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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

#11

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #9
roenxi wrote: post #8

Earlier 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.

Are stump speeches not propaganda? I don't see why the election system should privilege candidates whose political views are most compellingly expressed in quick little text blurbs.

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

#12

Post by adastra22 »

decimalenough wrote: post #4
racecar789 wrote: post #3

It'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.

Is that a trope?

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

#13

Post by jahewson »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #9
roenxi wrote: post #8

Earlier 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.

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

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

#14

Post by ljf »

adastra22 wrote: post #12
decimalenough wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The series actually talks about this in detail, in particular the (incorrect) trope that medieval peasants worked a lot less than we do.

Is that a trope?

Yes https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/medieval-peasant-only-work...

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

#16

Post by ch4s3 »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #9
roenxi wrote: post #8

Earlier 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.

File this under Lies Engineers Believe About Political Science.

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

#17

Post by pessimizer »

When you get to the end, remember that's how many to most black people lived until very recently until they were expelled from the land with nothing, due to the rise of more efficient farming techniques. The very few who owned their own land were more slowly pushed out when they were denied farm loans. Black people owned about 15 million acres of land in 1910, now they own about 1 million.

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

#18

Post by mcmoor »

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 found the one for Sparta too emotionally charged for my interest. But I really really endorse most of the other ones especially ones touching in economics and logistics of ancient world.

(Btw he's not a tenured professor, much to his chagrin, he's an adjunct professor. This is exactly why he wrote A LOT about broken academia system too.)

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

#19

Post by Terr_ »

martin-t wrote: post #6
docsaintly wrote: post #5

This 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.

> 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 useful, from a (leftist) video essay:

> See, when you talk to our conservative friend, you operate as though you have the same base assumptions [...]

> Since we live with both of these frameworks [democratic egalitarianism, capitalist competitive sorting] in our minds, and most of the things we do in our day-to-day lives can be justified by either one, we don't often notice the contradiction between them, and it's easy to imagine whichever one tends to be our default is everyone else's default as well. [...]

> Your conservative friend thinks you're naive for thinking the system even can be changed, and his is the charitable interpretation [...] Many conservatives assume liberals [...] know The Hierarchy is eternal, that there will always be people at the top and people at the bottom, so any claim towards making things equal must be a Trojan-horse for something that benefits them. [...]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agzNANfNlTs

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

#20

Post by bongodongobob »

Terr_ wrote: post #19
martin-t wrote: post #6

Earlier 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.

> 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…

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".
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