6 ms·

But the romans actually did innovate. Or at least put other's knowledge to massive use. The scale of planning and engineering put into their infrastructure is

But the romans actually did innovate. Or at least put other's knowledge to massive use. The scale of planning and engineering put into their infrastructure is just awesome. It's not just roads. Their sewage systems, water treatment plants, siphons, aqueducts, pipes... IDK if any of you had a deep dive into this, but I watch some YT channels by spanish professors and this people were no joke. And they seemed to have some research on materials too.

ajuc 4y ago
They innovated in areas where slaves didn't helped.
- csours 4y ago
  I worry that capitalism is using us in a similar manner. Neoliberal capitalism has given us a lot of very cheap, very technologically advanced stuff. An extremely basic integrated circuit in the 1960s costs the same as an entire iPhone now, accounting for inflation. Accounting for inflation, automobiles are as cheap as they've ever been, and have many more features that work much better than they ever have. But ... the edges wear thin. A Raspberry Pi (computer) and a Raspberry Pie (food) may be purchased for around the same price. A varied and healthy diet can be quite expensive (though there are deals to be found if you can travel to get them). Companies want to "add value" to food with extensive processing that increases the engineered taste factors to make us consume more. Housing is insanely expensive in many areas. Health care in the United States is not designed for any humans - not doctors, nurses, other professionals, and certainly not patients. Neoliberal capitalism won't innovate on these areas. Are we just stuck with what we have? Certainly government mandates could change the game, but just like the Romans, people think the system is working because they can buy a smart phone and a gaming console and some cheap snacks and go for a ride in their fine automobile. We can't see what the collapse will be, and we can't see what's next. I wonder how many Romans talked like this? I don't believe that our doom is inevitable, but I also think that progress requires specific intention, and progress can be very easily disrupted. --- I have a thesis that the economic benefits of integrated circuit microchip and the economic benefits of neoliberalism cannot be distinguished. They both feed each other. I don't see myself putting enough effort into researching it and writing it up, but I strongly believe that thesis.
  - WillPostForFood 4y ago
    >Neoliberal capitalism won't innovate on these areas. Wouldn't you put the transition from agriculture based economy under neoliberal capitalism? We went from 90% farm employment to 10% while massively increasing output. Tech folks don't think food production is exciting so they miss all the innovation. https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/1/8/22872749/john-deere-self-driving-tractor-autonomous-farming https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/1/8/22872749/john-deere-self... As to housing and health care, we don't have "neoliberal capitalism", we have highly regulated, captured, markets. If you moved to zero zoning in SF you'd start to have innovative building.
    - csours 4y ago
      My comment on food is not about the quantity or efficiency - those have advanced quite well. It is about the quality and value.
      - WillPostForFood 4y ago
        The quality of food is better in a modern market like whole foods today than what you got 50 or 100 years ago. Or if you like it super fresh, in pretty much every city you have organic produce at multiple local farmer's markets. Or look at restaurant options today vs even 40 years ago. Coffee today vs Folger's. Fair trade chocolate vs Hershey's. Access to fresh fruit, year round, via global supply chains. I don't know what hasn't gotten better. The worst thing about food today is abundance of cheap (value?) junk food, but that's an accomplishment in its own way.
  - radu_floricica 4y ago
    I'm not sure what you're complaining about, exactly. A raspberry pie is mostly service, not product - you get it for things like convenience and company and time. You can tell because the frozen version is much cheaper. And if you want to go further lower, you can actually make pies at home for pennies - all you need is a sack of flower and a bunch of frozen fruit. And capitalism even makes it easy for you to do it - if you decide it's something you really want, you can invest a couple hundred bucks in home equipment to do most of the work. I'm sorry if I'm misunderstanding, but a couple of reads of your comment and I still think you're complaining that things go well :)
- kalimanzaro 4y ago
  In particular, they didn't innovate in general technologies, like energy/information production/transmission, or metallurgy. Hard to beat slaves as a general technology， even concrete is no match.
  - Someone 4y ago
    > they didn't innovate in general technologies, like energy/information production/transmission, or metallurgy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_metallurgy#Mechanisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_metallurgy#Mechanisation: “There is direct evidence that the Romans mechanised at least part of the extraction processes. They used water power from water wheels for grinding grains and sawing timber or stone, for example. A set of sixteen such overshot wheels is still visible at Barbegal near Arles dating from the 1st century AD or possibly earlier, the water being supplied by the main aqueduct to Arles.” I think that aqueduct is an example of energy transmission. “Ausonius attests the use of a water mill for sawing stone in his poem Mosella from the 4th century AD. They could easily have adapted the technology to crush ore using tilt hammers, and just such is mentioned by Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia dating to about 75 AD, and there is evidence for the method from Dolaucothi in South Wales” “They also used reverse overshot water-wheel for draining mines, the parts being prefabricated and numbered for ease of assembly. Multiple set of such wheels have been found in Spain at the Rio Tinto copper mines and a fragment of a wheel at Dolaucothi. An incomplete wheel from Spain is now on public show in the British Museum.“ I think that shows innovation in technologies (not as fast as happened in the industrial revolution, but it is innovation)
    - kalimanzaro 4y ago
      From a related HN thread: "Italy never got as large number of mills as Britain as the rivers flowing into Northern Italy have too large variation in water flow. That is part of the reason Romans could never utilize waterwheels to a great extent." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32629471 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32629471
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
beej71 4y ago
Fine. But aside from the roads, sewage systems, water treatment plants, siphons, aqueducts, and pipes, what have the Romans ever done for us?
- the_af 4y ago
  Well played! "What have the Romans given us in return?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc7HmhrgTuQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc7HmhrgTuQ
- insane_dreamer 4y ago
  More importantly, what have they done for us lately? Literally nothing in the past 1000 years.
- DigiDigiorno 4y ago
  Irrigation? Medicine? Oh, and the wine.
  - SergeAx 4y ago
    They just took the whole wine industry from Greeks. No added value whatsoever.
lr4444lr 4y ago
Yes, the Roman military enterprise demanded technological innovation both to expand and maintain their conquered territories. But their productivity as the OP pointed out was severely hamstrung by the plentiful slave labor that conquest afforded.
Cupertino95014 4y ago
re materials: google "pozzolanans" they knew it worked, and Caesarea in Israel shows that it really did.
psychphysic 4y ago
Similarly slave labour is not free in the economic sense. You still pay housing, food and time at a minimum.
- kozikow 4y ago
  If your job can't afford you housing, food and basic healthcare you have it worse than most slaves did.
  - nautilius 4y ago
    Holy shit, man. What's your take on concentration camps? At least the prisoners are not homeless?
    - kozikow 4y ago
      If Amazon or Uber workers were slaves they probably would be treated better. Not saying that slavery is by any means even slightly positive. Just that economic system allows for extreme exploitation of people without alternatives.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - kleer001 4y ago
      concentration camps were (are?) built to kill people, subject them to abject torture, to hell, it was not an economic end let alone an ostensibly sustainable venture
      - badpun 4y ago
        Depends on the country. Soviet ones (Gulags) were created for economic purposes as much as for political. The economic idea behind the Gulags was to extract free slave labor out of population and basically free calories out of their bodies - the prisoners were barely fed, so their bodies had to burn their own tissues (starting with fat) to survive. Millions of prisoners/slaves doing hard manual labor for no pay and eating 800 kalories per day helped the country's rapid industrialization in the 20s and 30s.
visarga 4y ago
- Water mills - Steam engine - the Aeolipile - Concrete - even underwater concrete - Automations - see Heron of Alexandria https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPu9OQpH6uo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPu9OQpH6uo
unity1001 4y ago
All of those existed before Romans. From Sumeria to Indus Valley civilization to Egypt. If you dive into their history and watch related channels, you will find even more amazing things. What Romans did, however, was building them systematically and in a standardized fashion to bring them everywhere. That is an innovation. However... Aside from that and what advances Rome was able to do from their inception until the Late Republic period, Romans did not innovate as you would describe it. That's why the Roman history from Middle Republic until its fall is a story of slow decline and deterioration into feudalism.

ajuc 4y ago

They innovated in areas where slaves didn't helped.

csours 4y ago
I worry that capitalism is using us in a similar manner. Neoliberal capitalism has given us a lot of very cheap, very technologically advanced stuff. An extremely basic integrated circuit in the 1960s costs the same as an entire iPhone now, accounting for inflation. Accounting for inflation, automobiles are as cheap as they've ever been, and have many more features that work much better than they ever have. But ... the edges wear thin. A Raspberry Pi (computer) and a Raspberry Pie (food) may be purchased for around the same price. A varied and healthy diet can be quite expensive (though there are deals to be found if you can travel to get them). Companies want to "add value" to food with extensive processing that increases the engineered taste factors to make us consume more. Housing is insanely expensive in many areas. Health care in the United States is not designed for any humans - not doctors, nurses, other professionals, and certainly not patients. Neoliberal capitalism won't innovate on these areas. Are we just stuck with what we have? Certainly government mandates could change the game, but just like the Romans, people think the system is working because they can buy a smart phone and a gaming console and some cheap snacks and go for a ride in their fine automobile. We can't see what the collapse will be, and we can't see what's next. I wonder how many Romans talked like this? I don't believe that our doom is inevitable, but I also think that progress requires specific intention, and progress can be very easily disrupted. --- I have a thesis that the economic benefits of integrated circuit microchip and the economic benefits of neoliberalism cannot be distinguished. They both feed each other. I don't see myself putting enough effort into researching it and writing it up, but I strongly believe that thesis.
- WillPostForFood 4y ago
  >Neoliberal capitalism won't innovate on these areas. Wouldn't you put the transition from agriculture based economy under neoliberal capitalism? We went from 90% farm employment to 10% while massively increasing output. Tech folks don't think food production is exciting so they miss all the innovation. https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/1/8/22872749/john-deere-self-driving-tractor-autonomous-farming https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/1/8/22872749/john-deere-self... As to housing and health care, we don't have "neoliberal capitalism", we have highly regulated, captured, markets. If you moved to zero zoning in SF you'd start to have innovative building.
  - csours 4y ago
    My comment on food is not about the quantity or efficiency - those have advanced quite well. It is about the quality and value.
    - WillPostForFood 4y ago
      The quality of food is better in a modern market like whole foods today than what you got 50 or 100 years ago. Or if you like it super fresh, in pretty much every city you have organic produce at multiple local farmer's markets. Or look at restaurant options today vs even 40 years ago. Coffee today vs Folger's. Fair trade chocolate vs Hershey's. Access to fresh fruit, year round, via global supply chains. I don't know what hasn't gotten better. The worst thing about food today is abundance of cheap (value?) junk food, but that's an accomplishment in its own way.
- radu_floricica 4y ago
  I'm not sure what you're complaining about, exactly. A raspberry pie is mostly service, not product - you get it for things like convenience and company and time. You can tell because the frozen version is much cheaper. And if you want to go further lower, you can actually make pies at home for pennies - all you need is a sack of flower and a bunch of frozen fruit. And capitalism even makes it easy for you to do it - if you decide it's something you really want, you can invest a couple hundred bucks in home equipment to do most of the work. I'm sorry if I'm misunderstanding, but a couple of reads of your comment and I still think you're complaining that things go well :)
kalimanzaro 4y ago
In particular, they didn't innovate in general technologies, like energy/information production/transmission, or metallurgy. Hard to beat slaves as a general technology， even concrete is no match.
- Someone 4y ago
  > they didn't innovate in general technologies, like energy/information production/transmission, or metallurgy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_metallurgy#Mechanisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_metallurgy#Mechanisation: “There is direct evidence that the Romans mechanised at least part of the extraction processes. They used water power from water wheels for grinding grains and sawing timber or stone, for example. A set of sixteen such overshot wheels is still visible at Barbegal near Arles dating from the 1st century AD or possibly earlier, the water being supplied by the main aqueduct to Arles.” I think that aqueduct is an example of energy transmission. “Ausonius attests the use of a water mill for sawing stone in his poem Mosella from the 4th century AD. They could easily have adapted the technology to crush ore using tilt hammers, and just such is mentioned by Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia dating to about 75 AD, and there is evidence for the method from Dolaucothi in South Wales” “They also used reverse overshot water-wheel for draining mines, the parts being prefabricated and numbered for ease of assembly. Multiple set of such wheels have been found in Spain at the Rio Tinto copper mines and a fragment of a wheel at Dolaucothi. An incomplete wheel from Spain is now on public show in the British Museum.“ I think that shows innovation in technologies (not as fast as happened in the industrial revolution, but it is innovation)
  - kalimanzaro 4y ago
    From a related HN thread: "Italy never got as large number of mills as Britain as the rivers flowing into Northern Italy have too large variation in water flow. That is part of the reason Romans could never utilize waterwheels to a great extent." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32629471 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32629471
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

beej71 4y ago

Fine. But aside from the roads, sewage systems, water treatment plants, siphons, aqueducts, and pipes, what have the Romans ever done for us?

the_af 4y ago
Well played! "What have the Romans given us in return?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc7HmhrgTuQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc7HmhrgTuQ
insane_dreamer 4y ago
More importantly, what have they done for us lately? Literally nothing in the past 1000 years.
DigiDigiorno 4y ago
Irrigation? Medicine? Oh, and the wine.
- SergeAx 4y ago
  They just took the whole wine industry from Greeks. No added value whatsoever.

lr4444lr 4y ago

Yes, the Roman military enterprise demanded technological innovation both to expand and maintain their conquered territories. But their productivity as the OP pointed out was severely hamstrung by the plentiful slave labor that conquest afforded.

Cupertino95014 4y ago

re materials: google "pozzolanans" they knew it worked, and Caesarea in Israel shows that it really did.

psychphysic 4y ago

Similarly slave labour is not free in the economic sense. You still pay housing, food and time at a minimum.

kozikow 4y ago
If your job can't afford you housing, food and basic healthcare you have it worse than most slaves did.
- nautilius 4y ago
  Holy shit, man. What's your take on concentration camps? At least the prisoners are not homeless?
  - kozikow 4y ago
    If Amazon or Uber workers were slaves they probably would be treated better. Not saying that slavery is by any means even slightly positive. Just that economic system allows for extreme exploitation of people without alternatives.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - kleer001 4y ago
    concentration camps were (are?) built to kill people, subject them to abject torture, to hell, it was not an economic end let alone an ostensibly sustainable venture
    - badpun 4y ago
      Depends on the country. Soviet ones (Gulags) were created for economic purposes as much as for political. The economic idea behind the Gulags was to extract free slave labor out of population and basically free calories out of their bodies - the prisoners were barely fed, so their bodies had to burn their own tissues (starting with fat) to survive. Millions of prisoners/slaves doing hard manual labor for no pay and eating 800 kalories per day helped the country's rapid industrialization in the 20s and 30s.

visarga 4y ago

- Water mills - Steam engine - the Aeolipile - Concrete - even underwater concrete - Automations - see Heron of Alexandria https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPu9OQpH6uo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPu9OQpH6uo

unity1001 4y ago

All of those existed before Romans. From Sumeria to Indus Valley civilization to Egypt. If you dive into their history and watch related channels, you will find even more amazing things. What Romans did, however, was building them systematically and in a standardized fashion to bring them everywhere. That is an innovation. However... Aside from that and what advances Rome was able to do from their inception until the Late Republic period, Romans did not innovate as you would describe it. That's why the Roman history from Middle Republic until its fall is a story of slow decline and deterioration into feudalism.