An Athenian Puzzle
The ancient Athenians had a very straightforward approach to the problem of funding government expenditures. If you were one of the richest Athenians, every other year you had to pay for something—sponsor Athens' team at the Olympics, pay all (later part) of the cost of the one of the triremes in the Athenian fleet, or the like.
If you were selected for such a task—called a liturgy—there were two ways of getting out of it. One was to show that you had already been assigned a liturgy for this year or had done one in the previous year. The other was to show that there was another Athenian, richer than you, who had not been assigned a liturgy either this year or last—and who should therefore do yours.
That raised an obvious problem. In a society without an IRS, without accounting, without modern banking and financial records, how do you prove that another Athenian is richer than you are?
I will give one hint to the answer: It was obviously invented, not by an accountant, but by an economist. Possibly a mad economist.