How France Is Failing
Slovakia is on the same trajectory but from a worse baseline.
Economics
The Decline of Deviance
Let’s get weird. “Science requires deviant thinking. So it’s no wonder that, as we see a decline in deviance everywhere else, we’re also seeing a decline in the rate of scientific progress. New ideas are less and less likely to… Read More »The Decline of Deviance
Collections: This. Isn’t. Sparta. Part VII: Spartan Ends
You cannot win a war without strong economy. “Because Sparta produced so little of value, the Spartan state simply lacked the funds to supplement its operational capabilities. It could not afford foreign siege engineers or experts (an increasingly dire liability… Read More »Collections: This. Isn’t. Sparta. Part VII: Spartan Ends
Collections: This. Isn’t. Sparta. Part IV: Spartan Wealth
Paradoxically, this has lead to their downfall. “First, we need to reiterate that a ‘poor’ spartiate was still quite well off compared to the average citizen in many Greek poleis – we talk about ‘poor’ spartiates the same way we… Read More »Collections: This. Isn’t. Sparta. Part IV: Spartan Wealth
Collections: This. Isn’t. Sparta. Part III: Spartan Women
Poor people are often extremely clever. “peasants, male and female, are canny survivors, not idiots, and they plan for these things (seriously, far too many of my students seem to instinctively fall into the trap of assuming serfs, peasants, etc.… Read More »Collections: This. Isn’t. Sparta. Part III: Spartan Women
Collections: This. Isn’t. Sparta. Part II: Spartan Equality
Sparta was strange even for its times. “I want to open by stressing just how insane the previous statement is, that helots made up not only a simple majority of the human beings living under the Spartan state, but in… Read More »Collections: This. Isn’t. Sparta. Part II: Spartan Equality
Collections: Life, Work, Death and the Peasant, Part V: Life In Cycles
Explains a lot behavior of older people in societies that were agrarian quite recently, like Slovakia. “eyes are always watching and these are societies which expect the individual to place the community first, with individuals valued to the degree that… Read More »Collections: Life, Work, Death and the Peasant, Part V: Life In Cycles
Collections: Life, Work, Death and the Peasant, Part IVc: Rent and Extraction
It’s like taxes. You work huge part of the year to feed someone else. “from the perspective of everyone who isn’t our peasants is that if the peasantry only does the amount of agricultural labor necessary to subsist themselves and… Read More »Collections: Life, Work, Death and the Peasant, Part IVc: Rent and Extraction
100 Million vs. 100 Billion
It is a huge difference.
Collections: Iron, How Did They Make It, Part III: Hammer-time
This is why it is good that nowadays you can quit your job and start elsewhere instead of waiting for promotion. “Apprentices, of course, were proper blacksmiths in training and might one day look to be as well respected as… Read More »Collections: Iron, How Did They Make It, Part III: Hammer-time