4 ms·

What kind of technology enabled wealth gap in feudal society? It seems it was more about religion being used to subdue people.

by f6v 6y ago

donw 6y ago
> What kind of technology enabled wealth gap in feudal society? In short: Weapons. On the pre-gunpowder battlefield, the mounted, armored knight was roughly equivalent to the modern light tank. It is incredibly hard to take out an armored knight with the kind of weapons or tools which would have been available to peasants or serfs, so it doesn't take that many knights to keep enough peasants in-line to build a very wealthy kingdom. Religion during this era functioned much more like the modern civil service than what you or I would recognize as a church, and this also included both education and state security functions. When firearms became commonplace, this game totally changed. Previously, weapons, even the longbow, took years to master well enough to be combat effective. With muskets, you can turn a group of ignorant peasants into a fighting force capable of taking on armored cavalry in a few months, possibly even weeks. The Enlightenment, as well as our ideas about "equal treatment under the law", were the direct result of this force parity.
- belgian_guy 6y ago
  Following this reasoning, why didn't the enlightenment occur in asia, which had earlier access to gunpowder? Iirc the ottoman empire had portable guns before the west. And china had fire lances way before that.
  - donw 6y ago
    Because the Enlightenment was a complex social phenomenon with multiple prerequisites...?
  - ben_w 6y ago
    “Gun” isn’t one single tech; you start with a canon that’s hard to move, dangerous to the user, and with a smooth barrel and ball that doesn’t have good accuracy. Industry to make gunpowder cheaply and reliably rather than as one-offs for anti-castle siege weapons, and metallurgy and tooling to make the weapons hand-held and not prone to exploding in the operator’s hand, are what I have to assume old Asia lacked.
speedplane 6y ago
Guns germs steel! Read the book.
- sendbitcoins 6y ago
  Its also a 3-part PBC documentary. I think the Catholic monasteries also played a role, but that's not integrated into his thesis.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
Melting_Harps 6y ago
> What kind of technology enabled wealth gap in feudal society? It seems it was more about religion being used to subdue people. I'd argue the advent of centralized currencies did more harm than any and all standing armies combined. When you think about what a parasitical entity does in biology, you realize that simply killing a host is not evolutionary advantageous--their are 3 types of parasitism, not to be confused with the 3 types of symbiosis of which parasitism lies in. So instead the parasite seeks to keep the host alive as long as possible in order to extract resources/life from it in order to propagate and spread itself and its DNA/RNA into Nature in order to infect other hosts and rinse and repeat. Simply by demanding that peasants/serfs pay taxes and conduct all commerce in the coin that bares the issuers legacy has brought about so much of Human misery and perpetual serfdom that it baffles me what immense gravity their is in just the last 10,000 years since the supposed advent of Agriculture and therefore modern Society. I've spent the last ~15 years of my life focused on this very topic, and while I have gained a great deal of insight and probably did a PhD's worth of research, it would take my entire Lifetime to really dissect all of this.
- imtringued 6y ago
  Centralized currency is just a policy decision, so we are back to blaming leaders.
- gremlinsinc 6y ago
  What do you consider centralized currency? I mean, Rome had coin, I'm not sure about egypt and ancient sumeria, but I know they had gold and plenty of slaves. People have been warring and exploiting others since civilization... I can't say 10k years back before the move towards grouping in clans and cities... But technological currency also could "right the wrongs"... Imagine if each person could only have 1 bank account on a blockchain, verified by identity which is somewhat centralized but governed by a DAO. This bank account is auto-taxed (tx fees), it has a max limit, say 999 million. So essentially, there could not be billionaires. Sitting coin is taxed as well after awhile, and estate transfers would be limited say max 50 million can be transferred to posterity. The rest is paid out to all users as a dividend. The bank account would also pay out UBI to people based on the size of their wallet and their utilization. The more purchases, the more utilization the more your payouts from UBI. A large portion would also go towards a central "trust" for crowdfunding of businesses, mutual aid for emergencies, and for healthcare. The DAO would invest in worker/consumer owned grocery stores and try to peg the value of the dollar to prices by owning some of the pricing. Basically start w/ competing with Amazon on some consumer goods via the internet, and brick/mortar stores. DAO would work w/ devs to develop an algorithm that ensures not too much deflation/inflation, max limits, good taxation, good ubi, good burning/minting via staking protocol, etc... all while being open and transparent.
TeeMassive 6y ago
The lack of technology. With not much surplus in terms of food and resources children of serfs and peasants have to work and never do much else meanwhile nobles learn to read and educate themselves. And even with reading, without the printing press, all copying was mostly done by the Church, which means no Voltaire, no reading of the Bible to find that indulgences are BS and just a lack of awareness that things could be better.

What kind of technology enabled wealth gap in feudal society? It seems it was more about religion being used to subdue people.

by f6v 6y ago

What kind of technology enabled wealth gap in feudal society? It seems it was more about religion being used to subdue people.

donw 6y ago

> What kind of technology enabled wealth gap in feudal society? In short: Weapons. On the pre-gunpowder battlefield, the mounted, armored knight was roughly equivalent to the modern light tank. It is incredibly hard to take out an armored knight with the kind of weapons or tools which would have been available to peasants or serfs, so it doesn't take that many knights to keep enough peasants in-line to build a very wealthy kingdom. Religion during this era functioned much more like the modern civil service than what you or I would recognize as a church, and this also included both education and state security functions. When firearms became commonplace, this game totally changed. Previously, weapons, even the longbow, took years to master well enough to be combat effective. With muskets, you can turn a group of ignorant peasants into a fighting force capable of taking on armored cavalry in a few months, possibly even weeks. The Enlightenment, as well as our ideas about "equal treatment under the law", were the direct result of this force parity.

belgian_guy 6y ago
Following this reasoning, why didn't the enlightenment occur in asia, which had earlier access to gunpowder? Iirc the ottoman empire had portable guns before the west. And china had fire lances way before that.
- donw 6y ago
  Because the Enlightenment was a complex social phenomenon with multiple prerequisites...?
- ben_w 6y ago
  “Gun” isn’t one single tech; you start with a canon that’s hard to move, dangerous to the user, and with a smooth barrel and ball that doesn’t have good accuracy. Industry to make gunpowder cheaply and reliably rather than as one-offs for anti-castle siege weapons, and metallurgy and tooling to make the weapons hand-held and not prone to exploding in the operator’s hand, are what I have to assume old Asia lacked.

speedplane 6y ago

Guns germs steel! Read the book.

sendbitcoins 6y ago
Its also a 3-part PBC documentary. I think the Catholic monasteries also played a role, but that's not integrated into his thesis.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

Melting_Harps 6y ago

> What kind of technology enabled wealth gap in feudal society? It seems it was more about religion being used to subdue people. I'd argue the advent of centralized currencies did more harm than any and all standing armies combined. When you think about what a parasitical entity does in biology, you realize that simply killing a host is not evolutionary advantageous--their are 3 types of parasitism, not to be confused with the 3 types of symbiosis of which parasitism lies in. So instead the parasite seeks to keep the host alive as long as possible in order to extract resources/life from it in order to propagate and spread itself and its DNA/RNA into Nature in order to infect other hosts and rinse and repeat. Simply by demanding that peasants/serfs pay taxes and conduct all commerce in the coin that bares the issuers legacy has brought about so much of Human misery and perpetual serfdom that it baffles me what immense gravity their is in just the last 10,000 years since the supposed advent of Agriculture and therefore modern Society. I've spent the last ~15 years of my life focused on this very topic, and while I have gained a great deal of insight and probably did a PhD's worth of research, it would take my entire Lifetime to really dissect all of this.

imtringued 6y ago
Centralized currency is just a policy decision, so we are back to blaming leaders.
gremlinsinc 6y ago
What do you consider centralized currency? I mean, Rome had coin, I'm not sure about egypt and ancient sumeria, but I know they had gold and plenty of slaves. People have been warring and exploiting others since civilization... I can't say 10k years back before the move towards grouping in clans and cities... But technological currency also could "right the wrongs"... Imagine if each person could only have 1 bank account on a blockchain, verified by identity which is somewhat centralized but governed by a DAO. This bank account is auto-taxed (tx fees), it has a max limit, say 999 million. So essentially, there could not be billionaires. Sitting coin is taxed as well after awhile, and estate transfers would be limited say max 50 million can be transferred to posterity. The rest is paid out to all users as a dividend. The bank account would also pay out UBI to people based on the size of their wallet and their utilization. The more purchases, the more utilization the more your payouts from UBI. A large portion would also go towards a central "trust" for crowdfunding of businesses, mutual aid for emergencies, and for healthcare. The DAO would invest in worker/consumer owned grocery stores and try to peg the value of the dollar to prices by owning some of the pricing. Basically start w/ competing with Amazon on some consumer goods via the internet, and brick/mortar stores. DAO would work w/ devs to develop an algorithm that ensures not too much deflation/inflation, max limits, good taxation, good ubi, good burning/minting via staking protocol, etc... all while being open and transparent.

TeeMassive 6y ago

The lack of technology. With not much surplus in terms of food and resources children of serfs and peasants have to work and never do much else meanwhile nobles learn to read and educate themselves. And even with reading, without the printing press, all copying was mostly done by the Church, which means no Voltaire, no reading of the Bible to find that indulgences are BS and just a lack of awareness that things could be better.