What economic system did the 300 A.D. Romans have?They had trade, they had private property and laws protecting it, they had mixed funding of public schools (from the state treasury via taxes and attendees).Why weren't they "capitalist"?
> The economy of the Empire was a Raubwirtschaft or plunder economy based on looting existing resources rather than producing anything new. The Romans had no budgetary system and thus wasted whatever resources they had available. Their Empire relied on riches from conquered territories (this source of revenue ending, of course, with the end of Roman territorial expansion) or on a pattern of tax collection that drove small-scale farmers into destitution (and onto a dole that required even more exactions upon those who could not escape taxation), or into dependency upon a landed élite exempt from taxation. With the cessation of tribute from conquered territories, the full cost of their military machine had to be borne by the citizenry.> An economy based upon slave labor precluded a middle class with buying power. The Roman Empire produced few exportable goods. Material innovation, whether through entrepreneurialism or technological advancement, all but ended long before the final dissolution of the Empire. Meanwhile, the costs of military defense and the pomp of Emperors continued. Financial needs continued to increase, but the means of meeting them steadily eroded. In the end, due to economic failure, even the armor and weaponry of soldiers became so obsolete that the enemies of the Empire had better armor and weapons as well as larger forces. The decrepit social order offered so little to its subjects that many saw the barbarian invasion as liberation from onerous obligations to the ruling class.> We often assume that the collapse of the Roman Empire was a catastrophe for everyone involved. Tainter points out that it can be seen as a very rational preference of individuals at the time, many of whom were better off (but the elite presumably.) Archeological evidence from human bones indicates that average nutrition improved after the collapse in many parts of the former Roman Empire.
>300 A.D. RomansNo such thing. They were invented by the pope to fill out the 5000 years since Creation. No records exist for any events more than a century or so before the gregorian calendar.
>>15098604Ignoring the retard and the schizo, the reason is that the word "capitalism" is usually applied to societies with innovations like joint stock companies, stock markets, and fractional reserve banking, which the Romans did not have, even though the Romans did have a market economy, mass production of certain goods, and basic forms of investing and loans
>>15098907Who's the retard now? Romans can't be capitalist because they had slaves. Capitalist is just when wage slavery replaces slavery.
Was ancient china capitalist or socialist?I think Rome was a communist country.India was pretty communist too
>>15098963>proto-communistGerman peasant rebellion
>>15098604>What economic system did the 300 A.D. Romans have?Subsistence agriculture. >They had trade, they had private property and laws protecting it,Which is why they collapsed because capitalism is literally retards.
>>15098637>everything I don't like is a plunder economy>even when it goes decades without invading anythingUhhh you alright?
>>15099030>>15099030Rome did not have private property. The code of justinian allows theft. So the entire thread is retarded just like all threads on 4chan.
>>15098907(me)Though by 300AD a lot of that stuff the romans did have was beginning to decline because the third century crisis (and the associated plagues and climate cooling) had shredded the economy. The pottery mass production, anong other things, would nonetheless continue into the 6th century, so it didn't explode instantly following the crisis>>15098637This is mostly nonsense. The bit about conditions for peasants improving in some areas after the fall is true - we know this from changes in height / other indicators of nutrition in human remains. The roman empire was certainly awful for the poor, especially the rural poor - but everything else in this post is stupid. Britannia and some frontier regions of Gaul were the only areas where the military was ever the driving force of the urban economy, and at no point was the military ever primarily funded by plunder. Economic conditions remained mostly the same in the span between Augustus and Trajan, in spite of the relative lack of conquests. Where is this mythical shifting of the cost of the army onto the citizenry? It never happened; the armies were always primarily funded by taxation from the start.Additionally, to suggest that military innovation stopped is inane. The roman army of the late empire was more organized and technologically sophisticated by far than anything mustered by the republic or principate (in a fight, the vastly superior late roman cavalry alone would decide the victory very quickly). The barbarians caught up in part because of their own economic, cultural, and technological revolution from the late second through third centuries, and because of their increasingly close contact with Rome. The visigothic army that sacked rome in 410 was in most respects literally a Roman army, and filled with Visigoths who had been living in the empire for a generation at that point.
>>15099036>The code of justinian allows theftWhere?>did not have private propertyThey very explicitly did.
>>15099041>Additionally, to suggest that military innovation stopped is inane. The roman army of the late empire was more organized and technologically sophisticated by far than anything mustered by the republic or principate (in a fight, the vastly superior late roman cavalry alone would decide the victory very quickly).This is the opposite of what Marcellinus Ammianus said. They were breaking formation and refusing orders en masse in several of their battles against the Goths.
>>1509904617 Things again which we capture from the enemy at once become ours by the law of nations, so that by this rule even free men become our slaves, though, if they escape from our power and return to their own people, they recover their previous conditionNow you'll give some retarded explanation of how this doesn't count.
>>15099016>reading thread>only good post so far>gdpfag stock phraseWhat the fuck? Why?
>>15099051This is very obviously explaining the requisition of materials through force of arms. I don't think there's ever been a nation that did not do this, and you mentioned theft as if it were talking about individuals.
>>15099136It is moron. Do you think "the enemy" is a red diamond NPC?
>>15099176It is what? It's discussing group based conflicts, probably for political purposes. It's not talking about individuals stealing from one another.
>>15099194It was whatever and cops didn't exist, so it didn't matter. You're too dumb to find a eviction before 2015. Private property didn't exist before 1950.
>>15099200Look at this:>Things again which WE capture from the ENEMY at once becomes OURS by the law of NATIONSSo it's strictly referring to groups involved in political conflicts.>You're too dumb to find a eviction before 2015. Private property didn't exist before 1950.You are mind broken. Private property has always existed. Church property has existed. State property has existed. What has not existed? Collective property. You are obviously in denial about reality and are forcing things verbally to reassure yourself.
>>15099232>What has not existed? Collective propertyJfl.You're too dumb to find a eviction before 2015.
>>15098604>They had tradeDid they? Besides stealing everything.
>>15099232stop replying to gdpfag doofus
>>15099243No. Iranians and arabs drained all their looted spanish silver away with eastern luxuries.
>>15098907The only good reply ITT
>>15100491Its wrong. Roman's did not have a market economy in any way. The only prices were set by government edict to steal food.
>>15098637Complete nonsense. >The Romans had no budgetary system and thus wasted whatever resources they had availableRudimentary loans existed and they understood quite well how to use mints to effectively generate liquid currency. >or into dependency upon a landed élite exempt from taxationThe elite were not exempt from tax and taxation took into account tenants. Usually the tax obligation was taken up by their landlord but they were not exempt from taxation.>even the armor and weaponry of soldiers became so obsolete that the enemies of the Empire had better armor and weapons as well as larger forces.Absolutely not.>>15099050>They were breaking formation and refusing orders en masse in several of their battles against the Goths.He reports the exact opposite. That the Roman army fought to the end at Adrianople.
>>15100518But nobody actually used money in Rome, while his will insist that they did because his is a retard board.
>>15100529proof?
>>15100533Read the thread, absolute retard.
>>15100537I see no sources
>>15100540Well done then jidf.
>>15100543damn, no sources.
> ultimate redpill > The Romans were capitalist, as were most great towns up until 1917I wonder why do retards seethe at the mere thought that men of the past had shared much with men now and were not just retarded aliens waiting to be modernised by some time traveller and his ideology of progress
>>15100533it was revealed to him in a dream
>>15100561Yes capitalism is at least as old as cities. But the subsistence farmers majority lived on a gift economy.
>>15101972How so? They could sell their produce for currency.
Capitalism is just the system that has existed in cities since the dawn of time, we're in capitalism because that very system has now been applied in the countryside too.
>>15102533Indeed, the roman period had a lot more peasants selling their produce for money than the periods before or afterIt was easily the most capitalist entity of its time
>>15102559I agree.
