Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction
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Re: Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction
#2If you enjoy even a smidge of this, please look at other articles/series on their blog, ACOUP is absolutely phenomenal and I've not seen many writers (here also historian and tenured professor) both be so accessible and graspable while having a deep and nuanced understanding of the situation AND providing ample sources.
10/10 couldn't recommend more.
I believe the Sparta series is the most popular, but I really enjoyed the one on iron.
Re: Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction
#3It's a fitting title to describe life today for most people.
Re: Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction
#4It's a fitting title to describe life today for most people.
The series actually talks about this in detail, in particular the (incorrect) trope that medieval peasants worked a lot less than we do.
Re: Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction
#5This series will really make you examine social hierarchies, including the ones that exist today. They are no accident.
Re: Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction
#6This series will really make you examine social hierarchies, including the ones that exist today. They are no accident.
Today's social structures exist because they evolved through history and shifting incentives.
I sometimes wonder if we could design a better system today taking today's knowledge of psychology (and psychopathology) into account and optimizing for values we have today like freedom, balance of power and equality of opportunity.
Re: Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction
#7I can recommend reading ACOUP to any technically minded person even if it's about history.
I haven't had the time to read this series yet but I can recommend for example his articles about the industrial revolution, making of iron and steel or sieges in the Lord of the Rings compares to read world tactics.
He has a knack for analyzing society from a systems level perspective and going into the right amount of depth for somebody who wants to understand the principles without having any background in history.
Re: Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction
#8This series will really make you examine social hierarchies, including the ones that exist today. They are no accident.
Today's social structures exist because they evolved through history and shifting incentives. I sometimes wonder if we could design a better system today taking today's knowledge of psychology (and psychopathology) into account and optimizing for values we have today like freedom, balance of power and equality of opportunity.
Yes, trivially. The tricky part is building a system that the median citizen (and the officers in the military) can verify has been optimised that way vs competing, poorly optimised systems that sound good. Factor in the median citizen has maybe a couple of hours to do research, isn't very principled and doesn't understand game theory well. Also consider that high status people are perfectly happy to set up an "expert" in any given field to spread propaganda favourable to them.
The problem isn't setting up a great system, the problem is what happens when charismatic leaders and people like Stalin turn up.
Re: Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Today's social structures exist because they evolved through history and shifting incentives. I sometimes wonder if we could design a better system today taking today's knowledge of psychology (and psychopathology) into account and optimizing for values we have today like freedom, balance of power and equality of opportunity.
Yes, trivially. The tricky part is building a system that the median citizen (and the officers in the military) can verify has been optimised that way vs competing, poorly optimised systems that sound good. Factor in the median citizen has maybe a couple of hours to do research, isn't very principled and doesn't understand game theory well. Also consider that high status people are perfectly happy to set up an "exper…
Banning campaigning would go a long way. The state already mails out voter information containing a little stump speech of each registered candidate at least for Californian elections. Further advertisement is purely propaganda and leads to establishment victories over merit and a genuinely attractive platform.
Re: Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, trivially. The tricky part is building a system that the median citizen (and the officers in the military) can verify has been optimised that way vs competing, poorly optimised systems that sound good. Factor in the median citizen has maybe a couple of hours to do research, isn't very principled and doesn't understand game theory well. Also consider that high status people are perfectly happy to set up an "exper…
Banning campaigning would go a long way. The state already mails out voter information containing a little stump speech of each registered candidate at least for Californian elections. Further advertisement is purely propaganda and leads to establishment victories over merit and a genuinely attractive platform.
> Banning campaigning would go a long way.
With tongue in cheek, that qualifies you as the "people like Stalin" category. Not a good idea.