2 thoughts on “How The Maya Lived”

  1. Too bad the Y2012 bug is going to crash reality. Otherwise, that’d be a really neat thing to know. And of course, they have to mention it because that’s the idiocy of the month fad.

  2. I noticed this:

    [A]rchaeologists analyzed the chemical residues of Classic Maya settlements to determine that the Maya had a functioning market economy.

    Well duh! Every successful society that builds cities and lasts more than a generation has a market economy. Even ancient Egypt had a market economy. There’s simply no other way to run a bigger-than-tribal society. The USSR’s big success was getting a non-market economy to last three generations before utter collapse (a record the Norks are making a run for, but are unlikely to beat).

    I would note though the relationship between formal and informal market economies. The Mayan’s may have very well been informal, based on customs that arose over centuries without the benefit of legal enforcement from the top. England (and later the rest of Europe and America) industrialized because they were the first ones to figure out how to make a central government strong enough to enforce property rights and contracts (Market Economy 2.0) without co-opting all the wealth for the benefit of the enforcers (Kelo, Marxism put into practice, and Central Asian, Middle Eastern and African Kleptocracies).

    Unfortunately that’s a two-edged sword, since a State strong enough to enforce and protect property rights and contracts is strong enough to abrogate them. There’s no free lunch, and the price of Market Economy 2.0 is eternal vigilance against rent seekers.

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