Your choice of an image "Vercingetorix Throws Down His Arms at the Feet of Julius Caesar, 1899, by Lionel Noel Royer" prepped me so that as I was reading your analysis, especially "But a strong state can also mobilize more power to protect non-élite individuals from roving bandits and the stationary bandits who are local notables" I kept on mentally repeating "Nasty, Brutus, and Short."
"While grandiose palaces are aesthetically impressive, surplus was usually extracted from labourers who lived in squalor."
I have an economics question regarding this statement. When is it acceptable for leaders to consider future generations in making their decisions to build a palace, an aqueduct, a temple, etc? Certainly Hadrian, when he put soldiers and local Britains to work building his wall, thought the wall would protect Britain from hostile tribes for centuries to come. The same can be said of the Great Wall of China.
Likewise Roman aqueducts required a lot of slave labor, but they provided relatively clean water for generations to come. Some structures, like the Parthenon and the Pantheon, serve no practical value but they are examples of amazing architecture. In the modern world these buildings are priceless, even though the slaves and lower class workers who built them would no doubt have preferred to spend their time drinking and having sex.
(Although I doubt all of the workers were lower class. It took skilled craftsmen to build the Pantheon. Any carelessness or sloth and the dome would have crashed to the ground.)
So if you divide the amount of work extracted from the workers living in "squalor" by the hundreds of years the structures served their purpose, does this justify the project? Certainly the ruling class thought so, the lower classes probably disagreed, even though they benefited from aqueduct water too. I would also note that "squalor" is a relative term.
So from an economic standpoint, can coercive labor ever be justified if the benefits extend far enough in time? Put another way, when does it make economic sense to burden current workers in order to benefit future generations? How do economists measure this?
Isn't the most common, and common-sensical, argument for the "Pax Romana' simply the "Pax" part? That is to say: sure, maybe when the Legion rolls through, decapitates the leadership of your tribe, and says, "Congratulations, you're Romans now!" you end up in a situation where sending tribute to Rome at some level "costs" more than what you, as a subsistence farmer, gave to the local tribal warlord before. But now you're part of a continent spanning empire that is, at least mostly, at peace within its own borders. So you don't suffer massive losses every few years when resentments between neighboring tribal warlords flare up. While -- as you say -- you'd have to do some cost/benefit math to make sure, it seems completely plausible that this is going to look like an attractive trade-off. You may have no particular affection for the imperial overlords, but they largely let you continue to perpetuate your culture and retain a certain amount of local autonomy. As an additional bonus, local men who fancy themselves particularly talented at violence can now go join the Legion, rather than building gangs to engage in local violence.
It feels like a lot of this debate also hinges on not saying "communities that are not coercive states are bad, because they're oppressed once a coercive state invades them."
I just heard John Taylor say on Bloomberg TV (I'm paraphrasing) that the Fed may need to find out why inflation got as high as it did. He went on to point out that inflation has been global. Congratulations to you for getting that point through!
I cannot help but wondering as to how feudalism emerged in Europe. Was it all about people seeking protection from a frightening environment as the Roman empire gradually withdrew from the distant provinces. Could we be at a similar place as the winds of change frighten the hell out of folks so that they seek a protector. Could it be that we are facing the emergence of fedualism rather than fascism?
"..begins with a very important premise. States were often coercive, so should not be celebrated as more ‘advanced civilisations’. I think this is a really important mentality. While grandiose palaces are aesthetically impressive, surplus was usually extracted from labourers who lived in squalor. This is a useful corrective to narratives that dismiss or denigrate small-scale societies, as well as to those who defensively hype-up small kingdoms…"
As clear as mud. The premise of her premise seems to be that "advanced civilizations" are not coercive. What is an "advanced civilization"? Criterion: One that doesn't extract surplus from laborers that live in squalor. Doesn't that strike you as peculiar? If the share of labor in the national income of a growing economy falls, presumably because the elite extract a surplus from labor, a country becomes less "advanced"? Where does that leave the US, among others, over the past few decades? Burgeoning "primitive civilizations"? Maybe I have misunderstood the author.
“States were often coercive, so should not be celebrated as more ‘advanced civilisations’.” Not all coercive states are equal. The Comanches were extremely coercive in dominating rival tribes on the southern plains in the U.S. The Aztecs did the same in Mexico. But the Europeans were not just coercive, they had writing and technology. Writing and technology by definition makes a civilization more advanced.
Your choice of an image "Vercingetorix Throws Down His Arms at the Feet of Julius Caesar, 1899, by Lionel Noel Royer" prepped me so that as I was reading your analysis, especially "But a strong state can also mobilize more power to protect non-élite individuals from roving bandits and the stationary bandits who are local notables" I kept on mentally repeating "Nasty, Brutus, and Short."
Where can I apply for a Malthusian Economist card? Is there a fee? Member discounts on gruel at participating retailers?
"While grandiose palaces are aesthetically impressive, surplus was usually extracted from labourers who lived in squalor."
I have an economics question regarding this statement. When is it acceptable for leaders to consider future generations in making their decisions to build a palace, an aqueduct, a temple, etc? Certainly Hadrian, when he put soldiers and local Britains to work building his wall, thought the wall would protect Britain from hostile tribes for centuries to come. The same can be said of the Great Wall of China.
Likewise Roman aqueducts required a lot of slave labor, but they provided relatively clean water for generations to come. Some structures, like the Parthenon and the Pantheon, serve no practical value but they are examples of amazing architecture. In the modern world these buildings are priceless, even though the slaves and lower class workers who built them would no doubt have preferred to spend their time drinking and having sex.
(Although I doubt all of the workers were lower class. It took skilled craftsmen to build the Pantheon. Any carelessness or sloth and the dome would have crashed to the ground.)
So if you divide the amount of work extracted from the workers living in "squalor" by the hundreds of years the structures served their purpose, does this justify the project? Certainly the ruling class thought so, the lower classes probably disagreed, even though they benefited from aqueduct water too. I would also note that "squalor" is a relative term.
So from an economic standpoint, can coercive labor ever be justified if the benefits extend far enough in time? Put another way, when does it make economic sense to burden current workers in order to benefit future generations? How do economists measure this?
Isn't the most common, and common-sensical, argument for the "Pax Romana' simply the "Pax" part? That is to say: sure, maybe when the Legion rolls through, decapitates the leadership of your tribe, and says, "Congratulations, you're Romans now!" you end up in a situation where sending tribute to Rome at some level "costs" more than what you, as a subsistence farmer, gave to the local tribal warlord before. But now you're part of a continent spanning empire that is, at least mostly, at peace within its own borders. So you don't suffer massive losses every few years when resentments between neighboring tribal warlords flare up. While -- as you say -- you'd have to do some cost/benefit math to make sure, it seems completely plausible that this is going to look like an attractive trade-off. You may have no particular affection for the imperial overlords, but they largely let you continue to perpetuate your culture and retain a certain amount of local autonomy. As an additional bonus, local men who fancy themselves particularly talented at violence can now go join the Legion, rather than building gangs to engage in local violence.
Yes. But it can be really unpleasant as the conquest frontier rolls over you…
And with the transition from the Principate to the Dominate, the brutality of taxation appears to have gone way up…
It feels like a lot of this debate also hinges on not saying "communities that are not coercive states are bad, because they're oppressed once a coercive state invades them."
I just heard John Taylor say on Bloomberg TV (I'm paraphrasing) that the Fed may need to find out why inflation got as high as it did. He went on to point out that inflation has been global. Congratulations to you for getting that point through!
I mused on your elegant use of “effect” where, unusually, “affect” would also be somewhat appropriate!
:-)
I cannot help but wondering as to how feudalism emerged in Europe. Was it all about people seeking protection from a frightening environment as the Roman empire gradually withdrew from the distant provinces. Could we be at a similar place as the winds of change frighten the hell out of folks so that they seek a protector. Could it be that we are facing the emergence of fedualism rather than fascism?
"..begins with a very important premise. States were often coercive, so should not be celebrated as more ‘advanced civilisations’. I think this is a really important mentality. While grandiose palaces are aesthetically impressive, surplus was usually extracted from labourers who lived in squalor. This is a useful corrective to narratives that dismiss or denigrate small-scale societies, as well as to those who defensively hype-up small kingdoms…"
As clear as mud. The premise of her premise seems to be that "advanced civilizations" are not coercive. What is an "advanced civilization"? Criterion: One that doesn't extract surplus from laborers that live in squalor. Doesn't that strike you as peculiar? If the share of labor in the national income of a growing economy falls, presumably because the elite extract a surplus from labor, a country becomes less "advanced"? Where does that leave the US, among others, over the past few decades? Burgeoning "primitive civilizations"? Maybe I have misunderstood the author.
“States were often coercive, so should not be celebrated as more ‘advanced civilisations’.” Not all coercive states are equal. The Comanches were extremely coercive in dominating rival tribes on the southern plains in the U.S. The Aztecs did the same in Mexico. But the Europeans were not just coercive, they had writing and technology. Writing and technology by definition makes a civilization more advanced.