 I'd like to begin today by thanking Hens and Gultun for helping me back to this motion not to see your alterances in this very beautiful book itself, here in the beautiful Bode. And I hope that you are having a good time here as I am. Now, I've been asked to talk about financial markets in the ancient world, and everything is rather popular to do than I would want to be on the other side, so my answer is that there were financial markets in the ancient world, they were not as developed and as sophisticated as our own financial markets, but they were recognitably financial markets. That being said, I now want to turn to the nature and interpretation of the evidence of the existence of financial markets. Now, if you want to talk about English and Dutch market civilization in the 17th and 18th centuries, there is a vast mass of information about those. If you want to talk about economic structures, there are user papers, there are contemporary analyses, but there is no doubt that England and Poland in the 17th and 18th centuries were not as scientific. If you want to construct a sequential table of weak prices and day labour of wages in England, you can do that from 1250 onwards, there in the nation. When we turn to the ancient world, when we turn to Greece and Rome, the information of those parts is not available. It is not available for a number of reasons. One of the reasons is that the ancients did not share our interest in statistics that they did not, at least they did not seem to have collected the kind of data that we take for granted. They also did not follow through in security. We are not sure, for example, that the Roman government knew the actual population of Rome. It knew the number of tax payers in Rome, it knew the number of tax paying households in a particular city, but the idea of collecting statistics broken down by age and sex and parts does not appear to have entered their minds. Certainly, they were far less interested than we are in things like money supply figures, birth dates and marriages, trade statistics, and all the other things that we have remaining for and again, remaining for use, which they thought, but at least they do have use, and the ancients did not appear even to have tried to collect them. There is no problem that most of the literary ancient world has to have disappeared. Their civilization collapsed in the 18th and 17th centuries, and a vast mass of literature, which had been preserved until then pretty well, just disappeared. If you look at the great historians of Rome, Lili and Tacitus, we have only large fragments of their worlds, and what we have has immediately through various pockets of the middle ages, who were not terribly interested in economic questions. Indeed, the ancient writers themselves were our rubbish, they were just not interested in discussing the things which we often thought as all consuming interest. And so there is a shortage of hard evidence on which to base any conclusions. We then have the nature of how the evidence is in turn. Now, you may assume, and I'll say more about this in a bit, you may assume that ancient societies were not as much rather like that. They were not so rich, they had used huge slavery, and they were very high at inflation and tremble, but that was the point of speaking, they were not so clear. However, within classical studies during the past 50 years, an ultimate dominant tradition has emerged, in which it is simply denied that ancient societies were not societies. The two most important writers of the tradition are a Hungarian called Karl Holan, I believe it's a great series, though it is usually called in Karl Holan. And the historian Moses in Leviton, first of all, writing in the light of politics, he says, the concept of the market economy was born with the French physical facts, simultaneously with the emergence of the institution of the market as a supply and demand price mechanism. This was in the course of time followed by the revolutionary innovation of markets and fluctuating prices for the tax of production, labour, and land. He also says that prior to our own time, prior to the world of our 1800s, no economy has ever existed that even in principle was controlled by markets. Game and profit, labour exchange, never before the 19th century played an important part in human economy. Now that is our old statement, as I said earlier, we may reject a fact, in fact I'm sure we do reject a fact that this has become dominant within large parts of classical studies and engineering. What Karl Holan says is that instead of being based on a set of market transactions, the ancient economy was based on something else. At what extent? The understanding, the discovery of recent historical and anthropological research is that man's economy, as a rule, is submerged in his social relationships. He does not act so as to safeguard his individual interests in the possession of material goods. He acts as to safeguard his actual salary, his social claim, his social assets. He values material goods only insofar as they serve that aim. In place of market behaviour, Karl Holan said that the ancient or other free-born civilisations were based on the two principles of reciprocity and redistribution. Reciprocity means that you have a community, it includes one person specialising in making products, another person specialising in making carpets, somebody else in hunting, somebody else in growing cabbages, and these people exchange products without prices and without any thought of making a profit. With no thought of it, it's a bother to have material gain. What they are doing is producing because they feel it is their social duty to do so, and they exchange because that also is their social duty. And redistribution means that a service, or a game to follow trade, or any particular service is gathered in by a centre, it may be a state, it may be a priesthood, perhaps a city, and is then redistributed along with people on the basis of merit or need. There may be prices in this type of system, but there are prices that simply indicate equivalences of value so that those that be distributed, for example, five cabbages may need more one chicken, which might be used to know if you're distributing these things, so that a lot of us get five cabbages and a lot of us get one chicken, but the only thing that the prices are formed by the clean forces of supply and demand, and if there's any change in supply and demand, prices change, but that's a possibility, that doesn't happen. And quite frankly, yes, there was trade, there was trade in the ancient world, but trade used to place at courts of trade with the great enemy insulated from the territory of Italy so that no information on the prices could move from one to the other. And again, the prices at these courts of trade would most be unset by treaty between the various trade routes. Again, there's no thought that scarcity should enter into the price or that the relative valuation should enter into the formation of the price. And finally, so probably mostly about the societies of the ancient eras, Egypt, Sumerian, Babylonia, and so on. And summarizing the research, he says, even in highly stratified societies, such as in the area of Babylonia, and the Syria, and the France, or Egypt, storage economy is prepared, and in spite of a large scale mix of money and the standard, it is used for indirect exchange of money. This may, incidentally, explain the complete act of coins and the rates of valuations of Babylonia and Egypt. Okay, so you have a flat denial of market activity in the civilizations of the past. Now, it shouldn't be important to us, it should be important to us, but it's also important to us, because it may seem as part of the same corrosive attack on market civilization, as we've seen from the Marxists and all the Temporities of Egypt, there are a number of ways in which you attack civilization. And one of the big ways in which you feel attacked is by saying that it is not a natural institution. We, as libertarians and conservatives, usually have the back of our minds, but the notion of market behavior is part of human nature. So, what if you do not have a grossly extended and grossly oppressive statement, or an adjacently stultifying section of religious or cultural conditions, market behavior is more important than anything. Now, it doesn't mean that every time the government needs people alone, we become an area of influence. As David Hume said a few hundred years ago, the Ryan photos of the North, the Roland photos of the South, but all the water always runs down because of the force of the ground. Market behavior in different states of society based on the intellectual and moral capacities of people. And that's based on their prior cultural and religious tradition, but nevertheless, market activity is what people do naturally. That's what we believe, and it also seems to me what most common people believe. The idea that something is natural is an enormous argument of entertainment in our society. If you are looking, for example, that the family is a natural institution, that's what certain states dejuice the family. If you argue that slavery is an unnatural institution, that also, to a certain extent, dejuice slavery. It doesn't mean that slavery, once you argue that it's unnatural, it should be acknowledged because you perhaps don't argue on the basis of its great utility or the basis of its non-cultural acceptance. But the moment you argue that something is natural, you raise a presumption in its favor and when you argue that it's unnatural, you raise a presumption in it. And so part of our argument in favor of markets is that part of a natural order. And if you have a normal position for the classical soldier saying that market behavior is not natural, market behavior is something which has learned in the previous parts of two hundred years, it is a casting complaint. Now, Kodari was a socialist, a relatively relevant socialist, and he disliked market civilization. He regarded markets as immoral and unjust. And Kodari says that it is given to the best of our beings somewhere to let down women to the sacred hate in the course of their lives. This happened to Kodari in England. At next stages in the United States, it really grew in intensity. His thinking was directed against market society and things which by visiting men of his human shape. See what Kodari says, you know, it's a comprehensive fascism. We must revert to repatriate people. Now, again, you may say, we'll give some facts. Look, the movement is so well-founded. If you can argue that there was minimal access among the assets, some are done, but then there aren't. After all, the assets were people famous for ritual torture, mass human sacrifice, cannibalism. They had the right thing, they did not have use of menthols that they could seem to have come from legal. You can hardly actually say that it was a civilization. It was a civilization of South America, or the Dominican theater. The Spanish conquest was in those terms a remarkable production. You might argue that in the long term, the Spanish did a considerable benefit of people of South America by conquering and converting the Christianity. But when you say this form of the ancient civilization, the theories are no matter. And when you say it's all the means of roads, because the Greeks and Romans are at the heart of our civilization. They are the foundations on which we build. We may return to Auschwitz, we may be adjourned by marriage, we may be Italians, and Spanish and Greeks and French. Our ancestors may have helped destroy the civilization, they have helped preserve it. But in all circumstances, the Greeks and Romans are the foundation of our civilization, which and now. And if you can argue that the Greeks and Romans did not know market behavior in the sense of legal, then it does in a certain sense undercut our claim that market behavior is natural. It's natural, it's part of human nature. And so this is the debate with the going on for 50 years. The Polarmi and most of the introduction as I said at the third time is dominant in certain areas. And so it is of some importance to us as conservative and libertarian activists and scholars to be aware of this debate and to know exactly how would we do it. And then you can't simply say all market behavior is theological in part of human nature. Therefore Polarmi, in your own, they are asking this is to say this is economic socialism or the market or the false consciousness or reaction or discourse. You have been so conditioned by your certain senses that you are unable to conceive of anything other than the world in which you live. And so your argument that market behavior is part of human nature, therefore there was market behavior may or may not be that much, but it will be very gentle on these people. So what you could do is you could look at the definitions of market behavior by Polarmi and think of it. And then there was something that we grabbed from people seemed to assume that unless you have a going door to the kind of economy or at least the kind of economy that you see described in Paul Sanderson's very central, it's not a market economy. If you show any real reciprocity in real distribution, therefore it's not a market economy, therefore Polarmi and West Virginia must be right. And of course that's the deepest definition. More than any other market economy is that something like half the importance of transactions in those countries take place out there in the market. I am the general for the earlier, should not be paid for it. I change my course and so I don't keep this habit. I'm afraid to think of people, relatively of people who give to charity at large organizations large companies, products and transactions that are not going to take place at zero price or at crisis set for those with limited convenience. You will in a market economy see any norms about reciprocity and even about the state a great deal of real distribution. And so Polarmi and Vinnie are wrong with the definition of a market economy. If you try to apply their categories to more England and more America you could say that they are one of the most exciting terms in the area of the education which would be a plane of services. But these are also the questions of evidence and as I said the problem with evidence in ancient societies is that most of this is clear. It's rather a very beautiful which have been broken up and others have passed away. You have a few tensions here and there, a great mass of cycles and we must somehow reconstruct the call from the fragments of the past that are there. It is difficult to do but it can be done with some certainty and in mind the most exciting work on ancient politics has not been done by classes but by the incontinence of white soul. So it is not that the history of the history of Latin but those shows some familiarity with Latin. More recently we have obviously the first article on the subject in the German economy history in 1983 and a lot ago how also shat the Latin it is a 37 page point-by-point derivation of quality. It takes every piece of evidence and to study people against the synthesis of markets that shows that it is that evidence for markets. Let me read you the extracts to this article. This essay challenges the quality position of the markets. It is found that the progressive functions of the market quality of the market are all present in the ancient areas although quality is a stage of their credentials of possibility in most of the of history. In Latin it is part of the history in Milan the art of the years of the movement of our society. This was meant to prevent from becoming like the ancient men on the stage of the Assyndic periods of art and marked activity as part of the same regulation. I will find the article and read the sentence. Book published in 1995 which is also well worth getting out and reading. And so Morrisville has shown that there was marked an activity in the engine in the engine. And so let's see what evidence there might be for marked an activity in the engine of rural industrialization. Now what I'm going to talk about though, it's of one example. From Aristotle's policy to book 1, section 9, it's an advert phase of the leaders who lived at the stem of the road to us. A full engine story, by the skills in the stars while in the winter, that there would be a great harvest of olive oil in the time here. So having a little money, he gave the products for the use of all the olive presses in kilos and liters. When she hired her own crisis, there's no one to hate her. When I asked my name, and many were worked, many were worked for once, and all of a sudden, he let them out at any rate, and they were all alive. Now Finley would say, oh, that's an example, I'm afraid if you can have it, it's not actually marked. So he knows a lot of stuff, but I can't believe it. What you have here is an example for the contract. And it may not be a visual story, but it's an example of a writing in Athens, and Aristotle and his readers appear to be familiar with the idea of putting down the process for the future use of economic resources. It may be Aristotle says that nobody else did it against us, and so Thales would not think of all markets and go out and pick a proper problem. Each of the landscape of a previously marked structure, it seems to be quite normal for the use of oil presses to be registered out months, so that's even a year in advance. There was also nobody else did it against him. He made contracts which meant that there was a legal system which was accustomed to dealing with contracts, and maybe contracts in the expectation that they would be improved for us all. And he made those contracts with the people who appeared and came to them. Thales put down the process and put forth money to them. It was a bit wrong. He made these contracts and then on the time he came around, you didn't have to engage the community taking these oil presses for him and using them for their reciprocable redistribution of economic activity. No. Thales said please, can we have these oil press? I mean, yes, we've had it for 20,000 dollars or something. And he made money from this. But now, as I said, the evidence for ancient economic activity is all about its nature. It's anecdotal school which is made between many folks. But even a folk story, it's useful to show the assumptions of the people who are not in the story of their circumstances. One of few pieces tells us about a major financial crisis in Rome in 33 AD which does show that there was a strongly impugned of capital and land markets. Interest rates only shop up for the price of land per hour. And this crisis was only limited when the emperor lived. I haven't been interested in the interest rate in three years that the imposters are in the same level. That's the biggest deal with the financial crisis first. The even economy, in my theory, gives some indication of people wanting to think about it. However, they want to have an economy that's thinking about it. So, in conclusion, I would say they do appear to have been financial markets in the ancient world, from home to the land. There were a lot of confidants. The great surveillance of the British as we are, but if you know of any things that we could do, they had a perceived perfect non-existence. So, intonation costs were staggering. And transport costs also made the trade prohibitive beyond three market maps and then trade. But then, you know, reasonable amounts for things with a lot of confidants that we would recognize. And in this sense, there are many formalities using the standard, many of which are of my three point theory. And I would again suggest that this is not an obscure debate of academics in a subject of which you may have little knowledge and in which you have little interest. This is a very important debate because if the quality and thin these ancient values continue to dominate classical studies, there is one more large island where the confidants of socialism in the universities very few people may read this stuff, but generation after generation students are exposed to it. And if they're exposed to it, it's indirectly through those social documentaries and newspaper articles and so on. And because of the enormous prestige of the weeks in Rome in this, any evidence regarding any behavior does have some persuasive value among us. So if you are interested in forward-preservation further, a number of ways to start is that part of the world which is a set of things for citations and a way of giving more information and a way of giving stars to them. And that being said, I've had my 30 minutes. I'd like to thank you already for your comments and thank you members and your audience.