There are exceptions to the rule that one should not quote ancient writers on economics, I’m sure, but I couldn’t tell you what they are. To be clear, I don’t mean that one shouldn’t read them—one should. I just mean that they shouldn’t be quoted. The problem is that the context is so different that so much explanation is required that any value in the succinct expression of the quotation is completely lost in all of the necessary explanation if you don’t want modern audiences to completely misunderstand it.

This necessary explanation comes from several places, including the modern context of communism distorting all modern economic conversations. There are many economic ideas which are not communism and are in fact antithetical to communism that can very easily sound like things that communists would say. This is, in part, because communists are dishonest and are constantly trying to trick people into communism, but it remains that anything which might sound like a thing a communist would say must be distinguished from communism unless you can rely on your anti-communist bona fides with your audience. Since there are few places in the modern world with context, one can rarely rely on this.

For all of the inconveniences of the evil of Communism, a much bigger cause of the need to provide context is the wildly different economic context of the modern world from the ancient or even the medieval world. (I talk about this at length in Usury and Lending at Interest.) The short version is that there is unimaginably more scope for investment and the creation of goods and services than there used to be. Ancient and medieval writers could neglect things like investing in a business to create wealth because, while it existed, it was such a small fraction of the economic activity which went on that it made sense to omit discussion of it from general discussions. Another major issue was the extremely limited quantity of non-human energy which was available. If work was to be done and it wasn’t a man doing it, for the most part it was a beast of burden. There were some minor exceptions but work was done primarily by labor. In modern times we have portable fuels (such as gasoline) which can directly power engines as well as electricity. Enormous amounts of work are done not by men but by machines. This work creates an enormous amount of wealth but also requires a great deal of careful management and maintenance. All of this produces an incredibly complex interdependence of many suppliers, craftsmen, designers, and service jobs. We have unbelievably efficient transportation networks that can move not only goods but even food over vast distances. All of these things are made more affordable and also more available by carefully planned storage of goods and foods at different places.

The principles of economics have not changed since the ancient world, which is why it is worth reading ancient and medieval writers about economic principles. However, the specifics have changed to an almost unimaginable degree. The sorts of quotes people like to pull out from ancient writers are always about the application of principles to specifics. You can draw useful lessons from reading these, but only when you are sufficiently aware of the context of the original to extract the principle being illustrated and translate it.