COMMERCE

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other uses, see Commerce (disambiguation) .
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Commerce relates to "the exchange of goods
and services, especially on a large scale". [1] It
includes legal, economic, political, social,
cultural and technological systems that operate
in a country or in international trade.
Etymology
The English-language word commerce has been
derived from the Latin word commercium, from
cum ("together") and merx ("merchandise"). [2]
History
The caduceus -
used today as the
symbol of
commerce, [3] and
traditionally
associated with
the Roman god
Mercury , patron of
commerce,
trickery and
thieves.
Some commentators [ which? ] trace the origins of
commerce to the very start of transactions in
prehistoric times. Apart from traditional self-
sufficiency, trading became a principal facility of
prehistoric people, who bartered what they had
for goods and services from each other (the
barter system was popular in ancient times
where one could get goods and services by
offering the other person some other good and
service according to their need instead of paying
with monetary systems, which developed later).
Historian Peter Watson and Ramesh Manickam
date the history of long-distance commerce from
circa 150,000 years ago. [4]
In historic times, the introduction of currency as
a standardized money facilitated the wider
exchange of goods and services. Numismatists
have collections of tokens, which include coins
from some Ancient-World large-scale societies,
although initial usage involved unmarked lumps
of precious metal. [5]
The circulation of a standardized currency
provides a method of overcoming the major
disadvantage to commerce through use of a
barter system, the " double coincidence of
wants " (which means if someone wants
something from a person, that person should
also be in need of a thing or a service which
they can provide), necessary for barter trades to
occur. For example, if a person who makes pots
for a living needs a new house, he/she may wish
to hire someone to build it for him/her. But he/
she cannot make an equivalent number of pots
to equal this service done for him/her, because
even if the builder could build the house, the
builder might not want many or any pots. Also,
the barter system had a major drawback in that
whatever goods a person get as payment may
not necessarily store for long amounts of time.
For example: if a person has got dozens of fruits
as his payment, he/she can't store fruit for long
or they may rot - which means a person will
have to bear a huge loss. Currency solved this
problem by allowing a society as a whole to
assign values[ citation needed ] and thus to
collect goods and services effectively and to
store them for later use, or to split them among
minions.
During the Middle Ages, commerce developed in
Europe through the trading of luxury goods at
trade fairs . Some wealth became converted into
movable wealth or capital. [ citation needed ]
Banking systems developed where money on
account was transferred [ by whom?] across
national boundaries. [6] Hand-to-hand markets
became a feature of town life, and were
regulated by town authorities. [7]
Today commerce includes as a subset of itself a
complex system of companies which try to
maximize their profits by offering products and
services to the market (which consists both of
individuals and groups and other companies or
institutions) at the lowest production cost . A
system of international trade has helped to
develop the world economy; but, in combination
with bilateral or multilateral agreements to lower
tariffs or to achieve free trade, has sometimes
harmed third-world markets for local products
(see Globalization .)
See also
Advertising
Bachelor of Commerce
Business
Capitalism
Commercial law
Distribution (business)
Wholesale
Retailing
Cargo
Eco commerce
Economy
Electronic commerce
Export
Fair
Finance
Fishery
Harvest
Industry
BBA
Import
Laissez-faire
Manufacturing
Marketing
Marketplace
Mass production
Master of Commerce
Merchandising
Trade
References
Look up commerce in Wiktionary, the free
dictionary.
1. ^ "commerce" . English: Oxford Living
Dictionaries . Oxford University Press. n.d.
Retrieved December 11, 2018. "1 The activity of
buying and selling, especially on a large scale."
2. ^ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911).
"Commerce" . Encyclopædia Britannica . 6
(11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 766.
3. ^ Hans Biedermann, James Hulbert (trans.),
Dictionary of Symbolism - Cultural Icons and the
Meanings behind Them , p. 54.
4. ^ Watson, Peter (2005). Ideas : A History of
Thought and Invention from Fire to Freud .
HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-621064-X .
Introduction......./
5. ^ Gold served especially commonly as a form
of early money, as described in "Origins of
Money and of Banking" - Davies, Glyn (2002).
Ideas: A history of money from ancient times to
the present day . University of Wales Press.
ISBN 0-7083-1717-0 .
6. ^ Martha C. Howell (12 April 2010).
Commerce Before Capitalism in Europe,
1300-1600 . Cambridge University Press.
ISBN 978-0-521-76046-1 .
7. ^ Fernand Braudel (1982). Civilization and
Capitalism, 15th-18th Century: The wheels of
commerce . University of California Press.
p. 30. ISBN 978-0-520-08115-4 .
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