Staple production is easier for gang-bosses to monitor than more diversified farming. Staple production also has lower skill requirements for workers. When demand for staple products is very high -- to feed the proletariat of imperial Rome, to feed the growing cities of late-Medieval Flanders, or to supply the cheap luxuries demanded by early modern England -- slavery or serfdom can emerge even without an extraordinarily high land/labor ratio.
Joel adds that this could answer Krugman's puzzle of why serfdom did not reemerge after the catastrophes of the 1300's crashed the population of Europe. As Carol Deppe mentions in The Resilient Gardener, farmers adapted to the instability of the time by adding many different crops and animals, and this could have made the agriculture system too complex to be managed by slave bosses.
Of course, today plantation slaves have been replaced by industrial machinery. Going back to this link from a few days ago, I used to think this whole system was doomed, but now I think it has an enduring niche. For turning sunlight to physical work, solar panels plus electric motors are more efficient than photosynthesis plus mammalian digestion. Unless there's a universal tech crash, which I doubt, large-scale mechanized agriculture will remain economically sustainable, and reforms to preserve topsoil could make it ecologically sustainable. So the reason to grow food in your backyard is not to save the world, but because it improves your own life.
The idea of something called "An Economy" as distinct from the larger society was invented by political philosophers in the eighteenth century as a way of rationalizing certain self-interested, avaricious and greedy behaviors that take place in a market economy which were formerly sanctioned by ethical and moral systems. A totally arbitrary distinction is made between behaviors that are "economic" and hence outside all other spheres of human relationships - political, social, ethical, religious etc. where naked self-interest is expected and justifiable.
From 2003, Paul Krugman on serfdom and population. The idea is, when population density is high, it's cheaper to hire a worker than to feed a slave. When population density is low, the ruling powers have to hold their workers through violence to stop them from running off and being self-sufficient. This is something we'll have to struggle with as global population declines.
The Beer Game, or Why Apple Can't Build iPads in the US. The idea is, if a manufacturing and distribution system is too far-flung, then each part of the system tries to make up for delays by anticipating future orders. This leads to a feedback loop, instability, and failure. So China is good at manufacturing because the supply chains are so dense. I'm wondering how this will change as home-scale fabricators get cheaper and better. Maybe in 20 years a town will decide to specialize in building ultracapacitors or brain implants or airships, with all components made locally by different people in their garages.
We might as well consider civilization a game with bigger stakes than usual. It's no coincidence it was a success as a PC game too. Too bad both get a bit dull towards the end.
I think there's a deep truth here. Why is it that most games, and most societies, are more enjoyable at the beginning than at the end? I've quit Fallout 2. Now that I've got NPC's with shotguns, and gone back to the Den to kill the slavers and get the car, there's not much to look forward to: guns with different names and higher damage numbers, balanced by enemies with higher numbers, and a long series of quests that are starting to feel like busywork. The fun part was the beginning: designing my character, analyzing and optimizing skills and perks, squeaking by on primitive weapons and tools and finding my first good ones, and as a player, mastering the interface and unfolding a vision of a different world.
It's easier to see how this fits with civilization by looking at Civilization the game. You start out as a settler exploring the uncharted wilderness, you build up a city from nothing, you get new buildings and units with qualitatively different abilities; and then by the halfway point you can see the whole map, you have ships and airplanes, and "progress" becomes quantitative. In role-playing games this is called level grinding: the novelty and excitement are gone, and you're just doing the same stuff over and over to get higher numbers.
Compare this to the "American dream". You come from a poor family, work your way up into a series of higher paying and higher status jobs, get a house in the suburbs and two cars... and then what? There's nothing left but to make more money so you can get material possessions with higher price numbers. This is why rich people keep trying to make even more money, because if they say "I have enough", life becomes meaningless, game over. I think this is also why most lottery winners end up bankrupt. It's not just that they're irresponsible, but that they feel more alive when they're struggling.
Games don't model decline because it wouldn't be any fun, just trying to hold onto what you have as the numbers get smaller. But there would be one way... When your empire peaks, you stop playing the empire, and begin playing the new system that's going to replace it! Of course this is what the citizens do in real life. Many Americans are still obsessed with "security" (playing the decline), but more of us are giving up on the old system and turning our attention to various systems that might replace it.
Are human societies going to keep rising and falling forever? If we had a stable system, what would keep it interesting? Individual humans can keep their wealth stable and find meaning in things other than money, so how could a whole society do this? And why is this not a problem for other species? If life were satisfying in the right way, would we have no need for novelty? I'm thinking of an answer, but for now I'll leave these questions open...
What work are trees doing, and what work are birds doing? And what work are the sun and the moon and the stars doing? Except man, nobody is so insane to think that you have a certain great work to complete. This is how they have created the achieving mind.
This is related, oddly, to cosmology. I don't believe in the Big Bang, and some astronomers agree with me, but they have been pushed to the margins for cultural reasons. Our culture of expansion and achievement has projected its own mythology onto the universe, giving it a spectacular beginning and a linear progression to some kind of end. If, instead, the universe has always existed, then anything that could possibly be done has already been done an infinite number of times. If it's possible for you to win a Nobel Prize, then if you go far enough back, there's a world exactly like this one where you already did it. So there's no point doing anything just to accomplish it, only to enjoy it.
I feel like it's time for me to have some useless fun, so I've been playing Fallout 2, which you can download for $6 from GOG.com. If you decide to play Fallout 2, you will appreciate the Nearly Ultimate Fallout 2 Guide. ]]>Pacification was accomplished through the proffering of Western goods, including machetes, axes, metal pots, fishhooks, matches, mosquito netting, and clothing. The seductive appeal of such things was nearly irresistible, for each of these items can make a quantum improvement in a sylvan lifestyle. Acquisition of several or all of these goods is a transformative experience that makes contact essentially irreversible.
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With the convenience of matches, one quickly loses the knack for starting a fire. Shotguns decisively outperform bows and arrows, but cartridges must be bought at a good price. Such newly acquired dependencies fundamentally altered the life of the Indians, who were compelled to work for wages instead of spending their days hunting, fishing, and tending their gardens.
This is the kind of thing Ivan Illich wrote about all the time, and it's still happening today, to you. With the convenience of frozen dinners and restaurant meals, one quickly loses the knack for preparing food. iTunes decisively outperforms radio, but music files must be bought at a good price. To navigate sprawl you need a car, to pay expenses on a car you need a job, to get a job you need a college degree, and to get a degree you have to go so deep in debt that giant blocks of money own your life.
But at the same time, many of us understand this web of dependency and are fighting to get free of it. As I've argued many times, the reason to trade your car for a bicycle is not to save the planet, but to minimize your dependence on giant centralized systems in which you have no participation in power, and to liberate thousands of hours of your time for meaningful autonomous work. We're not trying to live like our ancestors, but to do something totally new: to preserve the most helpful complex technologies, while shifting to a political and economic system where power is fully shared.