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Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction

acoup.blog

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Re: Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction

#81

Post by StefanBatory »

simgt wrote: post #24
dmbche wrote: post #2

If 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 enjoy…

I've enjoyed Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond recently. If you have read it, how does it compare?

It's a problematic work. From what I remember from my time on /r/askhistorians, they really did not like it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/wd6jt/what_d...

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/historians_views...

https://web.archive.org/web/20210619035356/http://www.columb...

My impression is that it is correct enough the look good on surface. Like learning Freud, you see his points, it makes sense, but the details are wrong and so you spend most of your time learning why he wasn't exactly right.

Re: Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction

#82

Post by alexashka »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #63
alexashka wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can at the very least tweak existing systems to be meaningfully better. For example we could phase out all marketing and advertising. We could simplify and automate accounting and many other jobs. We could reduce the work week to 30 hours. We could make jobs teenage friendly and replace high schools with entry level jobs so that people get to try to be in multiple fields before they commit to years of studying any…

> We could make jobs teenage friendly and replace high schools with entry level jobs so that people get to try to be in multiple fields before they commit to years of studying anything. We could eliminate most university programs and again replace them with entry level jobs, 20 hours/week - people can study new material on their own free time and at their own pace - eliminate all memorization based learning to pass a…

The kinds of jobs I imagine would leave people with far more energy and time to do whatever they want - including learning, or not learning :)

Re: Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction

#83

Post by immibis »

TFYS wrote: post #74
lurk2 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The basic mechanism you’re describing is essentially accurate, however: > As soon as you allow any level of inequality to exist, the power differentials caused by it will be used to increase the power differential and inequality even more, and over a long period of time you'll end up with a dictatorship. This doesn’t logically follow. The existence of a power differential doesn’t necessitate the differential being ex…

I would say that over a long enough period of time it's unavoidable that a selfish person will use the power to gain more. Selfish people are more likely to seek positions of power, so even if most people are altruistic, the people that seek power are more likely to be selfish.

In other words, cancer always spreads.

Not necessarily the first cancer, but eventually one will.

Cancer is when a component of a system acts to replicate or enrich itself instead of acting to perpetuate the system.

Re: Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction

#84

Post by immibis »

DeathArrow wrote: post #64
bongodongobob wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our current regime lies through their teeth daily. Like obvious, completely made up lies. Every. Day. It's not a misunderstanding. One side is pushing for authoritarianism, one is not. One can be negotiated with by voting, the other, violence. I'm so fuckin tired of pretending there is just some kind of misunderstanding between both "sides".

>One can be negotiated with by voting, the other, violence. Violence like shooting political opponents for voicing their opinions?

Proof by counterexample: I think it would have been a good decision to shoot Adolf Hitler for his opinions, don't you?

Re: Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction

#85

Post by lotsofpulp »

jahewson wrote: post #13
kjkjadksj wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Being able to give a good speech is merit when the goal is to select a leader.

I used to think that, before 2016. Apparently, incoherent rambling is also a successful strategy.

Re: Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction

#86

Post by n1b0m »

ggm wrote: post #55

A reminder unemployment and underemployment and labour displacement existed in Roman times, and could be inferred to have carried into post Roman serfdom and the age of kings. It might not be the best choice for a peasant normally but walking off the land did happen. There are court records seeking the return of successful townspeople provably off their lords domain, and similar documents around marriage and land inh…

You’re right that "walking off the land did happen". Although the feudal system legally bound serfs to the land, there were ways for individuals to escape this bondage. For instance, a serf who lived in a town for a year and a day without being reclaimed by their lord could often gain their freedom. These people, known as 'villeins' in some records, were essentially free peasants who had successfully left their lord's domain.

Re: Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction

#87

Post by immibis »

FearNotDaniel wrote: post #23
dmbche wrote: post #2

If 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 enjoy…

> their blog _his_ blog. It’s all written by one man. But I agree that it’s a remarkable blog, so fascinating and freely given. While I’m in grumpy-old-man-shakes-fist-at-newfangled-grammar mode, I can _almost_ accept that people writing in the “historical present” is unavoidable these days since TV historians have made it so trendy, but it’s especially jarring when he changes tense in the middle of a sentence (empha…

singular "they" is older than singular "you"

Re: Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction

#88

Post by thrance »

cjfd wrote: post #49
Terr_ wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I sometimes wonder if we could design a better system today [...] optimizing for values we have today like freedom, balance of power and equality of opportunity. I think it's important to point out that some people... don't seem to share the same ground-assumptions, and it's forming a rather sharp divide in modern US politics. There's a model for analyzing "how could you think that" disagreements which I've found u…

This analysis is highly muddled. "making things equal" != democracy. Capitalism can both create and break hierarchies. The concepts of democracy and capitalism have a far greater reach than the current US political climate where both are malfunctioning. The US is a superpower attempting to become a third world country and corruption and incompetence are a great way to reach that goal.

> Capitalism can both create and break hierarchies.

No, Capitalism can only reinforce hierarchies. Its core tenet is accumulation of capital, and thus power.

> corruption and incompetence are a great way to reach that goal.

Corruption is what happens when the capitalist class gets powerful enough to bend the rules. Incompetence is what happens when they figure out they can put a puppet in place and order him to bend the rules faster for them.

Re: Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction

#89

Post by crossroadsguy »

n1b0m wrote: post #86
ggm wrote: post #55

A reminder unemployment and underemployment and labour displacement existed in Roman times, and could be inferred to have carried into post Roman serfdom and the age of kings. It might not be the best choice for a peasant normally but walking off the land did happen. There are court records seeking the return of successful townspeople provably off their lords domain, and similar documents around marriage and land inh…

You’re right that "walking off the land did happen". Although the feudal system legally bound serfs to the land, there were ways for individuals to escape this bondage. For instance, a serf who lived in a town for a year and a day without being reclaimed by their lord could often gain their freedom. These people, known as 'villeins' in some records, were essentially free peasants who had successfully left their lord'…

How does this compare to employment bonds of today?

At least I know of likes of Infy, TCS etc doing this (in the home country) — making freshers sign bonds for 2-3 years and if you want to leave within that period the only way is to pay a good amount irrespective of whether you didn’t receive a salary raise or didn’t get the opportunities which were good good for you. If you don’t pay the bond — they won’t usually drag you to a court (they send legal notices for sure) but they will also not issue you an experience certificate.

Re: Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction

#90

Post by crossroadsguy »

cantor_S_drug wrote: post #41
bestouff wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

There is in one sense the king and the pawn are similar. Pawns are many, kings are few. If one pawn sacrifices itself to sacrifice the king, then kings ought to fear pawns and not take undue advantage.

The power (access to tools, system, and opportunity) to sacrifice an individual by another individual has become immensely disproportionate of late among individuals of different social and economic strata.
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