Mark Muldoon Reader, Department of Mathematics Teaching: Schedule, Winter/Spring 2025 The links below lead to online materials for units where I am teaching this term Computational Finance (MATH4/60082: MMath & MSc) Room: Room 2.130, Alan Turing Building (number 46 on this campus map) Phone: (0161) 306 3646 (44 161 306 3646   from overseas) Email: M.Muldoon@Manchester.ac.uk Pronouns: he/him/his

From this perspective, China was for most of its history the ultimate anti-capitalist market state. Unlike later European princes, Chinese rulers systematically refused to team up with would-be Chinese capitalists (who always existed). Instead, like their officials, they saw them as destructive parasites—though, unlike the usurers, ones whose fundamentally selfish and antisocial motivations could still be put to use in certain ways. In Confucian terms, merchants were like soldiers. Those drawn to a career in the military were assumed to be driven largely by a love of violence. As individuals, they were not good people; but they were also necessary to defend the frontiers. Similarly, merchants were driven by greed and basically immoral; yet if kept under careful administrative supervision, they could be made to serve the public good.

From a section on medieval China in David Graeber's celebrated Debt: the first 5,000 years.

Winter/Spring 2025