EVIDENCE THAT ROME WAS A MARKET ECONOMY.

EVIDENCE THAT ROME WAS A MARKET ECONOMY. With admirable fair mindedness, two days after posting the article I linked to yesterday, which argued that Rome was never a market economy, Arnold Kling on his own blog linked to strong evidence to the contrary. He linked to a wonderful review by James McCormick of THE FALL OF ROME AND THE END OF CIVILIZATION by Bryan Ward-Perkins. Kling writes, “Ward-Perkins’ thesis is that Rome created a strong economy based on trade, and that living standards collapsed when Rome fell.” Ward-Perkins relies on the archeological record for his thesis. Kling quotes McCormick: “The distribution of artifacts and discarded pottery and coinage establishes a massive and vital commercial economy, geared to satisfying the appetites of humble and modest customers….[S]oldiers stationed in Wales and Mesopotamia … were paid in gold, many were literate, and … they had access to hundreds of different well-made and mass-produced items of ordinary daily use.”