The horrors of Pompeii • Hacker News Board

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#41

Post by glowaway69 » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 6:03 AM UTC

autoexec wrote: post #30

WalterBright wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 htt…

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Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#42

Post by DC-3 » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 6:12 AM UTC

User23 wrote: post #38

DoreenMichele wrote: post #33

Graffiti is one of the most exciting kinds of evidence preserved for us by the destruction of Pompeii, because it comes not from the literature of the elite, or the inscriptions of the powerful, but from a wider cross-section of society. The article is mostly about slavery and prostitution, colored by modern views of the world. For much of human history, people were simply trying to survive and life expectancy was us…

> life expectancy was usually lower than today Life expectancy at birth was lower than today. However those who survived to adulthood had a life expectancy considerably closer to modern ones than most people think. It turns out the massive infant and childhood mortality rates greatly dragged down the average overall life expectancy.

This is true, but true in the sense of 'actually adults tended to live into their 60s not into their 40s'. In western countries today if someone dies in their 60s it seems very young.

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#43

Post by nerdponx » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 6:15 AM UTC

Tronno wrote: post #40

nerdponx wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has more to do with the idea that the system has evolved and advanced for a while. It's not so much about the system ending soon, as it is about it being deeply entrenched and widely adopted, its long-term negative consequences having had time to manifest, and/or being the late stages of a deliberate long-term agenda.

That might be reading into it too much. I'm pretty sure it's just a joke that capitalism is cancer. As in, "late-stage cancer".

Synonymous terms have been used in leftist/Marxist literature for a long time, that's always where I assumed it came from: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/05/late-ca...

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#44

Post by Simon_O_Rourke » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 6:16 AM UTC

As Edward Gibbon said, "Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery", however, you can't help but feeling that it must have been particularly awful existence for the many enslaved underclasses of Pompeii.

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#45

Post by brazzy » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 6:21 AM UTC

memling wrote: post #27

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…

> Slave names were sometimes numbers.

Senators' and emperors' names were quite often numbers.

That is definitely not the distinction you're looking for.

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#46

Post by Der_Einzige » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 6:24 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 people who believe Marx's thing about how "boom-bust" cycles will eventually destroy capitalism. Unfortunately, Historical Materialism is utter and complete bullshit.

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#47

Post by zirgs » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 6:28 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…

Just because that kind of "work" is legal doesn't mean that it's accepted.

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#48

Post by WalterBright » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 6:35 AM UTC

steveBK123 wrote: post #31

WalterBright wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 possi…

I wouldn't last a day on that show, but modern man, in our pining for the olden days .. grossly underestimates the % of time & effort humans had to spend on simply acquiring enough calories to survive.

For the fauna it's a full time job, too.

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#49

Post by morsch » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 6:46 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #7

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…

Without economics we'd all starve to death. Edit: I submit "Alone", the TV show where survival experts are dumped out in the wilderness one by one, where they all starve and eventually get pulled out for losing dangerous amounts of weight. And this is despite bringing along survival gear made by an advanced economy.

It's reality TV. You might as well submit Predator (1987) as evidence. (I'm not disputing that human cooperation is useful and necessary in the real world.)

Re: The horrors of Pompeii

#50

Post by defrost » Sat, Jul 08, 2023, 6:48 AM UTC

steveBK123 wrote: post #31

WalterBright wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 possi…

I wouldn't last a day on that show, but modern man, in our pining for the olden days .. grossly underestimates the % of time & effort humans had to spend on simply acquiring enough calories to survive.

    Normally, Aboriginal groups were easily able to find enough food for their entire clan in three or four hours of hunting and gathering each day.  They know which fruit and animals are available at certain times, how to gather or hunt successfully and how to store foods.

https://svacs.libguides.com/c.php?g=933180&p=6746395

How do we know this to be true?

There are still aboriginal people alive today that gather fod in the traditional manner - when I was 20 or so the Pintupi Nine wandered in, some stayed a few left and returned to the desert.

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30500591

There are still many people living hybrid lives, using modern metals and traditional knowledge to gather food, eg:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gmCX7R-W4c

A key point here is 30+ thousand years of getting to know and shaping the landscape - promoting plants and animals over others, learning the movements and habits of animals, seasons of plants, not having closed in winters, etc.