Fungible: The concept first formally arises in inventory control with the establishment of criteria under which equivalence of parts are consistently perceived, i.e. a bushel (criteria) of wheat (criteria) is the equivalent of any other bushel of wheat.
In Sumer, clay tablets were created to represent quantities of “fungible” nonperishable agricultural products stored in temple warehouses and assign those quantities to the specific persons storing them.
By establishing criteria of fungibility the system logically established the fungibility of the abstracted clay tablets also, an asset unit good as gold, a form of money if the Sumerians chose to use it as such.
It is important to note that fungibility refers to equivalence under criteria. Nothing in nature is equal truly to anything else past the molecular level. So fungible is dependent on functional criteria of equivalence regarding material capable of being divided into parts to exist. It's a two part genesis.
The Sumerian economy, dependent as it was on irrigation, constituted a type of fungible commons with a fiduciary steward deriving their management privileges from the necessary fiduciary stewardship of the individual farmer, necessary to prevent the ‘tragedy of the commons’, a depletion of the resource to zero, from occurring. The irrigation system was the commons proper but the farms it served were inseparable from that system in terms of function.
In the Sumerian example, we can see the genesis of commercial grade inventory receipts, asset units capable of forming a basis for money and trade. We see civilization beginning from the not so simple start of the realization of the concept of fungible.
Do Well and Be Well.
Comments
Post a Comment