10 ms·

Stylish suburbs: how ancient Mexican metropolis dodged inequality trap (2019)

38 points by diodorus 7y ago

WalterBright 7y ago
I don't know how much can be really inferred from digging through buried rubble. We know a lot about Rome because they had writing and people who lived then chronicling life there. Commoners live well in free market societies, and there's no slavery. Perhaps that's how they lived. For example, the article points out that the height difference between rich & commoners was not so much. But heights improved throughout America in the 1800's (quite dramatically, in fact).
- fit2rule 7y ago
  Artisans, not just commoners, provide the juice for free market societies. But artisans require resources. A lot can be told about a society on the basis of its resource management; slavery is an extreme response to a lack of resources, or it could also be based on abundance/cultural desire for decadence, based on affluence->scarcity factors - which can indeed be read from the soil and the shards. By looking at the shards and remnants of the dominant industries, we can see that humans self organise as a cultural unit according to what they have available at hand to play with. This is a fundamental key note of the way archeology contributes to our extant society.
  - WalterBright 7y ago
    There was plenty of art being produced in medieval Italy, for example, and it was a feudal society, not free market. (The art was commissioned by wealthy lords and the church.)
    - fit2rule 7y ago
      Medieval Italian artisans had their free market: the wealthy lords and the church. Competition among themselves for these resources produced innovation.
- ptah 7y ago
  > Commoners live well in free market societies, and there's no slavery. Do you have evidence of this?
  - barry-cotter 7y ago
    Infant mortality is lower for the bottom decile, almost certainly the bottom percentile in high and middle income countries now than for the very richest and most powerful before antibiotics. Calvin Coolidge’s son died of an infected blister he got from a racket playing tennis. In every continent bar Africa education, healthy lifespan and average wealth as proxied by GDP/capita have improved since WWII. Even in Africa education and health have improved, despite AIDS, and it looks like economic growth might finally take off. Some of this is due to technological advances but capitalism beats the pants off all alternative models at that, as we can see from the history of the Soviet Union, which managed to almost keep up militarily with the US while spending twice to three times as much as a proportion of GDP. Slavery is absent in all OECD countries and almost all that are substantially poorer and less economically free. Yes, we have evidence of this.
    - chownie 7y ago
      I don't think looking at GDP/capita proxies quality of life at all. If you and I pay one another $100 every week we'll both be boosting GDP and doing nothing of material worth aside from paying the taxes on the exchange. I'm also not convinced that it's absent in all OECD countries given an explicit loophole allowing slavery of prisoners in the US constitution.
      - barry-cotter 7y ago
        https://ourworldindata.org/human-development-index https://ourworldindata.org/human-development-index Positive correlation between human development index and GDP per capita; also positive correlation between GDP per capita and education and health.
  - WalterBright 7y ago
    > Do you have evidence of this? Sure. Life expectancy, height, and infant survival (all markers of standard of living) rose steadily throughout the free market 19th century in America. By WW2, Americans were the tallest people in the world.
- djrobstep 7y ago
  No slavery? Much of the prison population is explicitly engaged in unpaid labor. Others are engaged in "modern slavery" where employers don't let employees escape. And regular working/middle class people are coerced into "voluntarily" choosing which employer they'll be exploited by, at the threat of eviction/homelessness/poverty if they refuse, and further exploited through land rents, health insurance companies, and all sorts of other predatory entities. So I'd say there's plenty of slavery and exploitation still going on in "free" market societies.
  - WalterBright 7y ago
    Prison labor is not a significant part of the economy. > I'd say there's plenty of slavery and exploitation still going on in "free" market societies. Nobody is going to chase after you, whip you, and chop your foot off if you leave your job. It is nothing like slavery.
    - djrobstep 7y ago
      It absolutely is a significant part of the economy. Prisoners make military equipment, home appliances, office furniture, work in call centres, and fight fires, among many other things. As for "nothing like slavery": People are literally chased out of their houses if they stop doing their job and miss rent payments. If I stop working and can't afford groceries, but still try to retrieve them from the supermarket, I'll literally be thrown in a cage.
      - WalterBright 7y ago
        Being prevented from taking things that aren't yours is not slavery. I don't know of any economic system that tolerates taking whatever you want. I doubt you'd be forgiving if I wandered into your residence and helped myself to whatever was in your refrigerator and anything else I wanted. Prison labor is simply not a significant part of the economy. Your examples lack the dollar magnitude of them that would justify otherwise.
        7y ago
namenotrequired 7y ago
The article does not answer the "how" question.
- fit2rule 7y ago
  The idea that the inequality trap was avoided, is demonstrated in the relics left behind - and in that regard the article does indeed present data to suggest that wealth was distributed because the culture was based around the distribution - free commerce - of skilled artisans producing valuable goods derived from locally available, abundant resources.
  - bsanr2 7y ago
    Essentially, low barrier to entry. Something that free education (not necessarily limited to degree-granting colleges, and perhaps living grants for self-study) and a robust safety net could achieve today.

38 points by diodorus 7y ago

I don't know how much can be really inferred from digging through buried rubble. We know a lot about Rome because they had writing and people who lived then chronicling life there. Commoners live well in free market societies, and there's no slavery. Perhaps that's how they lived. For example, the article points out that the height difference between rich & commoners was not so much. But heights improved throughout America in the 1800's (quite dramatically, in fact).

fit2rule 7y ago
Artisans, not just commoners, provide the juice for free market societies. But artisans require resources. A lot can be told about a society on the basis of its resource management; slavery is an extreme response to a lack of resources, or it could also be based on abundance/cultural desire for decadence, based on affluence->scarcity factors - which can indeed be read from the soil and the shards. By looking at the shards and remnants of the dominant industries, we can see that humans self organise as a cultural unit according to what they have available at hand to play with. This is a fundamental key note of the way archeology contributes to our extant society.
- WalterBright 7y ago
  There was plenty of art being produced in medieval Italy, for example, and it was a feudal society, not free market. (The art was commissioned by wealthy lords and the church.)
  - fit2rule 7y ago
    Medieval Italian artisans had their free market: the wealthy lords and the church. Competition among themselves for these resources produced innovation.
ptah 7y ago
> Commoners live well in free market societies, and there's no slavery. Do you have evidence of this?
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  Infant mortality is lower for the bottom decile, almost certainly the bottom percentile in high and middle income countries now than for the very richest and most powerful before antibiotics. Calvin Coolidge’s son died of an infected blister he got from a racket playing tennis. In every continent bar Africa education, healthy lifespan and average wealth as proxied by GDP/capita have improved since WWII. Even in Africa education and health have improved, despite AIDS, and it looks like economic growth might finally take off. Some of this is due to technological advances but capitalism beats the pants off all alternative models at that, as we can see from the history of the Soviet Union, which managed to almost keep up militarily with the US while spending twice to three times as much as a proportion of GDP. Slavery is absent in all OECD countries and almost all that are substantially poorer and less economically free. Yes, we have evidence of this.
  - chownie 7y ago
    I don't think looking at GDP/capita proxies quality of life at all. If you and I pay one another $100 every week we'll both be boosting GDP and doing nothing of material worth aside from paying the taxes on the exchange. I'm also not convinced that it's absent in all OECD countries given an explicit loophole allowing slavery of prisoners in the US constitution.
    - barry-cotter 7y ago
      https://ourworldindata.org/human-development-index https://ourworldindata.org/human-development-index Positive correlation between human development index and GDP per capita; also positive correlation between GDP per capita and education and health.
- WalterBright 7y ago
  > Do you have evidence of this? Sure. Life expectancy, height, and infant survival (all markers of standard of living) rose steadily throughout the free market 19th century in America. By WW2, Americans were the tallest people in the world.
djrobstep 7y ago
No slavery? Much of the prison population is explicitly engaged in unpaid labor. Others are engaged in "modern slavery" where employers don't let employees escape. And regular working/middle class people are coerced into "voluntarily" choosing which employer they'll be exploited by, at the threat of eviction/homelessness/poverty if they refuse, and further exploited through land rents, health insurance companies, and all sorts of other predatory entities. So I'd say there's plenty of slavery and exploitation still going on in "free" market societies.
- WalterBright 7y ago
  Prison labor is not a significant part of the economy. > I'd say there's plenty of slavery and exploitation still going on in "free" market societies. Nobody is going to chase after you, whip you, and chop your foot off if you leave your job. It is nothing like slavery.
  - djrobstep 7y ago
    It absolutely is a significant part of the economy. Prisoners make military equipment, home appliances, office furniture, work in call centres, and fight fires, among many other things. As for "nothing like slavery": People are literally chased out of their houses if they stop doing their job and miss rent payments. If I stop working and can't afford groceries, but still try to retrieve them from the supermarket, I'll literally be thrown in a cage.
    - WalterBright 7y ago
      Being prevented from taking things that aren't yours is not slavery. I don't know of any economic system that tolerates taking whatever you want. I doubt you'd be forgiving if I wandered into your residence and helped myself to whatever was in your refrigerator and anything else I wanted. Prison labor is simply not a significant part of the economy. Your examples lack the dollar magnitude of them that would justify otherwise.
      - 7y ago

namenotrequired 7y ago

The article does not answer the "how" question.

fit2rule 7y ago
The idea that the inequality trap was avoided, is demonstrated in the relics left behind - and in that regard the article does indeed present data to suggest that wealth was distributed because the culture was based around the distribution - free commerce - of skilled artisans producing valuable goods derived from locally available, abundant resources.
- bsanr2 7y ago
  Essentially, low barrier to entry. Something that free education (not necessarily limited to degree-granting colleges, and perhaps living grants for self-study) and a robust safety net could achieve today.