``Hey Ian, do you think the original black market might have been the capitalist slave trade in Africans ? etymologically :>)'' Charles
``Well if black markets is just a modern way of saying contraband, then yes. If we follow Tilly even a little bit and view the political economy of the Mediterranean world under various Papal regimes as a network of protection rackets, what better way to dispossess rival accumulators and plunderers and enslave people than by declaring their markets in various sorts of commodities as illegal --contrary to church 'law'-- and then expropriate lots of stuff from coastal cities in Africa... '' Ian Murray
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Well guys. not to nit-pick, but let's not forget the origin and model of both capital and its contraband, that is to say Women. Ontologically, that is.
Chuck Grimes