How to deal with dishonest dealers in the old days – Russia today Posting in CHAT: Russia In the modern world, where there are consumer protection societies and many other regulatory bodies, the buyer is somehow protected from deception by the seller. In the good old days, there were ways to protect customers. They were varied and often unusual. But whether they were effective is quite difficult to judge today. Now that business is gradually moving to the Internet, it is not so easy to achieve justice against unscrupulous traders even with the help of official services. Therefore, there are some rules for purchasing goods online: refusal of prepayment, careful checking of the goods, keeping the CVV code of the bank card secret. But, despite all the measures taken, the number of deceived buyers is growing every year. Many centuries ago, there were their own rules for doing business, security measures and their own ways of punishing fraudsters. Let's get acquainted with the ancient methods of protecting the rights of the buyer - perhaps something can be used in the modern world. Laws of Manu, India For honest traders in ancient India, the main set of rules for doing business was a set of laws. Manu-smriti. It was believed that in ancient times these rules were established by the great sage Manu, and two thousand years ago educated brahmins wrote down his thoughts from memory. We know these rules thanks to the British traveler William Jones, who found ancient records and translated them at the end of the 18th century. The main problem of the Manu Smriti sources that have survived to this day is their dubious reliability. There are many different versions of these laws, so their complete originality cannot be relied upon. Despite this, there are common rules in all versions of the code, most likely related to the original. First of all, the laws of Manu recommend that transactions be made only in the presence of witnesses. A buyer who accidentally bought a stolen item was asked to return it to the owner as quickly as possible - in this case he was released from punishment. Among all the types of deception described in the source, the most important among Indians was the sale of non-seed grains under the guise of seed grains. This also included the sale of grain removed from the ground after sowing (it turns out that this also happened. Because of fraud with grain, the merchant was condemned to any part of his body). The execution was carried out right at the place of work in order to discourage others from repeating the feat of the trickster. Traditionally, after finishing the job, the executioner told the crippled swindler not to be sad. However, humanity has always been in the foreground among the Indians. Already in those days there was a return of goods, but this option had to be negotiated during the transaction. If the buyer did not like the product, he could return it within 10 days and get his money or product in return. This is such an ancient guarantee of Hammurabi, Babylon. The Babylonian kingdom existed 4 thousand years ago on the territory of modern Iraq. Despite the fact that this was a very long time ago, more is known about the life and customs of the Babylonians than about the life of some European countries in the 18th-19th centuries. Thanks to cuneiform writing on clay tablets, not only literary works such as the Epic of Gilgamesh have reached us, but also collections of the laws of King Hammurabi, covering all aspects of human activity in the kingdom, ranging from trade and courts. to medicine. The wise ruler also paid great attention to issues of fraud in business. As in India, transactions were recommended to be completed in the presence of witnesses - from 2 to 12. The larger the amount, the more people had to be present during the sale. The deal was sealed with an oath to King Hammurabi himself or. supreme deity Marduk. Thus, anyone who violated the rules of fair trade became both an enemy of the king and a blasphemer. If necessary, the contract was drawn up on a clay tablet. In this case, two-layer clay products were used, which protected the document from forgery. Today, archaeologists and historians have many such tables, which indicate not only the places of transactions and the price of the item, but also the cost. names of the seller and buyer. For example, a slave in the city of Lars costs 13 shekels of silver, which corresponds to 156 modern grams. It seems that this is a normal price for an adult, able-bodied man; Babylonian laws set aside a period of one month for terminating the transaction. If the goods turned out to be of poor quality, and the slave fell ill or died, the seller was forced to take the goods back and return the entire amount to the buyer, to the last penny. Dishonest sellers were subject to various punishments, from caning to death. In addition, the king did not value his subjects too much, so losing his life was much easier than getting hit on the back with a pole. Rules of Rabbi Joseph, Palestine No one will argue that Jews know a lot about business. This people with a complex history has always lived according to strict canons, subordinated to religious texts, on the basis of which rules were created for everything. In the 16th century, the wise Rabbi Joseph Karo of Safed compiled the Shulchan Aruch (“Holy Table”) codex, which contained thousands of paragraphs. The code stated that if the seller took a deposit or allowed the buyer to put his mark on the goods, then there was no turning back for either party. The punishment for violating this rule seems ridiculous today - the one who changed his mind was threatened with punishment. curse of the rabbinical court. But we must remember that in the Middle Ages, a person cursed by the rabbis became practically an outcast of his people, ceasing to exist both for the state and for his family. So they tried their best to adhere to the rules. When purchasing any product, the transaction was sealed with a special ritual called kinyan. It differed for different types of goods. For example, when buying a horse, the buyer became its owner by leading the animal with a bridle for several steps. This type of ritual was called kinyan meshiha or simply "drag". When making an important transaction, the seller and buyer had to call several Jewish witnesses and, for some reason, one non-Christian. If there was no one nearby, then the council could be replaced by one rabbi. The word of the clergyman was valued incredibly highly, because the authority of the rabbi was inviolable. The Koran, the countries of the Islamic world. The holy book of Muslims clearly states that on the Day of Judgment, deceivers and traitors will be resurrected with special force. a mark on his body by which everyone can recognize the scoundrel. Believers were very afraid of this, but more tangible executions were provided for the fearless. The Koran mentions the nomadic Arab tribe of the Midianites. These people did not lead a very pious lifestyle - they robbed caravans, robbed houses and shops, and weighed clients using specially made hollow scales for scales. Prophet Shuaib tried to reason with the wicked people, but they first mocked him and then began to threaten to kill him. Then Allah had to intervene, sending a strong earthquake to the Midianite villages, which killed the wicked right in their homes. The dishonest Aikit tribe also suffered. Some of the representatives of this people joined the prophet and were saved, while the rest died from drought and heavenly fire. . For example, in Kyiv in the 10th century there were about 40 churches in 8 markets. A princely flag and a cross were installed near the market. This indicated that the trading place was protected by both God and the state, and violators faced severe punishment. Witness scales were always attached to the trading rows. All goods were weighed on his proven scales, which were locked at night in one of the temples, out of harm's way. Mytnik could act as a guarantor for an important transaction, the task of which was to collect a tax of 10% of the price of each product into the princely treasury. Mytnik could also act as a justice of the peace if disputes arose between the parties. In the Russian principalities it was not customary to enter into written agreements and everything was limited to oral agreements. Of course, it was not at all difficult to violate them, citing, for example, bad hearing or a misunderstanding. So the carelessness in business transactions that we have today was inherited from our ancestors. We also tend to take sellers at their word and freely interpret sales contracts in our favor. Source link Source link
