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Actually, Michael Hudson argued that even Sumerians knew that, so they had a debt jubilee everytime a king has died (and from that comes the phrase "clean slate
by js8 4y ago
Actually, Michael Hudson argued that even Sumerians knew that, so they had a debt jubilee everytime a king has died (and from that comes the phrase "clean slate"). Despite all the technology, we are not really much smarter today.
- prottog 4y ago> so they had a debt jubilee everytime a king has died From this I can gather that Sumerian kings on average didn't live very long. ;-)
- whitemary 4y agoOr they were a good king and didn't let debt build up.
- green_man_lives 4y agoI would assume that most of the early Mesopotamian societies were the same. IOUs were the first form of currency, used for trade and bookkeeping. But after a while you'd see consolidation of wealth in the hands of a few, which would have been antithetical to the everything they knew at the time (group > individual).
- ineedasername 4y agoI imagine that a spasm of anxiety went through every lender’s gut whenever a king so much as sneezed.
- ajmurmann 4y agoSo I would only get a mortgage when the king is young? I assume interest rates would go up with the age of the king?