I just started reading [amazon_link id=”0691143781″ target=”_blank” ]Money Changes Everything: How Finance Made Civilization Possible[/amazon_link] by William Goetzmann. It will take a while as it’s too heavy to carry on trains, but I’m already loving it. This from the introduction:
“Markets taught people about such things as the limitations of the capacity for reason and the dangers of miscalculation. These complex conceptual frameworks augmented and stimulated the development of problem solving, but they also set up a conflict between traditional and quantitative modes of thought. This conflict is heightened during periods of financial innovation and financial disaster. Not only did financial architecture challenge traditional financial institutions, it also challenged traditional conceptual frameworks for dealing with the unknown. … Understanding and managing this conflict reman important challenges to modern society.”
I’m now deep in the opening chapter on Uruk, accountancy and cuneiform.
[amazon_image id=”0691143781″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” ]Money Changes Everything: How Finance Made Civilization Possible[/amazon_image]
Alas, the EEC became the EU which became a monetary disaster for many of the reasons implied from the history of financial disasters. Politicians or centralised secretariats cannot run complex monetary systems on the basis of what may have been noble ideas at one time but have become financial and management liabilities in recent years.