Brad’s Reviews > ...And Forgive Them Their Debts > Status Update

"The common denominator from Babylonia to Byzantium was the transfer of subsistence land to large property owners. Making such transfers irreversible impaired government fiscal revenue and the supply of military manpower, leading ultimately to economic collapse."

The prophets of Israel and Judah were well-connected men of influence, as were the Greek and Roman reformers and the Stoics who later influenced the Gracchi and other disaffected aristocrats in Rome. Although these reformers spoke on behalf of the poor against wealthy predators, they did not arise out of the poor classes.

This tendency of wealth to shift the tax burden onto labour is a thread that runs from ancient history down to today's world.

On top of this, punishments for non-payment to creditors that fail to recognize when debt has become unpayable and insist on cannibalizing the foundations of the economy are a concomitant thread.

Hammurabi heard many cases, or at least appeals of judgments, directly...However, access to the ruler would have been limited by the need to go through local officials or assemblies, whose ranks often included the abusive parties.

The letter of the law from the political center is all too easily corrupted in translation by go-betweens. On its own it's eventually an insufficient check.

Essential assets such as oxen could not be taken as pledges, because they were necessary means of production to produce crops, as well as to enable the debtor to pay taxes or work his way out of debt. Creditors who distrained such assets were fined one-third of a mina of silver, the same amount as for killing a man.

For much of this book, I'm left pondering anachronistic implications...

"‘One finds mention, here and there, of ‘peasant revolts,’ Jean Bottéro writes, ‘but these appear to have been provoked by terrible catastrophes such as famine, and are directed against an individual such as a king, not against an institution. In reality, the old inhabitants of Mesopotamia appear to have been devoid of any revolutionary spirit,’ as there was no idea of an alternative way to organize society."