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This reads like research sponsored by a tobacco company showing that cigarettes are actually not that harmful. I like how it frames the economy as this indepen
by resu_nimda 8y ago
This reads like research sponsored by a tobacco company showing that cigarettes are actually not that harmful.
I like how it frames the economy as this independent entity that we just sort of observe and hope for the best. Oh our divining rod produced these arbitrary statistics so the glass is half full guys!
In reality, though, the forces of human nature driving the economy don't change. Since the dawn of the surplus, there have always been a handful of kings and many serfs, and there probably always will be.
- Hoasi 8y ago> Since the dawn of the surplus, there have always been a handful of kings and many serfs, and there probably always will be. One thing is different though: the thralls of today possess costly devices that simultaneously entertain and surveil them, among other things. Past kings would never even have dreamed about that.
- resu_nimda 8y agoI think it's largely irrelevant. Do the kings of today have a harder or easier time maintaining the status quo? I think most changes and fluctuations there are more attributable to chance (i.e. mechanisms we don't understand) than our conscious efforts. The same devices that surveil can also empower, in the end it could be a wash. We change the world around us but I'm convinced there's a certain homeostasis to our social and cultural experience, at core we're having the same conversations and dealing with issues analogous to the ones they had 3000 years ago.
- wasdfff 8y agoPast kings would have banned just possessing any inflammatory information. If Wikipedia was around 800 years ago and you, a serf, were caught using it, the king of England would have cut your head off in the city center, and the public would cheer and celebrate your death.