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The property of being preserveable affects more than just the appropriability of resources. Cereals being preserveable also would have made them more tradeable
by CryptoPunk 4y ago
The property of being preserveable affects more than just the appropriability of resources. Cereals being preserveable also would have made them more tradeable, and trade increases productivity.
Taxation is a concept related to trade, in that it enables resources to be transferred to facilitate larger-scale coordination, and with it, greater division of labor. But it is this ability to transfer resources, to facilitate larger scale coordination and division of labor that I believe would be the underlying economic advantage provided by cereal crops, with taxation just being a subset of this class of interaction.
It stands to reason that the ability to store cereal surpluses more easily also increased cereal crops' utility as a food source by leading to less waste through spoilage.