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I think your comment and the parent are addressing slightly different points. Your assertion about the destruction and rebirth of companies/societies as good an

by ksdale 6y ago

I think your comment and the parent are addressing slightly different points. Your assertion about the destruction and rebirth of companies/societies as good and necessary can be true at the same time as the assertion that that process is an absolute nightmare for the people involved. I think I agree with you about the Hayflick limit idea, but I also think it's useful to point out, as the parent does, that a sclerotic, moribund empire is probably a better place to live for the majority of people in it than not an empire, assuming there is trade and general stability.

gumby 6y ago
> ... a sclerotic, moribund empire is probably a better place to live for the majority of people in it than not an empire, assuming there is trade and general stability. Is it? It took a plague to launch a revolution in agriculture in Europe, leading to an increase in calories production, an expansion of human life span, and opening up an expansion in trade (which reflects an increased amount of consumption of goods beyond simple survival). The preceding periods of semi-stasis were ones of no expansion in human quality of life and punctured by the opposite when you happened to be in the wrong place during a struggle between elites. In our concrete world: had Apple not been able to blow up the oligopoly where the phone carriers controlled what phones were available and what they could do, would we have the current explosion of software, tools, etc? In the US in particular the sclerotic phone oligopolies kept the mobile phone market at least a decade behind Europe and Japan.
- ksdale 6y ago
  Are you asking whether the 50% of people in Europe who died from the plague, and the survivors would have preferred to not have the plague? This is exactly the issue I'm talking about. It's very plausible that the world got much better after the plague, and that the plague was an important catalyst. But it also seems obviously true that absolutely no one alive at the time would choose the plague in order to cause that improvement.

by ksdale 6y ago

gumby 6y ago

> ... a sclerotic, moribund empire is probably a better place to live for the majority of people in it than not an empire, assuming there is trade and general stability. Is it? It took a plague to launch a revolution in agriculture in Europe, leading to an increase in calories production, an expansion of human life span, and opening up an expansion in trade (which reflects an increased amount of consumption of goods beyond simple survival). The preceding periods of semi-stasis were ones of no expansion in human quality of life and punctured by the opposite when you happened to be in the wrong place during a struggle between elites. In our concrete world: had Apple not been able to blow up the oligopoly where the phone carriers controlled what phones were available and what they could do, would we have the current explosion of software, tools, etc? In the US in particular the sclerotic phone oligopolies kept the mobile phone market at least a decade behind Europe and Japan.

ksdale 6y ago
Are you asking whether the 50% of people in Europe who died from the plague, and the survivors would have preferred to not have the plague? This is exactly the issue I'm talking about. It's very plausible that the world got much better after the plague, and that the plague was an important catalyst. But it also seems obviously true that absolutely no one alive at the time would choose the plague in order to cause that improvement.