Omer Moav on the Emergence of the State

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4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 6 March 2023

⏱️ 62 minutes

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Summary

Since at least Adam Smith, the common wisdom has been that the transition from hunter-gathering to farming allowed the creation of the State. Farming, so went the theory, led to agricultural surplus, and that surplus is the prerequisite for taxation and a State. But economist Omer Moav of Reichman University argues that it wasn't farming but the farming of a particular kind of crop (but not others) that led to hierarchy and the State. Moav explains to EconTalk host Russ Roberts storability is the key dimension that allows for taxation and a State. The conversation includes a discussion of why it's important to understand the past and the challenges of confirming or refuting theories about history.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics
0:07.0	and Liberty.
0:08.0	I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover
0:13.0	Institution.
0:14.0	Go to econtalk.org where you can subscribe, comment on this episode and find links down
0:18.6	the information related to today's conversation.
0:21.4	You'll also find our archives, but every episode we've done going back to 2006.
0:26.8	Our email address is mail at econtalk.org.
0:30.2	We'd love to hear from you.
0:37.8	Today, January 23rd, 2023, and my guest is economist Omar Mawov of Reifven University
0:44.6	and the University of Warwick.
0:46.8	He is the host of the Hebrew language podcast, Osim Heshbun, and he is the author with
0:51.7	Yoram Meshwar and Luigi Pascaleov, the origin of the state land productivity or appropriability,
0:59.8	which is published last year in the Journal of Political Economy and is the subject of our
1:04.5	conversation today.
1:05.5	Omar, welcome to econtalk.
1:09.3	Thank you, Russ.
1:10.3	Now, your paper is an attempt to understand where hierarchy and the state come from and
1:20.4	it's an incredibly creative and ambitious work.
1:26.4	I want to start with a question you don't really deal with in the paper because in papers
1:30.6	like this, you don't deal with these things, but what do you mean by the state?
1:34.8	It's only my son about this upcoming podcast, he said the state would mean like the state.
	...

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