6 ms·

Also keep in mind that during that period the Black Plague killed 30-60% of the population. Serfs had more power because there were dramatically fewer of them.

• varjag 5y ago
  On the other hand if it took a plague to improve the standards of living it is fair to agree the baseline was quite abysmal.
  • zrail 5y ago
    Oh no doubt!
  • rufus_foreman 5y ago
    I don't think that argument makes sense. What's the country with the highest standard of living today? This says it's Canada: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/quality-of-life-rankings https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/quality-of-life-r.... If a plague wiped out 50% of the population of Canada, and wages went up afterwards, would that mean that the current standard of living in Canada is quite abysmal?
    • TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
      If a plague wiped out 50% of the population of the First World countries, wages wouldn't go up, they'd disappear entirely. The just-in-time supply chains that keep the lights on and food and other goods in the stores would fall apart within a couple of weeks. Medieval starvation was local. Areas were largely self-sufficient in the bare essentials - except in bad years, which happened regularly enough to keep a lid on population growth, but not so regularly they caused widespread depopulation. Trade was mostly for useful extras. That's very much not true today. Everything is specialised and interdependent, and not even farming areas are truly self-sufficient. This was - and possibly still is - the biggest risk from a pandemic. It's hard to calculate the exact tipping point, but when you have a certain percentage of the population unable to work for a couple of weeks or so, essential systems start breaking down.
      • rufus_foreman 5y ago
        The "essential" system that broke down during the Black Plague was serfdom. If 50% of Canadians died next week, you think what, Canada would cease to exist?
        • pbourke 5y ago
          > If 50% of Canadians died next week, you think what, Canada would cease to exist? It’s possible. Canada’s nearly broken up* in recent memory over regional differences. 50% of a population dying is a massively destabilizing event that could undo even a comparatively wealthy nation. * or at least its second largest province narrowly decided to stay in Confederation.
        • whoaisme 5y ago
          Maybe it would? I mean if yyou're smart tell us how 50 percent of Canucks getting wiped out would play out. You act as if plenty of political entities didn't cease to exist because of the plague.
      • dragonelite 5y ago
        We have seen the shock to the supply chain that happened during the early months of this pandemic.
      • Amezarak 5y ago
        Yes, this is the real problem with the modern world, and I'm afraid it's only getting worse. We're becoming hyper-efficient and scaling things up enormously at the cost of being extremely fragile. Eventually, some black swan event will happen and we'll have a systems collapse it will be very hard to recover from - because so little of the population will have baseline skills. Thankfully this pandemic wasn't it, but it doesn't seem to have woke up TPTB to the problem.
        • IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
          The pandemic was not a black swan event. However i agree with you and i think even the US govt agrees with you. Thats the reason farming subsidies exist
• brodo 5y ago
  The black plague started 1350. 1310 was the big famine. Late middle ages where no joke.