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LQD What are they worth? | 28 comments (28 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)
Re: LQD What are they worth? (none / 0)
Are we talking about potlach now?

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Dec 14th, 2009 at 04:33:46 PM EST
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Re: LQD What are they worth? (4.00 / 5)
Potlatch - "giving away" was, interestingly banned by both the Canadian and US governments, because the reciprocity and redistribution of wealth was thought more dangerous than cholera.

You can't be me, I'm taken
by Sven Triloqvist on Mon Dec 14th, 2009 at 04:40:59 PM EST
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Re: LQD What are they worth? (4.00 / 2)
I'm referring to
The influx of manufactured trade goods such as blankets and sheet copper into the Pacific Northwest caused inflation in the potlatch in the late eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries. Some groups, such as the Kwakwaka'wakw, used the potlatch as an arena in which highly competitive contests of status took place. In some cases, goods were actually destroyed after being received, or instead of being given away.


En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Dec 14th, 2009 at 04:46:20 PM EST
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Re: LQD What are they worth? (4.00 / 4)
An early example of Creative Destruction, I'm sure.

Hazy memories of Anthro 200 wandering through my mind informs me the increase in goods destruction was linked to the ability to destroy valuable goods without removing the necessary amount of high value goods from the society and to maintain the status hierarchy.  In other words, any society can only have X amount of high value goods; once X is passed high status individuals seek to reduce the circulating surplus back to X to keep their status.

 

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

by ATinNM on Mon Dec 14th, 2009 at 05:58:54 PM EST
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Re: LQD What are they worth? (4.00 / 3)
No, although that is an interesting variation on theme.

I merely note that throughout human history, status and authority seem consistently to be accorded to those who excel at non-productive or even destructive activities. The exercise of violence is probably the oldest and most obvious example of this, but many more niches were created as societies became more complex.

Status and authority as a function of parasitism... how's that for a paradigm?

The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman

by dvx (dvx.clt ät gmail dotcom) on Tue Dec 15th, 2009 at 02:47:50 AM EST
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LQD What are they worth? | 28 comments (28 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
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