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Samurai City

worksinprogress.co

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Re: Samurai City

#11

Post by david_shi »

sharkjacobs wrote: post #10

> In a way, the Tokugawa system was a success. Japan experienced near-total peace between 1600 and the late nineteenth century, a remarkable achievement for a premodern society and a dramatic contrast to Europe or China, where tens of millions of people died in wars. > Tokugawa Edo stands as a monument to the power of rent-seekers, producing little and demanding immense resources as a condition of civil peace. The tw…

Perhaps Golden Ages are the rare and illusive times when a third way is possible.

Re: Samurai City

#12

Post by throwaway173738 »

sixo wrote: post #4
Morromist wrote: post #3

One thing that I find interesting about this is that "samurai lived in dignified but extreme poverty" but never really did anything to threaten the state and take its riches for themselves for hundreds of years, despite all of them being crammed together with lots of opportunity to organize an enormous rebellion right in the city where the king lived. Perhaps they didn't think of it as poverty. Anyway, great read.

I suspect that, in reality, it is the indignity of poverty which motivates people to take up arms against each other. So long as dignity is retained, poverty may be emotionally bearable (perhaps to the point of actual starvation, when dignity becomes unsustainable).

It makes sense. Otherwise people would never become monks in certain sects, because there’s an innate indignity to poverty but subsuming yourself to a higher purpose negates the indignity.

Re: Samurai City

#14

Post by julianeon »

sharkjacobs wrote: post #10

> In a way, the Tokugawa system was a success. Japan experienced near-total peace between 1600 and the late nineteenth century, a remarkable achievement for a premodern society and a dramatic contrast to Europe or China, where tens of millions of people died in wars. > Tokugawa Edo stands as a monument to the power of rent-seekers, producing little and demanding immense resources as a condition of civil peace. The tw…

Warfare, or more plainly the deaths of many, seems like a pretty decisive tiebreaker: whatever the flip side of the option that involves the death of thousands is, I will choose that. Of course, without this example, most people would say something like the downside isn't that bad; this case study is instructive because it shows that yes, it is.

It's not a perspective we usually see: the nobility, not as a noble or morally elite class, but as a problem that a successful government can manage and minimize, without violence.

Re: Samurai City

#15

Post by c22 »

sharkjacobs wrote: post #10

> In a way, the Tokugawa system was a success. Japan experienced near-total peace between 1600 and the late nineteenth century, a remarkable achievement for a premodern society and a dramatic contrast to Europe or China, where tens of millions of people died in wars. > Tokugawa Edo stands as a monument to the power of rent-seekers, producing little and demanding immense resources as a condition of civil peace. The tw…

I guess if I am one of the landlords, or if rents are very reasonable and competitive I prefer the former. However, if it becomes the case that I am having all of my productivity extracted by rent seekers and I no longer have agency over my own life then the benefits of stability get downgraded and I'm much more willing to roll the dice.

Re: Samurai City

#16

Post by jejrhfndjdd »

c22 wrote: post #15
sharkjacobs wrote: post #10

> In a way, the Tokugawa system was a success. Japan experienced near-total peace between 1600 and the late nineteenth century, a remarkable achievement for a premodern society and a dramatic contrast to Europe or China, where tens of millions of people died in wars. > Tokugawa Edo stands as a monument to the power of rent-seekers, producing little and demanding immense resources as a condition of civil peace. The tw…

I guess if I am one of the landlords, or if rents are very reasonable and competitive I prefer the former. However, if it becomes the case that I am having all of my productivity extracted by rent seekers and I no longer have agency over my own life then the benefits of stability get downgraded and I'm much more willing to roll the dice.

[dead]

Re: Samurai City

#17

Post by bitwize »

gostsamo wrote: post #2

Fascinating. Currently imagining a futuristic version of that and mixing it with some cyberpunk happening under the shadow of the big brother.

After Bioshock Infinite came out, I imagined how cool it would be to have a shogunate-era Japanese version of it called "Floating World Edo", rendered in the style of ukiyo-e prints (which term means "pictures of the floating world"). Perhaps an alternate-universe Tokugawa family would use their floating capital to keep their daimyō in line, not by forcing them to live in Edo for half the year, but by bringing Edo directly to them. Yes, I know that's basically Laputa. (Fun fact: The bits in Gulliver's Travels concerning Laputa and Balnibarbi contain descriptions of not just an LLM, but a fairly typical organizational "AI transformation" replete with a skeptical holdout at risk of being punished by upper management for not embracing the new hotness!)

Re: Samurai City

#18

Post by gregwebs »

This is fascinating after learning about and rading Peter Turchin's concept of Eelite overproduction [1]. The theory is that much of society's conflicts are actually fights between the elite and that this happens when the elite start fighting for the same resources.

From that point of view they seemed to have created a system that stopped the elites from starting wars with each other by imprisoning their families. And although they levered high taxes they did force many elites to accept a small amount of resources per elite to the point that some in elite status were effectively poor. Instead of money they got status and a title.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction

Re: Samurai City

#19

Post by _carbyau_ »

gostsamo wrote: post #2

Fascinating. Currently imagining a futuristic version of that and mixing it with some cyberpunk happening under the shadow of the big brother.

Require all the cyberpunk billionaires to live together under the shadow of the surveillance shogunate.
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