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Years ago I read some theory that part of the social pressure to create early states with centralized power and militaries in places with grain-centric agricult

by abeppu 3y ago

Years ago I read some theory that part of the social pressure to create early states with centralized power and militaries in places with grain-centric agriculture was about the ease of stealing harvested grain. By comparison, places that had root-crops which could be left in the ground and harvested as needed, thieves could not quickly/easily take a lot of value, so there was less need to guard resources. The current article is kind of a reminder that the safety of crops / the difficulty of theft is variable with context; it's not just an attribute of the crop-type. If this continues, I wonder if we'd see tree-owners engage in something like tree-spiking, so it's literally unsafe to cut their trees.

justinator 3y ago
Didn't work for the Irish. British took all the meat and left the potatoes behind. So although they were kept alive, it wasn't a great existence. And then the potato blight happened. Which England naturally didn't help out relieving.
- narinxas 3y ago
  all that desperation IS a source of energy, granted the boundaries/gates/walls are administered in such a way to allow harvest... just (maybe toke up and) think about how mitochondria actually work. the 'energy' all comes from gradients of various sorts of presures (like the presure of hunger i.e. desperation)
- Wildgoose 3y ago
  Not actually true. The first year the Famine Relief provided by the British Government was better than anything anywhere else in Europe, (which was also affected). The second and third years the pressure on the Treasury was such that Westminster wanted the rich Irish to also contribute, (Ireland wasn't subjected to the Income Tax being paid in Britain). The Irish refused and so in response Westminster dumped the problem of Famine Relief entirely on Irish local government, which was simply incapable to take on such a mammoth task. (The reason why the Treasury couldn't afford to borrow the money required was that they had just recently borrowed huge sums of money to buy the freedom of all the slaves in the British Empire).
greenhearth 3y ago
This makes sense as nomads transformed by agriculture would probably be more interested in organized defense than offense (before prosperity, population booms and eventual land grab attempts.) Do you remember if this was a book?
- Spivak 3y ago
  This is why China has so many walls, the first large agrarian settlements had to deal with a huge population of scattered nomadic peoples raiding them. You couldn't really take the offense to them because it would be like playing whack-a-mole but being nomadic they weren't well equipped to conduct sieges against towers and walls so that's what they did. If you ever wondered where that bit from South Park came from with the Mongolians that's where. But spoiler Genghis Khan found a way around that problem.
  - greenhearth 3y ago
    Believe it or not, the agrarian state predates China by thousands of years. It goes back 10k years to the early farmer migration into Southern Europe from the Middle East. And yes, I am very well aware of the Great Wall of China lol
    - Spivak 3y ago
      Okay, so first thing I wasn't talking about the great wall. That wasn't created until the Ming dynasty which is after the period I'm talking about. And second I mean the first agrarian settlements in China.
      - opo 3y ago
        >...Okay, so first thing I wasn't talking about the great wall. That wasn't created until the Ming dynasty The most famous parts of the Great Wall were built in the Ming Dynasty, but stretches of the wall were first built centuries before: >...Several walls were built from as early as the 7th century BC,[4] with selective stretches later joined by Qin Shi Huang (220–206 BC), the first emperor of China. Little of the Qin wall remains.[5] Later on, many successive dynasties built and maintained multiple stretches of border walls. The best-known sections of the wall were built by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Wall_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Wall_of_China
rindalir 3y ago
I think this idea is also present in the work of James C. Scott, author of "Against the Grain". But I think he was talking about this in the context of it being easier for governments to "steal" grains (and just subjugate the farmers + general population), whereas other agricultural societies such as those in parts of Africa avoided this kind of societal dominance and large parasite/ruler/priesthood class by growing crops like yams that were hard to just show up and steal/tax in bulk. You could always just leave the tubers in the ground for a while and harvest on an as-needed basis.(edit for spelling).
- abeppu 3y ago
  I think especially when the first "governments" arose, but also now, the difference between "thieves" who visit you repeatedly and "rulers" can be pretty fuzzy, and is mostly a matter of perspective. But if some guys with weapons who are already in your extended community (perhaps your second cousins or something) run a protection racket and take 20% of your crop every year, but ostensibly protect you from roving/unknown guys with weapons who want to show up and take 80% of your crop periodically, then the presence of "thieves" justify the existence of "rulers" even if they're doing the same basic thing at different scales.
  - rindalir 3y ago
    That's how it always starts! :) I think the origins of the state in agrarian societies is super interesting. Does it start organically (like you and your neighbors agreeing paying a small % for a security service) and then one day you blink and its morphed into a massive bureaucracy with royal granaries, armies, ziggurats and human sacrifices? Does a certain class of people step in and intentionally turn the system into one that primarily benefits themselves? How complex does a society have to be before that happens? etc...
  - WD40forRust 3y ago
    That is called the Mafia State, and I vaguely remember Stefan Molyneux touching on that in the last decade.
yvelon 3y ago
I think this is the reference you mention: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/omoav/mmnp_paper_2015-07-02.pdf https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/omoav/mmnp_pap...

by abeppu 3y ago

justinator 3y ago

Didn't work for the Irish. British took all the meat and left the potatoes behind. So although they were kept alive, it wasn't a great existence. And then the potato blight happened. Which England naturally didn't help out relieving.

narinxas 3y ago
all that desperation IS a source of energy, granted the boundaries/gates/walls are administered in such a way to allow harvest... just (maybe toke up and) think about how mitochondria actually work. the 'energy' all comes from gradients of various sorts of presures (like the presure of hunger i.e. desperation)
Wildgoose 3y ago
Not actually true. The first year the Famine Relief provided by the British Government was better than anything anywhere else in Europe, (which was also affected). The second and third years the pressure on the Treasury was such that Westminster wanted the rich Irish to also contribute, (Ireland wasn't subjected to the Income Tax being paid in Britain). The Irish refused and so in response Westminster dumped the problem of Famine Relief entirely on Irish local government, which was simply incapable to take on such a mammoth task. (The reason why the Treasury couldn't afford to borrow the money required was that they had just recently borrowed huge sums of money to buy the freedom of all the slaves in the British Empire).

greenhearth 3y ago

This makes sense as nomads transformed by agriculture would probably be more interested in organized defense than offense (before prosperity, population booms and eventual land grab attempts.) Do you remember if this was a book?

Spivak 3y ago
This is why China has so many walls, the first large agrarian settlements had to deal with a huge population of scattered nomadic peoples raiding them. You couldn't really take the offense to them because it would be like playing whack-a-mole but being nomadic they weren't well equipped to conduct sieges against towers and walls so that's what they did. If you ever wondered where that bit from South Park came from with the Mongolians that's where. But spoiler Genghis Khan found a way around that problem.
- greenhearth 3y ago
  Believe it or not, the agrarian state predates China by thousands of years. It goes back 10k years to the early farmer migration into Southern Europe from the Middle East. And yes, I am very well aware of the Great Wall of China lol
  - Spivak 3y ago
    Okay, so first thing I wasn't talking about the great wall. That wasn't created until the Ming dynasty which is after the period I'm talking about. And second I mean the first agrarian settlements in China.
    - opo 3y ago
      >...Okay, so first thing I wasn't talking about the great wall. That wasn't created until the Ming dynasty The most famous parts of the Great Wall were built in the Ming Dynasty, but stretches of the wall were first built centuries before: >...Several walls were built from as early as the 7th century BC,[4] with selective stretches later joined by Qin Shi Huang (220–206 BC), the first emperor of China. Little of the Qin wall remains.[5] Later on, many successive dynasties built and maintained multiple stretches of border walls. The best-known sections of the wall were built by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Wall_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Wall_of_China

rindalir 3y ago

I think this idea is also present in the work of James C. Scott, author of "Against the Grain". But I think he was talking about this in the context of it being easier for governments to "steal" grains (and just subjugate the farmers + general population), whereas other agricultural societies such as those in parts of Africa avoided this kind of societal dominance and large parasite/ruler/priesthood class by growing crops like yams that were hard to just show up and steal/tax in bulk. You could always just leave the tubers in the ground for a while and harvest on an as-needed basis.(edit for spelling).

abeppu 3y ago
I think especially when the first "governments" arose, but also now, the difference between "thieves" who visit you repeatedly and "rulers" can be pretty fuzzy, and is mostly a matter of perspective. But if some guys with weapons who are already in your extended community (perhaps your second cousins or something) run a protection racket and take 20% of your crop every year, but ostensibly protect you from roving/unknown guys with weapons who want to show up and take 80% of your crop periodically, then the presence of "thieves" justify the existence of "rulers" even if they're doing the same basic thing at different scales.
- rindalir 3y ago
  That's how it always starts! :) I think the origins of the state in agrarian societies is super interesting. Does it start organically (like you and your neighbors agreeing paying a small % for a security service) and then one day you blink and its morphed into a massive bureaucracy with royal granaries, armies, ziggurats and human sacrifices? Does a certain class of people step in and intentionally turn the system into one that primarily benefits themselves? How complex does a society have to be before that happens? etc...
- WD40forRust 3y ago
  That is called the Mafia State, and I vaguely remember Stefan Molyneux touching on that in the last decade.

yvelon 3y ago

I think this is the reference you mention: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/omoav/mmnp_paper_2015-07-02.pdf https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/omoav/mmnp_pap...