Studying the demise of historic civilisations • Hacker News Board

Re: Studying the demise of historic civilisations

#261

Post by agent008t » Tue, Mar 05, 2019, 2:20 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #239

agent008t wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong. Keeping wealth long term is difficult. 1. Advisors and accountants do not own the wealth - you set the goals. If you want to spend it or mismanage it, they are not going to stop you. 2. The wealthier you are, the more difficult it is to maintain the real value of your wealth, in general. 3. If you have 3 children, they have 3 children and so on, and you split your wealth equally among your children, even a bil…

While this was quite common (money being squandered after several generations), it's not necessarily as common today among the ultra-rich. Among the upper middle class, yes, it's common to happen. E.g. maintaining the "real value" is not as much of problem for people having tens of billions (as we increasingly see today). Even if the value drops, they're still multi-billionaires. And diversification strategies today…

1. If a family that gets wealthy, stays wealthy, that's great - the number of wealthy families can only go up, so over time there will be more and more wealthy families.

2. If, on the other hand, there is some survivorship bias going on there and wealth rotates a lot, and some members of wealthy families keep their wealth, that is not as good an outcome but it is still not so bad, as it suggests that as a family's culture degrades their wealth will likely degrade as well.

Re: Studying the demise of historic civilisations

#262

Post by tim333 » Tue, Mar 05, 2019, 2:23 PM UTC

Jedi72 wrote: post #203

dagaci wrote: post #194

Many of these great "empires" were simply extended looting machines, once they ran out of looting opportunities they collapsed in the same way that a Ponzi collapses when it run out of new "investors". While things were good, it was all golden, glitter and glam, and many tall buildings. Loot of course takes many forms, gold, silvers, the work of serfs, the work of slaves, monopolies on trade routes, monopolies on tra…

I think this is a fantastic point, but it leads to the next question which is that are the current world powers any different?

There's less looting these days and more making stuff.

Re: Studying the demise of historic civilisations

#263

Post by benj111 » Tue, Mar 05, 2019, 2:25 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #243

benj111 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tin and copper in Cornish mines, was the main driver early on. That isn't really the point, yes it was the 'age of steam' but in reality it made a few marginal mines profitable. There were no steam trains, no steam ships, no wide spread mechanisation. Britain wasn't some backwater that was propelled ahead of spain due to accidentally discovering steam power. It was already a power in it own right, with trading networ…

Coal, actually. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_power_during_the_Industr... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Savery#Application_of_t... Coal mining was a thosand times greater than metal mining by the late 18th / early 19th century: Coal was so abundant in Britain that the supply could be stepped up to meet the rapidly rising demand. About 1770-1780 the annual output of coal was some 6.25 million long tons. V…

"Newcomen's great achievement was his steam engine, developed around 1712; combining the ideas of Thomas Savery and Denis Papin, he created a steam engine for the purpose of lifting water out of a tin mine." [1]

Plus that's 700,000 tons of copper, copper ore typically contains 2%? Copper, so your 700,000 tons of copper represents 35 million tons of ore. I'm undecided whether relative weight is even a good comparator. Sure value of output would be the best comparison?

You seem to be referencing Savery engines that weren't successful, whereas I'm referencing Newcomen engines that were. Can we agree that unsuccessful engines weren't a factor in Britain overtaking Spain?

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Newcomen

Re: Studying the demise of historic civilisations

#264

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Mar 05, 2019, 2:33 PM UTC

tanilama wrote: post #92

supernova87a wrote: post #21

You know I lately think that, ok, we're mostly past the age of empires physically conquering one another, we're in the age of economic ebbs and flows of established countries. And in this kind of age, the thing that sinks a country is not aggression by others, but indifference and lethargy as a country "gets old". "Getting old" means the political desired and inertia of a rich, settled population get to dominate the…

> Too many rich, old, soft people who now have settled and moneyed lives, and don't want to make the same sacrifices ....Too happy with their 2nd homes and retirement plans. Really? That is at least not what I saw happens in the US, most of the old people could be impoverished by unexpected disease. What you described isn't like 5% of the whole population really...

[deleted]

Re: Studying the demise of historic civilisations

#265

Post by lisper » Tue, Mar 05, 2019, 2:48 PM UTC

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #214

Mbioguy wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I'm gonna cut to the chase: that line is probably the most fascist thing I'm going to read all day, and excepting you, Hacker News has failed to call it out. This idea that war can somehow mythically rejuvenate the ethos or spirit of a country isn't unique to fascism though. It was also common in the jingoist imperial western european powers, and partly used as justification for aggression against neighbors and…

> the most fascist thing I'm going to read all day ... Hacker News has failed to call it out Yes, and the same happens in other posts on HN. This says a lot about HN's Overton window.

Or it could simply be that no one is paying attention. HN comments are not exactly the most important thing to which a person can devote their time and attention.

Re: Studying the demise of historic civilisations

#266

Post by shadowprofile76 » Tue, Mar 05, 2019, 2:53 PM UTC

gerbilly wrote: post #258

dagaci wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Egyptian Civilization was sustained because of the Nile delta productivity. Literally all the nutrients gathered over 1/4 of the of the African continent are deposited nowhere else along the river route but in Nile delta, this unique phenomenon of nature meant this area is extremely resilient and can withstand any level of exploitation. Egyptian Civilization continued for over 3000 years (what we know about) which is…

It's a good thing they dammed (damned?) the Nile then, to keep that rich alluvial soil away. :-)

Dammed*.though i'm pretty sure they also partly damned the river's ecosystem with millennia human presence.

Re: Studying the demise of historic civilisations

#267

Post by tim333 » Tue, Mar 05, 2019, 2:55 PM UTC

supernova87a wrote: post #21

You know I lately think that, ok, we're mostly past the age of empires physically conquering one another, we're in the age of economic ebbs and flows of established countries. And in this kind of age, the thing that sinks a country is not aggression by others, but indifference and lethargy as a country "gets old". "Getting old" means the political desired and inertia of a rich, settled population get to dominate the…

Those ideas have a history

“War essential. It is vain rhapsodizing and sentimentality to continue to expect much (even more, to expect a very great deal) from mankind, once it has learned not to wage war."

Friedrich Nietzsche, in his 1878 book that was one of the inspirations for WW1, WW2 and all that. Not one of humanities best times. Though you could have a more positive take on war as in war on poverty and the like rather than the shooting people stuff.

Re: Studying the demise of historic civilisations

#268

Post by bloak » Tue, Mar 05, 2019, 2:59 PM UTC

mmjaa wrote: post #114

I'm quite disappointed that the aboriginal cultures of Australia are not factored into this. Bias against the idea that they might have been a civilisation? Oldest oral traditions of any human culture. Oldest, still being worked, mining operation of any human culture. A hippocratic oath encoded in their culture while we, white Europeans, bled people to their deaths. I think this report, while interesting - is not qui…

Perhaps I'm being too literal and etymological, but to me "civilisation" means towns and cities.

Towns and cities lead to economic specialisation, a legal system, civil service, taxation, and so on. Nomads and people living in villages may have a complex culture but it's rather different from city life, even a low-tech city life like in ancient Egypt, for example.

Re: Studying the demise of historic civilisations

#269

Post by impostir » Tue, Mar 05, 2019, 3:03 PM UTC

dak1 wrote: post #5

xiaodai wrote: post #2

Is it true to say that China is the longest surviving civilization? They seem to think that Shang and Zhou are different civilisations? Instead of a continuity as they like to call it in China. There are good reasons why they should be considered continuations because they shared a similiar script for writing.

The script has changed considerably over time between different dynasties, and different areas have had mutually unintelligible languages, even if sharing similar script. For example: Japan shares many characters with Chinese, and Korean and Vietnamese both used to use Chinese characters, but they are all separate languages. Similarly, numerous "dialects" in China are less mutually intelligible than many different We…

I mostly agree with you, but I have one, albeit a nebulous one, problem. China, as an idea, has been around for ~6000 years. I agree that China, as a distinct political entity, hasn't existed for that time period. The Egyption civilization went through at least 5 significant changes of a political nature, but most would agree that it was still a contiguous civilization.

My guess is that civilization is too nebulous of a term for good discussion, but thats just my 2p.

Re: Studying the demise of historic civilisations

#270

Post by thaumasiotes » Tue, Mar 05, 2019, 3:03 PM UTC

dagaci wrote: post #226

dalbasal wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bronze age civilisations of the middle east (Akkad, Hati, Egypt) didn't follow this pattern. Egypt, for example, was a Nile + delta empire for most of the three kingdoms/periods. It's only towards the end of the new Kingdom that they expanded into nearby Canaan, and fought frontier wars against hittites along the Phoenician coast (eg, the famous battle of kadesh). Rome definitely did have an expansion imperative.…

Egyptian Civilization was sustained because of the Nile delta productivity. Literally all the nutrients gathered over 1/4 of the of the African continent are deposited nowhere else along the river route but in Nile delta, this unique phenomenon of nature meant this area is extremely resilient and can withstand any level of exploitation. Egyptian Civilization continued for over 3000 years (what we know about) which is…

> Egyptian Civilization lasted so long only because of the Delta productivity and ended when Greek and Roman conquest resulted in Egyptian grains being wholesale shipped northward out of the country

Greek? Egypt was conquered by Persia about 100 years before Alexander.

Alexander conquered it too, but didn't have time to ship anything out because he immediately died.

The dynasty that followed him was Greek, the Ptolemies, but they didn't control any territory other than Egypt.