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Comment by zeteo | Hacker News Reader

The extent to which the Incas did it is remarkable, but historically civil engineering had little to do with markets. The ancient Sumerians, Egyptians, Persians etc. pretty much built their infrastructure and monumental buildings with drafted, unpaid labor. The French monarchy, one of the most advanced states in the world, relied on the corvée to build roads up until 1789 [1]. The decisive turn in the situation took place in Holland around the 16th century, when Dutch cities discovered they could build canals and recoup costs by charging moderate usage fees. This system of financing civil engineering, adapted to e.g. turnpikes and later railroads, increasingly became widespread, and displaced earlier arrangements in Western countries during the 18th and 19th centuries. So what would be truly surprising is if the Incas had done it with money.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corvee#France

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Actually I remember a documentary were it stated that the Persians paid men and women for their skills working on projects. I can't remember the name of the documentary (probably from the discovery channel).

A quick google search - http://hsc.csu.edu.au/ancient_history/societies/near_east/pe...

And - "Men, women and children worked in ancient Persia to support a diverse economy. Workers were paid in wine and grain, with skilled laborers paid more than unskilled, and supervisors paid more than workers. Men were paid slightly more than women, but female supervisors were paid more than the men working under them. Young women received maternity leave and were paid money for each child they had."

http://www.ehow.com/about_5414474_jobs-did-ancient-persians-...

>Workers were paid in wine and grain

That's not pay, it's logistics. Even on the worst forced labor projects they're still usually feeding the prisoners.

Maybe just a little OT, but my grand-parens lived in an mountain valley somewhere in Eastern Europe and even though I was still a kid I remember that when they were bringing people in to help them with agricultural work (collecting hay etc) often times said people were not paid with money but instead with "days-worked".

More exactly, once person A had worked for you for two days you had to pay back by working two days at her place, let's say helping her collecting potatoes or whatever, "number of days worked" was a sort of currency. And providing food to the hired workers was also part of the deal.

Obviously things have changed now, as even then (25 years ago) this practice was beginning to fade off.

What you describe sounds a lot like the labor-day (trudoden) accounting system for collective farms in the Soviet Union. They actually did pay wages to the workers according to the number of labor-days worked. (Note: It wasn't literally one day -- harder tasks could earn more than one labor-day per day.)

If one farm needed some temporary labor, it would've been easier to trade labor-days with another farm than to settle in cash.

I don't know about other Soviet bloc countries, but I would not be surprised if they used a similar system. 25 years ago would've been towards the end of the Communist era, which would also explain why it was fading.

Eh, you simply changed the meaning of the word; it clearly states "paid" and not "feed".

You are fully aware that you can offer work in exchange for things rather than gold or fiat money?

From the other link we'll find

>Free workers were even recruited from neighbouring satrapies at harvest time (Dandemaev and Lukonin, 1989: 157). Paid free-born labourers worked on the Babylonian canals, and free non-citizen farmers worked the land of the state, temples and the rich (Dandamaev and Lukonin, 1989: 152), and provided the corvee labour at such sites as Susa and Persepolis (Kent 1953DSf 22-58). They could not be sold, and so were not actually slaves, and could be considered non-citizen workers.

(my emphasis)

The discussion is more complicated than quoting a couple of random non-related articles on the Internet. But simply changing the meaning of a given statement and dismissing the entire counter argument is dishonest.

I apologize if my previous reply came across as too curt. But I think a sharp distinction needs to be drawn between two work systems that are quite different:

A. Market based, in which a certain reward is provided for performing a certain amount of work. Workers are generally free to come and leave, and respond accordingly to variations in wages.

B. Command based, into which workers are essentially corralled by threats of force (explicit or implicit), and often provided with nourishment so they can keep laboring until their obligation is fulfilled.

It's possible to talk of "payment" under scenario B [1], but it cheapens the term and it definitely doesn't indicate market-based relations. Transfers of food and drink (which make for poor currency, especially in places that are already minting coins [2]) are on the contrary a good indication of the corvée system at work.

[1] See e.g. this Wikipedia entry: "Corvée [...] was unpaid labour imposed [...] by the state [...] The corvée was the earliest and most widespread form of taxation [... The] Medieval agricultural corvée was not entirely unpaid: by custom the workers could expect small payments, often in the form of food and drink consumed on the spot." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corvee

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_daric

That is a good distinction.

Although if I may digress and make a small comment. The market economy could be argued somewhat "command based" too. The difference being that you are given money to buy the food and shelter you need (rather than being given them directly). And then you have the entire "debt economy" when it comes to "laboring until their obligation is fulfilled".

While I now understand your argument, I saw the issue more as the state at least acknowledged an exchange, and a right for the worker to receive some compensation. Perhaps not the most valuable. But something, in a time were you could easily have slave labor; "payment" in its simplest form without any connotation to specific economic models.

Speaking of slave labor however. There was a part about slaves (in one of the articles I quoted). It stated that more skilled labor (doctors, nurses and teachers) were kept as slaves. Now, in a market economy those kinds of skills would (should) be especially rewarding in the model A you are talking about.

When I think about it, I can't say that lower skill work really would seem to differ in the two models you mentioned. In today’s world you could find lower skill work that pays more than simply keeping a person alive (e.g. in many European countries), but generally speaking this is not true in all (most?) places.

But I digress. Again.

Ya: free to go but free to starve isn't much of a choice. Outright slavery isn't necessary.

How is paying me money any different if my only option if I quit was live on the streets and starve?

Monopoly on means of survival is effective slavery. People in early agricultural societies didn't exactly have many choices.

This is the argument behind the movements for a living wage. However this is now, no early agricultural society, just first world shining light capitalism. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_wage

There are huge limits to capitalism in terms of automation. We are going to hit those limits in our lifetime and society is going to need some drastic adaptations.

> skilled laborers paid more than unskilled, and supervisors paid more than workers. Men were paid slightly more than women, but female supervisors were paid more than the men working under them. Young women received maternity leave and were paid money for each child they had."

It makes sense, people were paid for their ability to add to society. Men paid more possibly due to their greater strength; carry more, build more faster and women for having children.

I think the key point is that they didn't have money at all.

The article has two main points:

1. The Inca state had no internal trade system whatsoever. This is, if accurate, indeed unusual for a society of its size.

2. Despite this, they still managed to acquire great "wealth", which the article defines as infrastructure and public works. This is not surprising at all, since historically even societies that had markets did not usually rely on them for civil engineering projects.

There were a lot of ancient societies that didn't have money but still engaged in commerce. The ancient Egyptians payed taxes in food for example. What the article stresses is that we don't have a record of the Incas' merchant class. This doesn't mean they didn't have one; they had no writing system either so it's possible that Inca trade was simply never recorded.

One thing to remember about the Inca's though is that though they had no written language, they did have a record keeping system involving knots in string. Only a very few Incas knew how this system worked so it's possible that here was no efficient reckoning system available to the masses so large scale trade would have been impossible in a lot of ways.

Another thing to think of, is that when talking about the 'Incas' we should avoid conflating the Incas themselves, who were relatively few in number, and the vast number of peoples that they ruled over. The bulk of the Incas themselves were soldiers in the military and were provided for directly by the government, while the conquered peoples were reputedly pressed into labor and made to wear uniforms corresponding to their social statuses. It's possible that the various tribes traded amongst themselves before they were conquered by the Incas and had their societies radically transformed.

The story of Atahualpa’s Ransom (http://latinamericanhistory.about.com/od/theconquestofperu/p...) -- the king offered a ransom of gold -- seems to cast doubt on the claim the Incans didn't have money.

Why's that? It's clear they recognized various things as valuable. And that the Spanish told them they wanted gold.

But money is special: it's a unit by which all economic value is measured, and it's universally swappable for any other kind of value.

It's possible, in principle, that this "transaction" was the first of its kind in Inca civilization and only happened to involve gold because that's what the Spanish wanted. But since gold is the quintessential commodity currency and has much of its value tied to others' valuing it [1], I think the burden of proof is on the claim they didn't have money. (And that's even before considering this famous anecdote -- one of only a few available, about any aspect of Inca culture.) They don't even address it though.

[1] Unlike bartered goods or services, gold (like other good currencies) is readily divisible and transportable, transfers without any skill, and stores indefinitely. Unlike many commodities, gold is not valued primarily for its functional value (food can be eaten, cloth provides warmth, etc.)

I guess you're entitled to use whatever standard of proof you want. But "random guy on the internet doesn't like it" is not the kind of thing you should expect to persuade others. For me it certainly doesn't outweigh the opinion of professional scholars.

The reason we know Romans had money is that we still have some of their money. If they did have money and you're asserting it was gold, then it should be up to you to come up with some of their golden money. There are certainly plenty of other artifacts from the era.

I get the feeling from this and your previous post that you're associating something having value with it being traded or used as money? Value and currency. Am I wrong? I know that the majority of my possessions have very little monetary value (maybe even zero) but a lot of value none the less. Judging by the small understanding of the Imca I have, they placed a lot of value in a lot of non material things and also in material things that weren't readily tradable. A lot about the Inca isn't understood - their record keeping/message system for example, quipu. And these were made of string. A lot of their artifacts have been preserved in deserts and glaciers, allowing very fragile things to be recovered. Quite apart from first hand accounts, I would think that unless something major has been overlooked that is right in front of everyone, money didn't exist.

First, it depends on whether the gold was considered a currency. If it was just another good, then it's really just a bartering -- life for some good, which in this case happens to be gold.

Second, that story is post-conquistador. It is in fact the Spanish who are demanding the gold and silver, which is of course what the Spanish used for currency. So it's really an observation on the Spanish, not the Incans.

It may be that the Inca never used gold as currency, but it would be hard to substantiate that claim, I would think. The reason the Spanish valued it as currency is not because of some quirk of the Spanish, however -- it's univerally a good currency (though not the best). Unlike bartered goods or services, gold is readily divisible and transportable, transfers without any skill, and stores indefinitely.

The Spanish had grown up knowing that gold could be swapped into land and wine and women. Get a lot of it, go home, live the good life. I doubt it was more sophisticated than that. The evidence suggests that the Spanish didn't have an academic understanding of currency, because the influex of silver caused huge inflation in Spain and damaged their economy.

    > it's univerally a good currency

It's not. Metals don't function as currency even in the world we live in. You can't go into a shop and buy a computer with a piece of gold - nobody is set up for it. It functions less as a currency even than something like bitcoin, which you can occasionally find something quoted in. With gold - you won't find someone quoting food, land, or shares with it, or set up to accept it as payment.

There's a concept called 'store of value'. Gold is regarded by many to function as a strong store of value. In fact, recently it hasn't - it's gone up significantly for several years and then down this year.

But that's a different thing to currency. And it's not unique to metals - land and cocaine tend to have those properties also.

    > It may be that the Inca never used gold as
    > currency, but it would be hard to substantiate
    > that claim, I would think

You've set down a default assumption that is incorrect - that gold is a universal currency. Then you've followed on to say that - therefore - it should be assumed that the Incas used gold as a currency. This is invalid.

The article says there's an absence of evidence of markets from the Incas, and painted a picture of how life worked. If you think that gold was valued as a currency, show some evidence.

The Spanish had grown up knowing that gold could be swapped into land and wine and women. Get a lot of it, go home, live the good life. I doubt it was more sophisticated than that.

Actually it really was. Spanish, Europeans, Asians, and perhaps other nations elsewhere, tried different methods of exchanging goods. In the beginning they would have exchanged good directly (salt for sheep), but they found this would be very hard because you could not readily divide certain goods and you had to buy significantly more or less of what you needed. Other forms of payments were introduced in different parts of the continents including salt, silk, and even nails in some regision, etc... Then came metal. It wasn't easy to divide, but soon enough they introduced small equally sized weighted metal. But as you can imagine the crooks would mixed different metals, which in the long run lead to coined money to certify authenticity. However Kings started to reduce the quantity of gold to repay debts they owed because it was not so much based on weight, but more so on "coin." There is more, but you would want to read the Origins of Wealth of Nations by A. Smith for more on the subject.

Gold seem to have been a good "currency," (but then again what do you mean by currency) and could have remain such, but the problem has always been the value it was based on and what you could have afforded with it. There layed the problem.

The above is what I understood from Adam's Smith Wealth of Nations, Book I, but I must admit I am still at my first read and perhaps by read 3 I will have a better understanding.

To be clear, I think gold is inferior as a currency compared to modern (fiat) money. I was comparing it to other goods-of-value (livestock, clothes, food, etc.)

I know very little about the Inca, and make no claim about them. I'm merely skeptical of the article's claims (which may very well be right).

Incidentally, so is salt.

Not unrelated, Salinas de Maras. If you're going to Cusco, make the side trip. It's fascinating. http://breakoutofbushwick.org/a-visit-to-the-salinas-de-mara...

It's a stretch to call it a universal currency. You don't see people in the high street quoted in units of salt.

Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_salt

It looks like a fairly universal currency: Roman soldiers were paid in it (at least, "salary" comes from the word for salt), as were soldiers in the American War of 1812. In Timbuktu they traded salt for slaves. It created cities and the Polish kingdom. It was taxed for hundreds of years in Europe.

These days salt is practically free, but when the only way to get it was from mining or by evaporating ocean water (neither very readily accessible in many parts), and unlike gold, you tended to consume it in preserving food, it was worth a bit more.

The other major benefit is that it had no other use except as a medium of exchange (unlike grain, salt, and other commodities) and was easy to carry in decorative form (ie jewelry).

Agreed, there is nothing strange about the Incan system. It is one of the oldest forms of taxes.

However I shared the paper's central question which was the complete lack of existence of a trading class. In other cultures there were always traders and markets and points of exchange. Perhaps as a mono-culture the Incans never had to develop such systems (or the need was small enough, as pointed out in the paper, that they did so on a case by case basis).

Other than the lack of a trading class the economy is very much like the early Egyptian economy, based around the production of food and with taxes extracted in the form of labor and food. My guess for the lack of a trading class is due to too few neighbors to trade with.

And actually one of the fairest. We all are equally rich in time so requiring labor in equal amount makes sense.

Then you can give everyone equal money for their labour and let them trade the surplus goods and services on the free market.

I've watched one documentary which claimed the Egyptians were paid, in beer.

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