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How to Enter a City Like a King

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Re: How to Enter a City Like a King

#51

Post by WalterBright »

spencerflem wrote: post #28
quacked wrote: post #14

I often think about how much human labor there is available at any given moment, and how in any minute some percentage of "available labor" is bound up doing something. Back in the day, with billions fewer people, you could still bind up some percentage of available labor making beautiful gates for the coronation, or staging mock battles for the king as he passed. Today, I guess people make marketing copy for cat foo…

Something like 30% of our GDP is advertising - a pursuit I’d claim not just worthless but actively making everyone else’s life just a little worse. Sports are part of what makes life worth living though :)

Without advertising, how would you know what products were available? How would you know where to obtain them?

Re: How to Enter a City Like a King

#52

Post by sunrunner »

card_zero wrote: post #17
quacked wrote: post #14

I often think about how much human labor there is available at any given moment, and how in any minute some percentage of "available labor" is bound up doing something. Back in the day, with billions fewer people, you could still bind up some percentage of available labor making beautiful gates for the coronation, or staging mock battles for the king as he passed. Today, I guess people make marketing copy for cat foo…

Nobody knows what percentage. Besides, people want more than to be fed, sheltered, and protected from violent attacks. Undoubtedly they are often wrong and want ridiculous pointless things, but nobody knows exactly which things are the wrong things. That's why we have a diverse society of idiots, all trying different things. What intrigues me is that all of it is considered "economic activity", and counts toward GDP…

> nobody knows for sure which parts are bullshit

I'm pretty sure it's all bullshit and the universe is just random chaos, unless you could convince everyone that there's some kind of objective higher purpose that they all should be striving towards. People just figure out which things they believe to be non-bullshit and go in that direction. Perhaps the only guaranteed purpose for life is to continue itself, which seems awkwardly recursive.

Or as Terry Pratchett put in Hogfather:

"Take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet," Death waved a hand, "And yet you act as if there is some ideal order in the world, as if there is some... some rightness in the universe by which it may be judged."

Re: How to Enter a City Like a King

#53

Post by OkayPhysicist »

WalterBright wrote: post #42
xenonite wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically w.r.t to advertising: In socialist contries there is often only one single brand of a certain product. This removes the need for advertising. But without competition, productivity goes south with time.

Socialist products never seem to be competitive in the world market. Nobody wanted to buy Soviet cars outside of the USSR, for example.

There are notable exceptions. The AKM and RPG-7 are some of the most widely marketable weapons of all time.

Re: How to Enter a City Like a King

#54

Post by WalterBright »

rsyring wrote: post #3

How to enter a city like a king? Humbly, on a donkey. As one who comes to serve instead of one who comes to be served. What a difference from what we can expect from our current leaders, kings or king wannabees alike.

You can thank George Washington for rejecting the trappings of kings - "your Excellency", sceptres, crowns, robes, palaces, thrones, a chest full of medals, bowing and scraping, heredity succession, etc.

Re: How to Enter a City Like a King

#55

Post by quacked »

bluGill wrote: post #41
quacked wrote: post #14

I often think about how much human labor there is available at any given moment, and how in any minute some percentage of "available labor" is bound up doing something. Back in the day, with billions fewer people, you could still bind up some percentage of available labor making beautiful gates for the coronation, or staging mock battles for the king as he passed. Today, I guess people make marketing copy for cat foo…

Why is useful important? Back in the day residents would sometimes get a western good and they would save the packaging (think plastic spray can lids) because it was color unlike the soviet versions. Both worked (well we will assume though cheating putting water in in a cleaning bottle was not unknown when quotas were not met), but consumers want that beauty. which is to say a lot of needless things are still highly…

There's a certain percentage of "available labor" spending that, if it goes away, causes death directly. Maintaining the power grid and the cold storage network comes to mind, although of course both of those resources are massively overpowered if you're thinking "survival only" and not "make sure gas stations have Klondike bars".

Re: How to Enter a City Like a King

#56

Post by WalterBright »

quacked wrote: post #44
WalterBright wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most productive societies are ones where the people are free to do what they want. The more people are regimented and taxed, the less productive they are.

Undoubtedly, but productivity does not directly equate to beauty, health, happiness, satisfaction, morality, civic engagement, justice, etc.

A life of indolence does not lead to any of those things. We simply are not built that way. We were built to struggle.

Re: How to Enter a City Like a King

#57

Post by mmooss »

tooheavy wrote: post #9

Does anyone know the literature on adding people or individuals to groups, even an individual to a city? And the implications or outcomes of adding individuals of differing characteristics, potential for power, wealth, success, status, displacement, influence, or any number of other qualities, etc. I suspect this highlights fundamental elements of our social nature, our culture and societies, their values and problem…

Could you give us a concrete example of what you are referring to?

Re: How to Enter a City Like a King

#58

Post by fragmede »

card_zero wrote: post #50
bluGill wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is useful important? Back in the day residents would sometimes get a western good and they would save the packaging (think plastic spray can lids) because it was color unlike the soviet versions. Both worked (well we will assume though cheating putting water in in a cleaning bottle was not unknown when quotas were not met), but consumers want that beauty. which is to say a lot of needless things are still highly…

I don't know about useful, but right is important. You could imagine if everybody spontaneously started going around doing wrong. To some unclear extent this is what normally happens, and those people doing wrong should stop. It's not even entirely their own business, right and wrong: even when they have property rights on their side, it's still OK for other people to pass comment. And it could be that colored bottle…

Religion may not be as important as it once was, but the history of Catholicism would seem to be at odds with that.

Re: How to Enter a City Like a King

#59

Post by dragonwriter »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #46
dragonwriter wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Something like 30% of our GDP is advertising It peaked at under 2.5% of GDP in the late 1990s, and is significantly less now. https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2024/oct/rise-digi...

You're both right, but were thinking in different terms: As of 2025, advertising is responsible for approximately 21.9% of the total U.S. economic output, according to a study by S&P Global Market Intelligence commissioned by The Advertising Coalition. [prnewswire.com] Here are some key figures from the study: Total U.S. GDP (2024): $47.5 trillion Advertising-driven economic activity: $10.4 trillion Direct advertisin…

> Advertising-driven economic activity: $10.4 trillion

That’s not advertising, that's almost entirely sales “stimulated by” advertising, which are, even in theory, sales the particular seller would not have made without advertising, but not, even in principal, necessarily additional economic activity from advertising.

So even in expanding “advertising” to “due to advertising”, its at best a vast overestimate (and the “jobs supported by advertising” statistic is downstream of that statistic and suffers the same problem when treated as if it were additional rather than largely reallocation.)

Re: How to Enter a City Like a King

#60

Post by fragmede »

WalterBright wrote: post #56
quacked wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Undoubtedly, but productivity does not directly equate to beauty, health, happiness, satisfaction, morality, civic engagement, justice, etc.

A life of indolence does not lead to any of those things. We simply are not built that way. We were built to struggle.

For once, I agree with you!
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