SHOULD HAVE BEEN “GUNS, GERMS, AND PROPERTY RIGHTS” Well, if you start a civiliz

SHOULD HAVE BEEN “GUNS, GERMS, AND PROPERTY RIGHTS”

Well, if you start a civilization with the problem of coordinating irrigation if an alluvial plain, thats very different from starting a civilization with the problem of allocating land to farmers who do not rely upon irrigation.

Each culture, each civilization, carries with it, its means of warfare, means of coordination of use of the land, and family structure.

None of which are particularly relevant in a modernity, in which our means of production and reproduction depend upon abstract institutions of property and contract which allow the voluntary organization of production in vast, unknowable overlapping patterns of specialization and trade.

Capitalism isnt a belief, its a technology.

Guns, germs, steel… MONEY, ACCOUNTING, AND PROPERTY RIGHTS.