist.

Consider a society where rusting as a phenomenon was illegal to express. You would be allowed to talk about holes in the chassis but not be allowed to invent a primer or clear coat that effectively prevents rust since rust as a problem does not officially exist. Your attempt to avoid rust through economic expenditures would be considered value destruction, because it is inefficient use of resources.

Besides the tendency to absolute oligarchy, there's the small matter of wholesale resource consumption and planet trashing.

Roughly: there’s no better alternative to capitalism and we have capitalism therefore we have reached optimal society.

> Wall Street calls it securitization. The merchants of Assur called it Tuesday.

was the give away for me.