Fun with Math, Money, and Memorandums

Another deleted chapter

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Getty Images really came through with the feature photo.

The editing of Greedy Sexist Religious Bigots: A History of Humanity continues. I’ve reworked the first half and am waiting to hear back before getting into the second half. Originally, the book had 37 chapters. Now it has 32. This was Chapter 10, where my editor suggested we could punt the entire thing. And I was all what the fuck? No way. And then I read it and was like well shit yeah she’s right.

It’s a fine chapter with lots of good information, but we are endeavouring to dial in tighter on the theme of the book as revealed in its title. The reality is that this chapter gave a lot of background information of how the world of math, banking, and writing all came to be, but it was a distraction, not really necessary. Little bits as they pertain to greed and inequality do appear elsewhere in the book, but the fact is that she was right. It wasn’t necessary for this book.

However, just because it wasn’t necessary doesn’t mean it isn’t interesting. Check it out.

10

Fun With Math, Money, and Memorandums

“The men who can manage men manage the men who can manage only things, and the men who can manage money manage all.” The Durants, again. They won a Pulitzer and the Presidential Medal of Freedom for their historical writings. Anyway, Solon laid the foundation for Greek democracy, because he could manage money.¹

Born seven centuries later, Plutarch is our source for the details of Solon’s reign, and the author still felt the need to comment on the ruler’s sex life, reporting he “was not immune to good-looking young men.” I’m more interested in how Solon’s economic policies pissed everyone off and that it was a good thing. It was a good thing because Athens was on the verge of civil war, an impending battle of rich versus poor, and Solon was neither.

The people of Athens were angry for several reasons, but like President Bill Clinton’s campaign strategist James Carville said, “It’s the economy, stupid.” At least, presidential elections in the United States were about the economy until a Black man had the audacity to occupy the White House and a bunch of low-melanin losers misplaced their excrement. I’m getting ahead of myself by a couple millennia. The poor were ready to eat the rich, and Athens looked to a middle-class merchant to solve their problems. As Plutarch wrote, Solon “had no part in the wrongdoing of the rich, and was not caught up in the afflictions of the poor …” Athenians were so desperate for a fix, and they deemed Solon trustworthy enough to solve their problems, they eventually bestowed upon him autocratic powers. It began with him gaining the title of Archon in 594 B.C.E.

And use those powers he did. In addition to repealing some literally Draconian laws, his biggest impact was financial. He cancelled the massive debts of the poor and eliminated debt slavery, made the rich pay more in taxes, and said that any land farmers had worked for generations now belonged to them. The rich were all You did fucking what? and the poor were like Not goddamn good enough you need to go full Karl Marx even though he hasn’t been born yet! So, yeah. Good compromise when both sides are mad at you. Then, knowing he’d be endlessly pestered to modify these laws, Solon said it’s fuckity bye time and fled the city for the next decade to go on the Ancient Greek version of walkabout.²

It still wasn’t fair, but it was fairer, and eventually lead to the formation of the world’s first democracy, which also wasn’t fair. It’s still not fair. Throughout history, almost all systems of state power have been oligarchies. Aristocratic oligarchies ruled by birthright, theocratic oligarchies by their religious power, and democratic oligarchies rule via wealth.³Poor people don’t get elected president, and those who win the most votes cannot help but come under the sway of big money. Money makes the world go round, and with the creation of surplus it was only a matter of time before it was invented. And counted. And tracked.

I love writing, and I also love the money I make from writing. Sue me. Actually, don’t. Lawyers are expensive. Anyway, there is a direct connection between desire for wealth and the development of writing. But math came long before.

Previously I wrote of how, around 200,000 years ago, the cutting of meat on a kill transformed from chaotic feasting to far more measured. We can surmise this could have involved some math. Let’s see, the butcher says, we have [uses all fingers and half of their toes] people here, so I need to cut that many pieces of meat to share equally. Maybe that happened. What we definitely know happened is 20,000 years ago, in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a bone was carefully etched to represent six months of a lunar phases. And a lot of guys said oh hey this is man’s first calendar. And then a female mathematician said, uh, excuse me? Man’s first calendar? Because even modern men couldn’t deduce the importance of measuring something else that happens with the same regularity the moon passes through all its phases.⁴ Regardless, such tally sticks long predate the advent of writing, but it was when the issue of money came into play there developed an additional need to merge math with descriptions of what it these numbers meant.

The so-called “Father of Economics” didn’t grasp what it meant.

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