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> But with giant machines mining the graphite, logging machines cutting down trees, trucks transporting both, going to a mill and then a factory to combine the

> But with giant machines mining the graphite, logging machines cutting down trees, trucks transporting both, going to a mill and then a factory to combine them, Okay, so how much time does it take to make a steel sword with modern techniques and machines to do all the work mentioned? If we're going to compare, we have to compare while matching as many variables as possible. At a time when almost all processing was by a person doing it, possibly with the help of a domesticated animal, how much time does it take for people to but down trees, mine graphite (or lead), harvest rubber or process petroleum into synthetic rubber, and transport all those materials to a location so they can make them into pencils. > the amount of labor per pencil is minuscule because it gets spread out across millions of them. And the amount of labor per steel sword is also reduced because you're making tens or hundreds of them. A pencil still isn't ten seconds by this metric, but that doesn't matter, as the point wasn't that a pencil is as hard or harder than a steel sword to make, but that if you want to look at all those inputs going into making a sword and count the time of people cutting down trees as part of it, then it makes sense to look at that part of it for modern processes as well. The only reason a pencil as we recognize it today (that is, not a twig with graphits, but the six sided with rubber item you imagine as the ideal of a U.S. style pencil) doesn't cost $5 or $10 or even more is because we've found ways to vastly reduce the costs of harvesting and processing those inputs. The point of my original comment wasn't to say the person I was responding to was wrong (they were entirely correct about the reason for the cost is time and effort), but to expand on their comment and note that the complexity can also be abstracted away the same as it was back then. A sword is cheaper today than it was then for the same reason a pencil is cheaper today than it would have been then, the input components are vastly cheaper because we've found ways to harvest and process them more efficiently.

samatman 6y ago
> Okay, so how much time does it take to make a steel sword with modern techniques and machines to do all the work mentioned? A random Cold Steel longsword was about five hundred bucks, after a quick search. Figuring 100% markup and the rest labor averaging $15/hr, about 17 hours of labor. That's an extremely lazy calculation, but it has to be in the right ballpark.
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  It's also worth pointing out that swords haven't remotely benefited from large economies of scale in the same way that other modern manufactured goods have simply because swords are a niche good in the modern day and aren't manufactured in the millions annually like other things are. If you want to compare like-for-like, look at goods that are as important in the modern day as swords were in medieval times. One similar enough modern example (because it's also worked metal) would be silverware; you can easily get stainless forks, knives, and spoons in bulk for less than a buck nowadays. Metal silverware in the medieval era was so expensive and thus such a luxury good that only the elites had it. Common people ate with their hands or roughly whittled wooden cutlery. There's also the problem that stainless steel wasn't invented yet, and other metal substitutes for it in cutlery applications are either much more expensive (silver/gold), or rust.
  - samatman 6y ago
    Definitely, contemporary swords are boutique luxury items. A good machete is about 30 bucks, and a sword is fancier, but not much: $60 is a decent guess at the price of a quality sword, if they were an important sidearm that most people needed to have.
    - CydeWeys 6y ago
      Yeah, I was thinking of machetes too. There are of course trash novelty swords at a similar price range, but those aren't so great at the actual job of cutting things. Machetes are. Also, $30 gets you a good machete (as distinct from fancy/hand-made). $5 gets you a cheap Harbor Freight machete that nevertheless does seem like it does the job. If we manufactured swords in the same volume we do chef's knifes, machetes, hammers, screwdrivers, prybars, etc., they'd be super cheap.
- kbenson 6y ago
  I meant that to be a but more rhetorical, but it does express my point. In the past it was far more expensive, and other than the assumption of how much of the cost is the final stage labor and how much is materials cost (and to some degree labor cost, which also has changed over time), the same calculations can be used roughly to approximate relative cost of items in other time periods. In the past, a vastly higher proportion of the cost would have been base materials, but also they might take some of that in-house, if there aren't industries to support manufacture of materials to a form better suited to the final stage of manufacture. What if the cost of the steel going into a modern sword was something like $10k-$20k because it was so costly to harvest and process because of labor? That then makes you wonder why steel is so expensive, and now you're using economics as a window to peer into into how ancient economies worked. :)

samatman 6y ago

> Okay, so how much time does it take to make a steel sword with modern techniques and machines to do all the work mentioned? A random Cold Steel longsword was about five hundred bucks, after a quick search. Figuring 100% markup and the rest labor averaging $15/hr, about 17 hours of labor. That's an extremely lazy calculation, but it has to be in the right ballpark.

CydeWeys 6y ago
It's also worth pointing out that swords haven't remotely benefited from large economies of scale in the same way that other modern manufactured goods have simply because swords are a niche good in the modern day and aren't manufactured in the millions annually like other things are. If you want to compare like-for-like, look at goods that are as important in the modern day as swords were in medieval times. One similar enough modern example (because it's also worked metal) would be silverware; you can easily get stainless forks, knives, and spoons in bulk for less than a buck nowadays. Metal silverware in the medieval era was so expensive and thus such a luxury good that only the elites had it. Common people ate with their hands or roughly whittled wooden cutlery. There's also the problem that stainless steel wasn't invented yet, and other metal substitutes for it in cutlery applications are either much more expensive (silver/gold), or rust.
- samatman 6y ago
  Definitely, contemporary swords are boutique luxury items. A good machete is about 30 bucks, and a sword is fancier, but not much: $60 is a decent guess at the price of a quality sword, if they were an important sidearm that most people needed to have.
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    Yeah, I was thinking of machetes too. There are of course trash novelty swords at a similar price range, but those aren't so great at the actual job of cutting things. Machetes are. Also, $30 gets you a good machete (as distinct from fancy/hand-made). $5 gets you a cheap Harbor Freight machete that nevertheless does seem like it does the job. If we manufactured swords in the same volume we do chef's knifes, machetes, hammers, screwdrivers, prybars, etc., they'd be super cheap.
kbenson 6y ago
I meant that to be a but more rhetorical, but it does express my point. In the past it was far more expensive, and other than the assumption of how much of the cost is the final stage labor and how much is materials cost (and to some degree labor cost, which also has changed over time), the same calculations can be used roughly to approximate relative cost of items in other time periods. In the past, a vastly higher proportion of the cost would have been base materials, but also they might take some of that in-house, if there aren't industries to support manufacture of materials to a form better suited to the final stage of manufacture. What if the cost of the steel going into a modern sword was something like $10k-$20k because it was so costly to harvest and process because of labor? That then makes you wonder why steel is so expensive, and now you're using economics as a window to peer into into how ancient economies worked. :)