Hacker News Reader

Comment by cwnyth | Hacker News Reader

Everyone points to Ea-nasir, but that's a meme. Meanwhile, Diocletian outlawed price gouging and standardized prices across a variety of goods:

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.

View on HN

We are about ~300 years closer to Diocletian than Diocletian was to Ea-nasir. Too bad he didn't have access to Adam Smith, who could have told him that price fixing wouldn't work and might have pointed to Roman currency debasement as one of the major causes of inflation. Of course greed is always a factor I suppose.

Fair! Chronologically, at least, Diocletian's time is closer to us, though not technologically or population-wise. And by Diocletian's time, inflation was already out of control. If anything, the political stability that came with Diocletian's reforms actually helped bolster the economy, though it wouldn't last, as soon the center moved to Byzantium, leaving Rome (and Italy) to whither and die over the next century.

Lots of people say lots of things. I don't see why Adam Smith is special. Price fixing can work within reason.

Did you know that the communism-themed Fusion Festival fixes the price of a meal, across all 100+ vendors, currently at 7€? This is presumably negotiated between the festival organisers and the food vendors as a reasonable price. (Some of them make a point of advertising 6.50€ but that doesn't actually make a difference. If you like the food you would've bought it for 7€ and if you don't like the food you aren't going to change your mind over 0.50€. They're just throwing away money.)(Some stands that sell more "snacky" items like crepes or smoothies use lower prices.)

Because the price is the same everywhere you don't have to comparison-shop and can just pick the food you like.

What is a meal though? Do you get the same volume of food from all vendors, and the same number of calories? I definitely order multiple items from restaurants that have small portion sizes, so I suspect some vendors would be better or worse deals even at a uniform price.

I don't know what goes on in the back end, but 7€ buys you what you get for more money at other music festivals, including from the exact same vendors.

> we've come a long way

See "Forty Centuries of Wage and Price Controls" which shows that humans are very slow learners.

https://www.amazon.com/Forty-Centuries-Wage-Price-Controls/d...

I guess Diocletian was the first Communist, before there was such a thing as Communism.

The price fixing was a failure, as would be expected. I am not sure if 'sophistication' is the right word to describe it.

I thought communism was about central ownership of the means of production?

But yeah, long term price fixing always fails.

Not neccessarily central, but somehow distributed ownership over business by the working class. The most simple case though being the state owns it and then workers theoretically own the state. An economy of all independent co-op businesses could probably be defined as communism too though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com