The horrors of Pompeii • Hacker News Board

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#21

Post by robbiep » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 2:20 AM UTC

injb wrote: post #20

>>> About a fifth of the women’s names in the brothel indicate they were free. Can anyone explain this?

(Even?) today there are many people involved in the sex industry voluntarily - I know of a Doctor who has left her specialist job to pursue full time sex work, she says it pays more. It’s not so hard to believe that some women 2,000 years ago would have made a good living in a society where this kind of work was accepted and legal.

Presumably a portion could have been previously slaves who earned their freedom; and maybe even some who chose it as a line of work as free women initially

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#22

Post by WalterBright » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 2:22 AM UTC

autoexec wrote: post #17

WalterBright wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you have even just a small group of people, the odds change drastically. Yup. Bob is good at making gill nets, Ted is good at gathering berries. Fred is good at making a cabin. Sam is good at bow hunting. They trade their surpluses. A small economy. None have the skills needed to go it alone.

> None have the skills needed to go it alone. Yet the idea of a "self-made millionaire" is pervasive and people were pretty quick to hate on the "You didn't build that" observation.

If you ever open a business, you'll discover that nobody gives you anything. You've got to pay them.

Any surplus left over is yours, and yes, you did build that.

Any failure (and 80% of businesses fail within 5 years) you own the failure and its debts, too. The people who you paid for their services, you still owe any unpaid debt to them.

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#23

Post by WalterBright » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 2:24 AM UTC

autoexec wrote: post #18

WalterBright wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were also severely restricted in what technology they could bring. But they still had fish hooks, survival clothing, advanced bow and arrows, an advanced saw or hatchet, fish line, and fire starter. Only one was able to make fire without a fire starter. After watching Alone, I bought myself a fire starter, to carry when hiking. I remember one father/son team. The son had some sort of fisheries degree, and consid…

> What's kinda sad is how bad most were at building shelters. Seems expected when you consider that most people have never built a shelter, and those that have aren't often doing it on a regular basis using whatever happens to be lying around. Same for fishers and hunters who are highly skilled in the environments they regularly work in. You can only expect them to struggle when placed in new environments with new ad…

The contestant montage often showed them building things. They clearly had decent skills at sawing and other carpentry. They also clearly did not watch previous seasons and learn :-/

The most consistent failure was in way overestimating their ability to do hard physical labor without food.

It's clear from watching the show that the path to victory, given woodcraft skills, is doing as little physical exertion as possible. Build a minimal shelter, spend all the rest of the effort obtaining food.

P.S. I wouldn't last a week on that show.

P.P.S. Anyone building a shelter out of 8" dia logs is doomed.

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#24

Post by ch4s3 » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 2:31 AM UTC

cafard wrote: post #5

srcthr wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And of course as is typical of late stage western cultural elitism there are 4000 words on sex and two for the mines. You'd think the place where slave lifespan was measured in years rather than decades would make for a more interesting story. A man drowning in the dark, trapped by a rock fall, seeing the crushed head of his foreman on the left and his best friend running on the right. But that would mean forcing rea…

"Late stage" or "late capitalism" always suggests to me that the user has inside information on the sell-by date. I don't disagree about the proportion of attention.

It's funny that the phrase was coined in 1902 and fell out of fashion by about 1970 and was revived in the 2010s. I guess what's old is new again.

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#25

Post by autoexec » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 2:43 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #22

autoexec wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> None have the skills needed to go it alone. Yet the idea of a "self-made millionaire" is pervasive and people were pretty quick to hate on the "You didn't build that" observation.

If you ever open a business, you'll discover that nobody gives you anything. You've got to pay them. Any surplus left over is yours, and yes, you did build that. Any failure (and 80% of businesses fail within 5 years) you own the failure and its debts, too. The people who you paid for their services, you still owe any unpaid debt to them.

> If you ever open a business, you'll discover that nobody gives you anything.

You'll also discover that you couldn't have done any of it alone. That your business would have been impossible without your education, which involved countless others, or the roads and bridges built by others, or the internet which was built by others, or the investors and banks who gave you the money to get your business started which were built by others. Even the things you paid for directly and upfront, but which your business absolutely depended on were built by someone else and any success you have would not have been possible if they hadn't done all the work needed to get to where they could provide you with what your business needed from them.

That's the point. Nobody does it alone, because that would be impossible. As the man said "The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together."

That also means we fail together too. If you borrow a bunch of money to start a business and can't pay it back, that burden isn't just on you. The employees who depended on your business for their income also carry some of the burden of your failure. The customers who depended on you are also impacted. At a larger scale, when a business fails, we all lose out on what could have been if it hadn't. Our economy loses diversity. Most new businesses will fail, but the failures are never just about one person either. In fact, many times the things others have built, including the environment a business operates in, are a direct cause of that business failing.

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#26

Post by injb » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 2:44 AM UTC

robbiep wrote: post #21

injb wrote: post #20

>>> About a fifth of the women’s names in the brothel indicate they were free. Can anyone explain this?

(Even?) today there are many people involved in the sex industry voluntarily - I know of a Doctor who has left her specialist job to pursue full time sex work, she says it pays more. It’s not so hard to believe that some women 2,000 years ago would have made a good living in a society where this kind of work was accepted and legal. Presumably a portion could have been previously slaves who earned their freedom; and m…

Thanks but what I'm asking is how they can tell from their names? Is there a naming convention here?

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#27

Post by memling » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 2:53 AM UTC

injb wrote: post #20

>>> About a fifth of the women’s names in the brothel indicate they were free. Can anyone explain this?

> Can anyone explain this?

Slave names were sometimes numbers. Naming conventions in Roman culture were apparently also fairly formal.[0] I would guess there's sufficient evidence here that a ratio of free to slave could be estimated.

In general, it seems like being a slave was not a great experience.[1]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Rome#Treatm...

[1]: among other stories, the one concerning the murder of Lucius Pedanius Secundus sticks in my mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Pedanius_Secundus

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#28

Post by WalterBright » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 2:57 AM UTC

autoexec wrote: post #25

WalterBright wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ever open a business, you'll discover that nobody gives you anything. You've got to pay them. Any surplus left over is yours, and yes, you did build that. Any failure (and 80% of businesses fail within 5 years) you own the failure and its debts, too. The people who you paid for their services, you still owe any unpaid debt to them.

> If you ever open a business, you'll discover that nobody gives you anything. You'll also discover that you couldn't have done any of it alone. That your business would have been impossible without your education, which involved countless others, or the roads and bridges built by others, or the internet which was built by others, or the investors and banks who gave you the money to get your business started which we…

And yet millions of others got an education, roads, internet, etc., and went nowhere.

Investors don't give you money. They buy a piece of the business. Banks don't give you money, either. You have to pay the loan back, with interest.

BTW, employee back wages have first dibs on your assets should you declare bankruptcy. The back wages won't be much, anyway, as the law is pretty specific that a business cannot be late on payday.

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#29

Post by reducesuffering » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 3:11 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #11

bruce511 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why the down-votes, but I will point out they start in late fall, in areas uncolonised by people in 2000 years- which might infer some hint as to the desirability of said location.

They were also severely restricted in what technology they could bring. But they still had fish hooks, survival clothing, advanced bow and arrows, an advanced saw or hatchet, fish line, and fire starter. Only one was able to make fire without a fire starter. After watching Alone, I bought myself a fire starter, to carry when hiking. I remember one father/son team. The son had some sort of fisheries degree, and consid…

> What's kinda sad is how bad most were at building shelters.

What's funny is how good that one first season guy was at doing everything, especially shelter, and then after only a couple days to have an indefinite setup, just missed his wife and immediately left. "Everything looks good, just don't have Barbara!"

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#30

Post by autoexec » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 3:15 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #28

autoexec wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you ever open a business, you'll discover that nobody gives you anything. You'll also discover that you couldn't have done any of it alone. That your business would have been impossible without your education, which involved countless others, or the roads and bridges built by others, or the internet which was built by others, or the investors and banks who gave you the money to get your business started which we…

And yet millions of others got an education, roads, internet, etc., and went nowhere. Investors don't give you money. They buy a piece of the business. Banks don't give you money, either. You have to pay the loan back, with interest. BTW, employee back wages have first dibs on your assets should you declare bankruptcy. The back wages won't be much, anyway, as the law is pretty specific that a business cannot be late…

> And yet millions of others got an education, roads, internet, etc., and went nowhere.

And millions of others are highly skilled, talented, intelligent, hardworking, and creative, but don't all find success.

This is why luck plays a massive role in the success of any business. That doesn't mean things like skills and initiative aren't important, or that people can't shift the odds in their favor (see for example https://fictivekin.github.io/pmarchive-jekyll/luck_and_the_e...) but ultimately, some people who should succeed don't because they were unlucky and others who do succeed would have failed if things entirely out of their control just happened to go differently.

> Investors don't give you money. They buy a piece of the business. Banks don't give you money, either.

Banks and investors give you money, with the expectation that they'll profit by doing so, but more to the point they give you opportunity. Plenty of people get turned away by banks and investors and if they manage to pull enough money together to get started they can still succeed, but others fail because without that opportunity given to them, they couldn't even get things off the ground.

Employees lose a lot more when their job is lost than just the wages they are owed (which they also don't always get) especially the ones who took more risky forms of compensation, but even outside the realm of compensation there are costs.