@Didymos Thomas,
Didymos Thomas wrote:You're trying to establish the absence of a rule as a rule. And that just doesn't hold water.
What exactly do you mean by that?
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What rules concerning property?
The fact that property existed and was protected by law. Thievery ment jail.
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What rules concerning the value of objects?
The values being lined out in the form of scarcity, which I might add is in economics a word for abundance. The values are carefully noted in international ad national exchange rates and are daily decided upon by stock exchanges and common markets. Those rules existed then, just as now.
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What rules concerning wages?
The amounts to be paid for certain jobs were agreed upon by the bosses, just as now.
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What rules concerning vagrancy?
The fact that one could get arrested for it.
The grand total leading to the fact that people were forced to work to get paid or else be arrested for just swimming, fishing and picking fruits. At that time the world's natural food resources were still abundant and one could 'live off the land', so to speak, if the rules would not prohibit that. Nowadays one can no longer live off the land anymore. Both poiting towards the necessity of money to exist, and therefore the slavery to certain 'masters'(often depicted on the money).
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We are talking about a period that generally lacked such rules, take the US as a good example. Either the child worked, or the child starved because regulations protecting the child did not exist. Thus, children could be exploited, could be worked for long hours in dangerous conditions every day of the year.
You are missing what happened: either the child worked or the child starved
because of the rules creating the situation you describe above.
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Unless the guy with a gun is hungry, and the victim has a loaf of bread.
Leading to the valuation of scarcity, meaning abundance, economics is the ruleset used to maje that deed 'the good' for the robber.
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In any case, you've turned the conversation from government regulations to metaphysical "rules" governing actions. Quite the leap.
Metaphysical????
These are government rules governing the actions of people. If they would not be enforced, the crises could not continue.