How 12th-century Genoese merchants invented the idea of risk(psyche.co)
psyche.co
How 12th-century Genoese merchants invented the idea of risk
https://psyche.co/ideas/how-12th-century-genoese-merchants-invented-the-idea-of-risk
28 comments
If you're into risk, then an awesome book is Against the Gods, by Peter Bernstein.
Yes, and I was going to refer to that book, which is from 1998.
The article misses the point. He's describing the beginnings of marine insurance. The goal was to make commerce routine and at fixed cost. Before this, shipping was a high-risk, high-return, low-volume enterprise. Marine insurance converted it, gradually, into a low-risk, low-return, high-volume enterprise. From silks and spices to bulk salted herring in casks.
This is how shipping changed from "ventures" to "boring, but profitable".
The article misses the point. He's describing the beginnings of marine insurance. The goal was to make commerce routine and at fixed cost. Before this, shipping was a high-risk, high-return, low-volume enterprise. Marine insurance converted it, gradually, into a low-risk, low-return, high-volume enterprise. From silks and spices to bulk salted herring in casks.
This is how shipping changed from "ventures" to "boring, but profitable".
The painting they chose for the cover—Storm on the Sea of Galilee—was stolen in the Gardner Heist in 1990 and has yet to be recovered. It’s believed to be Rembrandt’s only seascape
4monthsaway(1)
Interest, risk, insurance etc. are such intrinsic economic concepts that it is hard to believe they didn't naturally originate in some form in the earliest human societies. While I'm sure the word risk and formal methods of actuary can be traced to the era mentioned by the author, I'm more hesitant to believe that the "idea of risk" was invented there.
Ancient greeks had actually a very similar system of participation on maritime endeavors.
They even supported poets in order to create fiction and propaganda about the amazing things and riches that were abroad. Making young people travel also relieved demographical pressure.
If you lost a ship by shipwreck, you lost it all, but it was very profitable if the ship returned. Like anything in life, the were "naturals" that will return and succeed, people that were really good at it for whatever reason.
They even supported poets in order to create fiction and propaganda about the amazing things and riches that were abroad. Making young people travel also relieved demographical pressure.
If you lost a ship by shipwreck, you lost it all, but it was very profitable if the ship returned. Like anything in life, the were "naturals" that will return and succeed, people that were really good at it for whatever reason.
There's some interesting details from Rome too. Take this on Cato:
>As his income grew, Cato also became a regular investor in commercial lending. Although a law from 218 BC banned senators from engaging directly in commercial shipping, Cato formed partnerships of fifty investors that backed the commercial operations of fifty ships. He fronted all of the initial capital and then lent money to investors that they could each use to buy a share in the enterprise. Cato himself entrusted one share to a freed slave who acted as his agent. He then profited from the trading activities as well as the interest on these loans, while following the letter of the law and limiting his direct exposure in case the cargo was lost.
>As his income grew, Cato also became a regular investor in commercial lending. Although a law from 218 BC banned senators from engaging directly in commercial shipping, Cato formed partnerships of fifty investors that backed the commercial operations of fifty ships. He fronted all of the initial capital and then lent money to investors that they could each use to buy a share in the enterprise. Cato himself entrusted one share to a freed slave who acted as his agent. He then profited from the trading activities as well as the interest on these loans, while following the letter of the law and limiting his direct exposure in case the cargo was lost.
Perhaps we didn't have as much economic activity in the earlier human societies or perhaps those methods have been lost to time (just like those societies). As an ex actuary student what I can tell you is that at least from a mathematical tools perspective, we didn't have those available till around the 17th century.
There are Babylonian tablets where merchants are complaining about other merchants not delivering on their contractual obligations :)
One of them even became a meme: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/complaint-tablet-to-ea-nasir
There's something incredibly surreal about a dispute over trading standards between two people who have been dead for literal millennia and couldn't possibly have conceived of the internet and the technology that makes it possible becoming a meme. I wonder if there's any correspondence out there today which will amuse people 3500 years in the future?
>I wonder if there's any correspondence out there today which will amuse people 3500 years in the future?
I really hope RickRolling is still a think in 3500 years
I really hope RickRolling is still a think in 3500 years
I wonder how it might get translated into future languages? There's dozens of Bible translations and while they all say the same thing the tone of the text can be quite different between them, the Valley of the Shadow of Death (KJV) conjures a much more vivid picture than the darkest valley (NIV) for example.
The idea of a future historian painstakingly translating and trying to figure out the "deeper significance" of each phrase in Never Gonna Give You Up makes me smile! Maybe we should print out Wikipedia on the kind of paper the ancient Israelites were using to give them a hand.
The idea of a future historian painstakingly translating and trying to figure out the "deeper significance" of each phrase in Never Gonna Give You Up makes me smile! Maybe we should print out Wikipedia on the kind of paper the ancient Israelites were using to give them a hand.
Most probably it will be as alien to people in 3500 years as the babylonian gods are to us.
Haha I had forgotten about this meme! I wonder if they had insurance for merchants back then and if so how did they even figure out the premium on it...
[deleted]
Re-invented, anyway. It was well-understood in India a thousand years before, and in Sumeria thousands of years before that. it got re-invented each place and time it was needed.
By "invent" I presume inventio which is to say "finding or discovering of something"[0]. The concept of risk is virtual in the comprehension of all human beings and it takes abstraction[1] and analysis to extricate the concept from the understanding. In which case, you should absolutely expect many people to discover the concept independently, as it were. (See logos or logos spermatikos.)
[0] https://www.etymonline.com/word/invention
[1] https://www.etymonline.com/word/abstraction
[0] https://www.etymonline.com/word/invention
[1] https://www.etymonline.com/word/abstraction
I guess that's how abstractions work in general. You start reasoning in them explicitly when the need (or benefit) to do so is sustained for some time. Then you discard them when they're not needed anymore.
There's a difference between "abstraction" as used in computer science and software development, and "abstraction" as an intellectual act or process.
The former itself seems to have a few different but related uses, but generally it is often a matter of modeling.
The latter is generally that act of the intellect that draws out something from a whole. So it's kind of an opposite process, in a very loose sense. The concept "greenness" is abstracted from images (or phantasms, in classical parlance) of particulars we encounter through the senses. We never encounter "greenness" in the world as a thing, only things which are green.
Where risk is concerned, I would expect the intellect to seize on the concept through abstraction (2), but any modeling of risk would involve the use of (1).
The former itself seems to have a few different but related uses, but generally it is often a matter of modeling.
The latter is generally that act of the intellect that draws out something from a whole. So it's kind of an opposite process, in a very loose sense. The concept "greenness" is abstracted from images (or phantasms, in classical parlance) of particulars we encounter through the senses. We never encounter "greenness" in the world as a thing, only things which are green.
Where risk is concerned, I would expect the intellect to seize on the concept through abstraction (2), but any modeling of risk would involve the use of (1).
I fail to see the difference between these two abstractions. Is modeling, as you put it, not drawing something out from a whole? I think if abstraction meant different things in different contexts, the definition would be to blame.
agree,
the abstract idea of risk can be traced way before the label "risk".
Written register of the idea can also be found in Hammurabi's code.
wow, 'risk' has arab origin! Again. Like sifr (=0) became german "Ziffer" (=digit)
Oh and if risk is indeed your jam then look no further than Nassim Taleb's Real World risk institute. I've spoken to some alums of this course and they swear by it! Of course you could read his books too but I think he makes his books stupidly long for no reason.
These kinds of articles always make me wish there were some sort of "financial history book" (or series) that tracked the flows of capital through history and endeavors. We see so much of how ideology and politics evolved, but history of capital flows in any specificity is (or, seems to me) so opaque.
I expect someone to point out that opacity is natural given the sensitive nature of the subject. Consider how much commonly known history is made up of once dire secrets.
Then again, perhaps it's all out there. I guess a good place to start would be US, UK and French treasury reports on actuals. Maybe with python that becomes a more manageable task.
I expect someone to point out that opacity is natural given the sensitive nature of the subject. Consider how much commonly known history is made up of once dire secrets.
Then again, perhaps it's all out there. I guess a good place to start would be US, UK and French treasury reports on actuals. Maybe with python that becomes a more manageable task.