[ExI] Belief in Market Efficiency

[painlord2k at libero.it]

Il 02/02/2009 18.51, Stefano Vaj ha scritto:
> On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 6:13 PM, painlord2k at libero.it
> <painlord2k at libero.it>  wrote:


>> Thank to the hammering of the Christian church for a few centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West.

> Mmhhh, here as you know I have more than a few doubts. The diffusion
> of slavery in the Latin and European economic and cultural space
> increased proportionally with religious, cultural, and social
> influences coming from the middle east.

The Romans had slaves before conquering the Empire.
And slavery in Greek was as much diffuse as in Rome.
They enslaved with ease people:

1) unwanted babies
2) prisoners of war
3) people failing to pay their debts

and bought people from any market available.

And, usually, they were forced to work so much that their number needed 
constant replacement.

> In other continents, such as
> North America or Sub-saharian Africa, organised large-scale slavery
> arrived together with monotheism.

"organised large-scale slavery" need large empires, commercial connections.
And, mainly, the monotheism that arrived and dominated was Islam.

In America the things are a bit different, because the power of the 
Church were only nominal. And the states were unable or unwilling to 
enforce the prohibition of enslavement there. We must remember that the 
armies of the Catholic Spain entered Rome after defeating the Pontiff 
Army and for long the King of Spain and France controlled much of the 
politics of the Catholic Church. For example they had the power to 
select who could and who could not become Bishop in their kingdoms.

Mirco