Are Economies Something Created by Humans? Or Are They Part of Human Nature that We Cannot Exist Without?
Anywhere there is human life and any sort of establishment, an economy is formed. Rules are established and civil law is created, forming a hierarchy of command, giving those higher up in society more power, respect and influence. Like I stated earlier every social meeting forms economies, even places such as WWII Nazi concentration camps are not exempt from this aspect of human life. The only factors that define these economies and help separate them from main stream economies are: How are they run? What is their currency? What is their purpose?
For the most part these economies are set up to allow for the survival of the strong, those that could get what they needed from others had a better chance of surviving. Every purchase or trade that occurred was a risk, first you had to give up portions of your ration of bread or soup, articles of clothing, or favors toward others. If you were caught by the SS you would either be beaten or killed, but if you didn’t trade you would die of hunger or cold, leaving no clear path for people to choose. Second, there was no guarantee that you would get what you paid for, or that they would do what they said.
In class right now we are reading the book Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi. He was and Italian Jew that was captured and spent about a year in the camp. Throughout the book he recounts many horrible events that occurred, but there is always the same underlying themes in every chapter, survival and economy. He survived because of his participation and being able to find what he needed. There is something one must wonder about this type of economy, is it like a full sized one, like how the world economy of today functions? Levi touches on this question in throughout his book, with the dealings of their bread based economy.
In the best cases they possess a miserable half-ration of bread which, with painful effort, they have saved since the morning, in senseless hope of a chance to make an advantageous bargain with some ingenuous person, unaware of the prices at the moment. Some of these, with savage patience, acquire with their half-ration two pints of soup which, once in their possession, they subject to a methodical examination with a view to extract the few pieces of potato lying at the bottom; this done, they exchange if for bread, and bread for another two pints of denaturalize, and so on until their nerves are exhausted or until some victim, catching them in the act, inflicts on them a severe lesson, exposing them to public derision.
Why does this sound so familiar? We don’t live in a death camp, but regardless of where we live, we are still effected by changes in the economy. At this very moment ours is in pretty poor shape, for the past few years there has been a decline in the overall economic health and productivity, no one could afford to buy anything, go see doctors, even pay bills and insurance. However a recent article from the BBC suggests that the economy is beginning to recover, with a 3.5% increase over the last few months. Just like in Auschwitz, our economy had taken a hit and now seems like it might be on the road to recovery. Events like this can be seen throughout the world, not just in isolated cases such as a Nazi death camp.
I find it quite miraculous that men and women that were trapped and treated like animals somehow formed a working economy to help survive. Who knows, maybe the idea of economics have become part of human nature, maybe we can no longer exist without it. Think about this, is our current economy really that different than those found in death camps? Were the Jewish people really and lower than anyone else?
Survival In Auschwitz: If This Is A Man
by: Primo Levi
US Ecomony is Growing Once Again
From the BBC
I liked how this post talked about something that was occuring inside the concentration camps of the Holocaust. It is interesting because you get a sense of feel that the life of a prisoner of a concerntration camp is a little similar to how other people live. It is however a sad thing and what the Jewish had to go through was unbearable and horrible. It is interesting how the trade went on inside the camps. They traded because that was a way of survivial. That is what the people had to do to survive. It seemed like the strongest and smartest survived in the Holocaust. There was an idea of a certain type of Darwinism Theory being applied inside the camps. I have just finished reading the book Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi and I learned many things about the Holocaust that I did not really know about before. I never knew what type of everyday things went on inside the camp. I did not know the extent of the trading that went on. There was a system where everything had valued. Items would lose or gain value at different times. This was something that grabbed my interest.
Ream - October 29, 2009 at 4:10 pm |