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> There's a historical model that proposes that the Renaissance directly came out of the Black Death Totally irrelevant. A common misunderstanding. That worked

> There's a historical model that proposes that the Renaissance directly came out of the Black Death Totally irrelevant. A common misunderstanding. That worked then because the main source of wealth was land. Less people means more land per person. That's not been the case since the industrial revolution. Now the main source of wealth is capital, including human capital. That's why New Jersey is so much wealthier than Montana.

lolinder 2y ago
> That worked then because the main source of wealth was land. Less people means more land per person. That assumes that people actually owned the land that they were working and weren't renting it from a landlord. If you're renting it from a landlord (with whatever definition of "rent" used in a given time and place) then sure, there's more land available to rent so the rent prices are cheaper, but it's not obvious to me that that's substantially different than the current prospective scenario where the owners of capital have less human capital to go around and so need to pay more for it. It's just a different way of structuring the same scarcity problem—fewer people to work leads to less profit for the holders of capital (whether that capital is in land or abstract financial instruments). > That's not been the case since the industrial revolution. Now the main source of wealth is capital, including human capital. And any event that causes human capital to be more scarce causes it to cost more. Since for most of us our wealth resides almost entirely in the human capital associated with our own selves, if human capital costs go up then our individual wealth goes up. The only exception is if you're in the small class of people who own substantial non-human capital.
- trilbyglens 2y ago
  When landowners died of plague it was often the laborers that inherited the land.
  - stvltvs 2y ago
    Citation needed.
- galdosdi 2y ago
  > That assumes that people actually owned the land that they were working and weren't renting it from a landlord. No, it doesn't. Prices are influenced by elasticity of supply and elasticity of demand. Even without owning it, if suddenly there are not enough laborers to go around, the remaining laborers will be in higher demand and be able to command higher wages from the landlords, who would rather pay a higher wage than leave the land fallow and get nothing from it at all. As a software engineer you should be familiar with this phenomenon, even when you work without owning shares of your employer. You are commenting on both medieval history and economics without benefit of so much as a freshman level introduction to either. The rest of your post is full of similar misunderstandings and disputing it point by point would be tiresome The main point you're missing though is this: Yes, allocating the profits between capital and labor (as between land and labor in ancient times) is a perennial war. But unlike then, now the pie actually gets bigger. There was no way to make more land before, other than to conquer, discover, colonize someone else's. Fundamentally zero sum. But today, creating more capital actually creates more "fields that can be worked" thus increasing demand for labor. In times of secular stagnation, it does seem, to the chagrin of myself and anyone else who isn't already independently wealthy, that labor always slowly loses gains in a relative sense. But any time things start changing or expanding again, the "Lord would rather have peasants at a high price than a fallow field" effect always starts helping again. And in either time, the vast amounts of capital created (by which I include physical plant, invented processes and technologies, and even acquired education and skills inside of the head and belonging to laborers) help everyone get richer. This is why the poorest in America often have access to air conditioning, antibiotics, and cell phones, unheard of luxuries at one time, even when they are unfortunate enough to live in a time when the big rentseekers slowly chip away at their percentage of the profits.

lolinder 2y ago

> That worked then because the main source of wealth was land. Less people means more land per person. That assumes that people actually owned the land that they were working and weren't renting it from a landlord. If you're renting it from a landlord (with whatever definition of "rent" used in a given time and place) then sure, there's more land available to rent so the rent prices are cheaper, but it's not obvious to me that that's substantially different than the current prospective scenario where the owners of capital have less human capital to go around and so need to pay more for it. It's just a different way of structuring the same scarcity problem—fewer people to work leads to less profit for the holders of capital (whether that capital is in land or abstract financial instruments). > That's not been the case since the industrial revolution. Now the main source of wealth is capital, including human capital. And any event that causes human capital to be more scarce causes it to cost more. Since for most of us our wealth resides almost entirely in the human capital associated with our own selves, if human capital costs go up then our individual wealth goes up. The only exception is if you're in the small class of people who own substantial non-human capital.

trilbyglens 2y ago
When landowners died of plague it was often the laborers that inherited the land.
- stvltvs 2y ago
  Citation needed.
galdosdi 2y ago
> That assumes that people actually owned the land that they were working and weren't renting it from a landlord. No, it doesn't. Prices are influenced by elasticity of supply and elasticity of demand. Even without owning it, if suddenly there are not enough laborers to go around, the remaining laborers will be in higher demand and be able to command higher wages from the landlords, who would rather pay a higher wage than leave the land fallow and get nothing from it at all. As a software engineer you should be familiar with this phenomenon, even when you work without owning shares of your employer. You are commenting on both medieval history and economics without benefit of so much as a freshman level introduction to either. The rest of your post is full of similar misunderstandings and disputing it point by point would be tiresome The main point you're missing though is this: Yes, allocating the profits between capital and labor (as between land and labor in ancient times) is a perennial war. But unlike then, now the pie actually gets bigger. There was no way to make more land before, other than to conquer, discover, colonize someone else's. Fundamentally zero sum. But today, creating more capital actually creates more "fields that can be worked" thus increasing demand for labor. In times of secular stagnation, it does seem, to the chagrin of myself and anyone else who isn't already independently wealthy, that labor always slowly loses gains in a relative sense. But any time things start changing or expanding again, the "Lord would rather have peasants at a high price than a fallow field" effect always starts helping again. And in either time, the vast amounts of capital created (by which I include physical plant, invented processes and technologies, and even acquired education and skills inside of the head and belonging to laborers) help everyone get richer. This is why the poorest in America often have access to air conditioning, antibiotics, and cell phones, unheard of luxuries at one time, even when they are unfortunate enough to live in a time when the big rentseekers slowly chip away at their percentage of the profits.