tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post317010505092404306..comments2023-10-14T03:58:59.333-06:00Comments on The Tao of D&D: EconomicsAlexis Smolenskhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10539170107563075967noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-57244470489889495882011-10-06T17:56:24.186-06:002011-10-06T17:56:24.186-06:00"early uses of steam power it wasn't inte..."early uses of steam power it wasn't integrated into those societies at all. In fact it was used in limited cases for little or no real value." <br /><br />That was [intended to be] my point- that steam powered machines were invented repeatedly, but they didn't have any historical impact for a good 1500-odd years, until circumstances changed to make them an economically useful source of power.Erichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07649420272387984400noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-5252514625243977692011-10-06T02:51:17.914-06:002011-10-06T02:51:17.914-06:00Eric, I think you've missed the point- imagine...Eric, I think you've missed the point- imagine if you inserted a steam-engined car into the era of the aeolipile instead of simply pointing at things which were _developed_.<br /><br />If you'd read Alexis' post properly you would have seen at the end of the same paragraph you quoted it said, <br />"We fail to recognize that a printing press that does not address a societies need for a printing press is really only a large piece of junk, which would more likely be dumped in a Nile-fed bog before it inspired a civilization-changing revolution."<br /><br />Addressing your example (which shouldn't be considered universal anyway), yes the greeks and romans may have had steam-power but that didn't mean they could simply intuit the technology into say a car or train or some anime-style airship.Duskhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11925274446793976278noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-50692208055269754652011-10-06T00:32:25.827-06:002011-10-06T00:32:25.827-06:00Eric if you scroll down to the portion on early us...Eric if you scroll down to the portion on early uses of steam power it wasn't integrated into those societies at all. In fact it was used in limited cases for little or no real value.Oddbithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12091924105175846386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-50231385875299866232011-10-05T23:34:26.794-06:002011-10-05T23:34:26.794-06:00Indeed the greeks (or maybe earlier peoples at tha...Indeed the greeks (or maybe earlier peoples at that) did invent steam technology. However it wasn't put to use as anything other than a curiosity until about the industrial revolution. Mostly because up until that point slaves, in name or fact, were much cheaper. It was a massive increase in demand and the growth of factory machinery that required such a power source to be produced.<br /><br />I mean, we had oil as fuel and understanding of the axle, piston, and so on for millennia. Why wasn't the internal combustion engine invented by Roman engineers? A large part of it was that they had no concept of the thing or a real need for it. Also, advanced technologies require large amounts of subsidiary industries and resource gathering agencies to support them.<br /><br />Look at more recent examples; I've been on a classic sci-fi kick for a bit and keep running into vastly outdated technologies written about by visionary authors who in most other respects we are still trying to catch up with. The computer tech in The Mote in Gods Eye and Ringworld were still tape driven! :)<br /><br />Like Alexis's example of the printing press, in the middle ages so few people could read much less write, and we got all these monks sitting around without much to do...<br /><br />And of course we have the tech to have made bases on and in orbit around Mars, just not the will to do it.Ben Brookshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15824719452356386524noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-25041658897014481482011-10-05T17:42:01.135-06:002011-10-05T17:42:01.135-06:00"that this or that technology could have been..."that this or that technology could have been incorporated seamlessly in any period of human history, such as pistols in the late Roman Empire, or motorcars in feudal Japan, or the printing press in pre-Hyksos Egypt"<br /><br />This position always confuses me, because it's so easy to disprove:<br /><br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_steam_engineErichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07649420272387984400noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-280486390194078102011-10-05T14:38:59.423-06:002011-10-05T14:38:59.423-06:00Wouldn't hold your breath about the Roman thin...Wouldn't hold your breath about the Roman thing.<br /><br />True, probably won't ever get it. But as these civilization posts have progressed past the D&D era, I feel it is my purpose at this point to discuss what the culture ISN'T, having written almost fifty posts about what it IS. In this case, that economic fundamentals like supply and demand, consumerism, debt load and so on simply don't apply to a mercantalist or pre-mercantalist world.Alexis Smolenskhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10539170107563075967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-13907357740064645342011-10-05T14:34:14.260-06:002011-10-05T14:34:14.260-06:00I totally agree that life in the middle ages was s...I totally agree that life in the middle ages was something that we are very, very far from and probably have little hope of understanding. Although that may change in another generation or two, due to the impending collapse of capitalism as we know it.<br /><br />Our views of "the good life" were formed by hundreds of years of violence. Hundreds of years of debt, war, and slavery formed our views of what the meaning of life is now. We are so far from the Middle Ages that we can no more understand those folks than we can the hunter/gatherers of the Paleolithic era.<br /><br />Additionally, our understanding of where we are is completely clouded by this terrible period of history which preceeded it and the authors of the middle of our own era attempting to make sense of it (Locke, Smith, Nietzsche). We cannot imagine things being different than they are now, or how they even got this way to begin with.<br /><br />Finally, if you could master the language of the ancient Romans and had the opportunity to visit them, I would like to think that you could share a cup of wine with a plebian and have more than the weather to talk about.Original_Carlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03521777462227997158noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-83037644286615626862011-10-05T14:02:00.667-06:002011-10-05T14:02:00.667-06:00I don't deny that any given period of life con...I don't deny that any given period of life contains pleasure, or a degree of happiness or humour. I'm sure people still enjoyed making love, that they still considered laying next to a trout stream on a hot day with their feet dangling in the water a thing of wonder. I certainly don't dispute that there was happiness and pleasure.<br /><br />But people lived short lives. War on a small scale between families and states was constant. Not just every few years, but every season. Disease, famine and death were constant. And most important in reference to the post, people did NOT see their salvation in trading what they had for what they wanted. They did not, by and large, work for wages. They did not view the rustic furniture they had with the expectation that they would have in their lives a better table, a better bed, a better cart and so on and so forth. They did not see the acquisition of wealth as something their happiness depended upon. They saw the acquisition of heaven as the reward of a long life, lived hard but lived well.<br /><br />This is a very, very different perspective from our sense of economy, and cannot be reconciled however many modern scholars try to make it so.Alexis Smolenskhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10539170107563075967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-11831153331944515512011-10-05T13:44:31.868-06:002011-10-05T13:44:31.868-06:00Consider that both of these authors lived at the t...Consider that both of these authors lived at the tail end of the Middle Ages and neither was an historian.<br /><br />Chrétien de Troyes was from the same period and also a poet, but few take his illustrations of medieval life as representative of how things were back then.Original_Carlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03521777462227997158noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-24669948546381555292011-10-05T12:40:31.434-06:002011-10-05T12:40:31.434-06:00Actually, Carl, the further back you go, the less ...Actually, Carl, the further back you go, the less likely you are to find positive references to medieval life; I rush to point out you quoted a "modern scholar" in writing your comment, while describing modern scholars.<br /><br />For my perceptions of medieval life, I shall be happy to rest my laurels upon Boccaccio and Dante, and not modern scholars.Alexis Smolenskhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10539170107563075967noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3871409676946408069.post-89089384766543762952011-10-05T12:00:19.753-06:002011-10-05T12:00:19.753-06:00I'm glad that you've chosen to write this ...I'm glad that you've chosen to write this post at this time. I'm just wrapping up reading a book on the history of money and economics called, "Debt: The First 5000 Years" by noted anthropoligist and anarchist, David Graeber. I think you and your game would benefit greatly from reading this book.<br /><br />I'm going to take a whack at your bonus question and then we'll see if I can come up with something response-worthy for the rest of your post.<br /><br />Primitive economies were (and sometimes still are) human economies. EVE's economy is a commercial economy. A human economy only uses money for specific things, usually brideprice and/or blood-debts (sometimes called flesh debts). In a human economy everything else runs on a credit-and-debt system that doesn't involve physical money or even units of account. A commercial economy assigns a monetary value to everything. EVE wouldn't work if it were governed by a human economy because in order for it to be a game, everything must be assigned a value that relates to other objects in the game. If EVE were run as a human economy and you needed bullets, you'd just ask your friend for some and that friend would gladly hand them over. If your friend needed a spaceship he'd ask you for one and neither of you would worry too much about who owed what to whom. You're humans, after all, and humans help each other. Not much of a game there.<br /><br />Regarding your assertions about debt, I have a few points to make.<br /><br />1. Ordinary individuals most certainly took out loans and they did so frequently after coinage was re-introduced to Europe. They got these loans from moneylenders/usurers. If they didn't pay it back they had to sell all their possessions, their wives and their children and/or go to debtor's prison to be tortured and/or killed. That is, unless they were aristocrats, in which case they were allowed servants, given fine meals and prostitutes were brought to them by their jailers. The weird part is that for a long time in Europe it was illegal to charge interest, and so the courts weren't much help to usurers until the Church decided that charging interest was OK.<br /><br />2. You're painting a picture of medieval life that is very harsh. In reality, the Middle Ages in Europe, specifically after the passing of the Roman Empire were a time that was very good for peasants. Slavery was almost entirely eradicated, there were many peasant freeholders, and state-sponsored warfare (and the subsequent mass-killings and enslavings) did not exist. Your picture of the middle ages comes from modern scholars trying to justify the world as they saw it. The anthropological record is quite different.<br /><br />However, as the Middle Ages began to give way to the Renaissance the conditions you describe showed up. Serfdom, debt-slavery, war, and violence spread across Europe along with the re-introduction of coinage.<br /><br />Bonus question: did you know that China actually abandonded fiat currency (AKA paper money and bronze coin strings) in the 16th century?<br /><br />Double-bonus question: why was the merchant-adventurer regarded so highly in medieval Persia?Original_Carlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03521777462227997158noreply@blogger.com