Talk:Subsistence economy

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[edit] Question

Question to Sarge Baldy: If you define subsistence economy as you do in the first paragraph: Looking at an agrarian society/early state which raises taxes in kind (like UR III in Mesopotamia) and otherwise meets all other criteria you stipulate would you still term this a 'subsistence economy'? And if so, why? Greetings - Popeye2

I wouldn't say so, but maybe just because it doesn't quite make sense to me. If there are taxes, wouldn't there have to be a surplus? After all, it's taking necessary resources from a group, and that means forcing overproduction of at least one resource so as to alleviate that tax burden. So no, unless there's something I'm missing I don't see how they could be. Sarge Baldy 20:44, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Greetings again & Thanks. To pinpoint the problem: Any agrarian economy - even a subsistence economy as defined by you - needs a regular periodical surplus for seeds in the coming season. An even greater suplus is necessary if the population is growing in between harvests - as must have been the case in the neolithic. From this point of view it is only a gradual difference to originate an additional surplus for "taxes in kind" to feed a hierachy of religious or political "officials" managing the increasing complexity of a growing community. I am not critical about your definition. I am struggeling with a different problem related to the origin of state and the role of staple food storage in subsistence economies and its effect upon stratification. (See for example: Testart, Alain, The Significance of Food Storage among Hunter-Gatherers....Current Anthropology, 1982 (33), 523-537).

True, and I suppose it's a matter of where you draw the line. But I think an important ingredient is that production exists for the sake of consumption and not for exchange. Taxes, being a means of massively redistributing resources, would seem unnecessary to me if the economy was truly subsistent; there is a reliance on the production of others, and at some stage an instability in these transfers could prove fatal to an economy. Although note that I'm a bit distanced from the field of anthropology, and cannot offer anything other than speculative assistance relating to the topic. Nor can I look into it further right now, not presently having access to an academic library. Sarge Baldy 20:33, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] No Currency?

Is that the only definition of a subsistence economy, that there is no currency? A better definition is needed. Fresheneesz 01:12, 28 May 2007 (UTC)