>Since modern states don't have an entrenched hereditary aristocracy
We absolutely do, but because we are bombarded with propaganda telling us they "earned it" by "working hard" and "pulling themselves up by their bootstraps" we pretend it is just a co-incidence that the people born into the top 1% almost always remain there, and people born in the bottom 99% almost always remain there.
>After public schooling became a things, suddenly just being able to read and write is not a distinguishing feature
It never was. The aristocracy were educated specifically on economics, justice, etc. It wasn't simply a matter of being able to read.
Sure, I simplified a lot. The current western world order is still much more fair to the common folk than feudalism.
The education aspect was not as much about how much more educated the aristocracy was rather that the unwashed masses rose to their level, and it was not anymore sufficient to say that god has decreed duke X a distinguished gentleman and commoner Y a filthy peasant.
It is not easy to rise social ladders, but it's way easier with our figment of a fair society, rather than if we believed social status was a fixed quantity given by the creator of the universe.
The pithy armchair psychologist in me would claim modern society is much more facilitating towards a growth mindset than a feodal one.
>The current western world order is still much more fair to the common folk than feudalism.
That's the common perception, but there's little evidence that it is true. Modern peons have no more ability to control their governments than medieval peons did, we just have the illusion presented to us to keep us complacent. We work longer hours, have less nutritious and safe food, and have an epidemic of "mental illness" stemming from our lack of social bonds and community. But because we have medicine and electronic gadgets we declare ourselves to be much better off.
>The education aspect was not as much about how much more educated the aristocracy was
Well really that is exactly what aristocracy was, as originally conceived. Some places ended up with a corrupt form where it was rule by birth rather than rule by excellence (the literal definition of aristocracy), but mostly people just mistakenly refer to monarchies as aristocracies.
>but it's way easier with our figment of a fair society, rather than if we believed social status was a fixed quantity given by the creator of the universe.
Why? The modern myth that nobility was defined purely by birth is just that, a myth. If you believe that excellence is given by god, it does not also follow that you must believe god only gives excellence to the offspring of others he gave excellence. In reality it was seen as no different than with livestock. If a good specimen is born you make it part of your breeding stock, even if its parents were not.
> We work longer hours, have less nutritious and safe food, and have an epidemic of "mental illness" stemming from our lack of social bonds and community. But because we have medicine and electronic gadgets we declare ourselves to be much better off.
This smacks of rosy retrospective bias. Even if we have less nutritious food, which is debatable, we have an abundance of it, sufficient to feed us all and we don't suffer famines and shortages, or nutritional deficiencies.
We have an "epidemic" of mental illness because most of our day is no longer solely focused on scrounging for survival. Also, the mentally ill are no longer shunned as harshly and so they don't die of starvation. Perhaps community bonds have something to do with it, but that's also debatable.
>Even if we have less nutritious food, which is debatable
It really isn't, it has been measured. With increased atmospheric CO2, plants grow faster and end up with a much higher calorie:micronutrient ratio. We also consume vast quantities of industrial waste products now like "vegetable oil", HFCS and soybean by-products.
>we have an abundance of it, sufficient to feed us all and we don't suffer famines and shortages, or nutritional deficiencies.
Famine wasn't as common as you seem to think it was, unless you include impoverished states, in which case famine is killing more people now than it was back then. You can't just look at rich countries now compared to everyone centuries ago. You have to compare like to like. We suffer plenty of nutritional deficiencies, and we suffer huge amounts of diet caused diseases like "type 2 diabetes" and osteoporosis.
>We have an "epidemic" of mental illness because most of our day is no longer solely focused on scrounging for survival.
People were not scrounging for survival then either. They were producing significant surpluses of food, enough to feed massive armies. And while they worked hard in spring and fall, they essentially had summer and winter as vacation time. They had more holidays/vacation time than modern Americans do.
>Perhaps community bonds have something to do with it, but that's also debatable.
We literally have hundreds of thousands of people killing themselves entirely because they have no social bonds. Everything is debatable, but this debate in particular has overwhelming evidence in support of it being correct. As population density grows, social cohesion, trust and relationships all decline. We just didn't evolve to be friends with 5 million people.
> Famine wasn't as common as you seem to think it was, unless you include impoverished states, in which case famine is killing more people now than it was back then.
"More people" is an irrelevant metric, what matters is the percentage of people relative to the total. That's a meaningful measure of progress.
> We suffer plenty of nutritional deficiencies
Such as?
> and we suffer huge amounts of diet caused diseases like "type 2 diabetes" and osteoporosis.
The latter of which was either common back then also, or uncommon because they didn't live long enough to develop it. As for type II diabetes, it's a disease of abundance, which proves my point. You can't overeat if you don't have enough to eat.
> They were producing significant surpluses of food, enough to feed massive armies.
That often starved during campaigns.
> And while they worked hard in spring and fall, they essentially had summer and winter as vacation time. They had more holidays/vacation time than modern Americans do.
During which they had to ration food, developed nutritional deficiencies, and died of exposure. Some vacation. You're awfully selective about how you compare "like to like".
> We literally have hundreds of thousands of people killing themselves entirely because they have no social bonds.
Citation please.
Also, there is very little real data on historical suicide rates [1,2]. It consists mainly of conjecture from the writings of artists at the time, like Dante speaking about hell and suicide. So your claims that modern rates are higher are also pure conjecture.
It is not a naturalistic fallacy. The things I mentioned are harmful. Industrial waste may not be necessarily harmful, but it is also not necessarily food. We consume it because it is industrial waste, not because it is food. It is harmful, we consume it in vast quantities, it did not even exist before the early 1900s.
>"More people" is an irrelevant metric, what matters is the percentage of people relative to the total. That's a meaningful measure of progress.
It is more as a percentage.
>Such as?
Do you think nutritional deficiencies don't exist any more? Common deficiencies include iron, B12, D, calcium, A, iodine, magnesium, zinc and folate. People now eat fewer vegetables, which contain fewer micronutrients, and we have almost completely removed organ meat from our diets altogether.
>The latter of which was either common back then also, or uncommon because they didn't live long enough to develop it.
Those are conflicting explanations. You can't dismiss a problem by throwing out random conflicting excuses. No, osteoporosis was not common then. "Type 2 diabetes" and heart disease both didn't even exist, and now are so widespread that they are top killers.
>As for type II diabetes, it's a disease of abundance, which proves my point.
No, it is a disease of consumption of toxic omega 6 polyunsaturated fats. Fat people existed in medieval times. They did not get "type 2 diabetes". And it still would not prove your point, as overeating is not the same as healthy. I said people ate healthier. People eating high calorie low nutrient food and getting morbidly obese now supports my point, it does not contradict it.
>That often starved during campaigns.
Only if you have an unusual definition of "often". And those incidents were due to being cut off from supplies. Another army preventing your food from getting to you is not an indication that you are unable to grow enough food and thus "everyone is spending all day trying to stave off starvation".
>During which they had to ration food, developed nutritional deficiencies, and died of exposure
Except none of those things. Those are the times they spent feasting. We still have several of the same traditional feasts, just renamed to pretend they are christian.
>So your claims that modern rates are higher are also pure conjecture.
Modern rates are higher than any other point in recorded history. We have poorer data from ancient times, but we do still have data. You even linked to some. And it indicates that suicide was rare, and when it did happen it was mainly out of shame or a sense of honor having done something wrong. There is no reason to assume suicide rates were higher in medieval times just because you want to believe the iron age was some horrific time. Again, the people who still live in the stone age today and are healthier and happier than us right now, and have essentially no modern "mental illnesses" like depression or social anxiety and no modern dietary diseases like "type 2 diabetes", even the ones with BMI scores in the "morbidly obese" category. Because they do not possess the technology to create petrochemical solvents necessary to extract toxic seed oils. We are just supposed to ignore that because they inconveniently point to modern society being harmful?
>Again, the people who still live in the stone age today and are healthier and happier than us right now,
That’s a senseless statement. Nobody lives in the Stone Age today. That’s a period of time.
If you’re referring to primitive tribes with no outside world contact, then you’ll need to provide evidence and definitions for healthier/happier. They have high infant mortality rates, they kill disabled children, they die from treatable illnesses, and they starve during bad years.
Of course they have mental illness, there is no evidence they are immune to Down syndrome, schizophrenia, or anything else. They are just much more likely to murder or ostracize people having too much difficulty fitting into the tribe.
>It is harmful, we consume it in vast quantities
Ugh, you accidentally forgot to provide any evidence of its harm again. You just preceded it with another naturalistic fallacy that implied that it must be harmful because it’s industrial.
>Nobody lives in the Stone Age today. That’s a period of time.
Yes they do. It is a period of technological development. There is no singular timespan that makes up the stone age or bronze age or iron age, those periods are different depending on the people.
>If you’re referring to primitive tribes with no outside world contact
They have outside world contact, they simply choose to continue living the way they prefer instead of adopting modernity.
>then you’ll need to provide evidence and definitions for healthier/happier
The dictionary already does.
>They have high infant mortality rates, they kill disabled children, they die from treatable illnesses, and they starve during bad years.
The first three things are not healthy, and the last thing is false.
>Of course they have mental illness, there is no evidence they are immune to Down syndrome, schizophrenia, or anything else.
Please attempt to read what is being said rather than intentionally taking an obviously contrary definition so you have something to argue about. I am talking about the modern "mental illnesses", note the quotes, like depression and social anxiety which are epidemic in modernity, and do not exist in primitive cultures.
>Ugh, you accidentally forgot to provide any evidence of its harm again
Almost as if this is a discussion and not me publishing a scientific paper. You are welcome to look up the data linking omega 6 polyunsaturated fats to the modern disease epidemic.
>You just preceded it with another naturalistic fallacy that implied that it must be harmful because it’s industrial.
Simply repeating the fallacy fallacy is not going to accomplish anything.
> It is harmful, we consume it in vast quantities, it did not even exist before the early 1900s.
Many things didn't exist before the 1900s, that still doesn't entail they are harmful. Furthermore, harm is dose-dependent. Water is harmful if you ingest too much. There is little evidence that these are harmful in appropriate doses. Again, most of the harm stems from abundance.
> [Famine is killing] more [people] as a percentage.
Citation?
> Do you think nutritional deficiencies don't exist any more? Common deficiencies include iron, B12, D, calcium, A, iodine, magnesium, zinc and folate.
Now where's the evidence that these deficiencies were not prevalent or worse throughout history, which is what you're actually claiming.
> You can't dismiss a problem by throwing out random conflicting excuses.
You mean like the baseless, uncited claims you're making? I've now provided far more citations demonstrating your claims are incorrect than you have. And the "excuses" aren't conflicting, they're exhaustive covering many possibilities, all of which undermine your narrative.
> "Type 2 diabetes" and heart disease both didn't even exist
As for type 2 diabetes, you have literally no basis to make that claim. There is plenty of historical data confirming the existence of diabetes throughout history, but it's not possible to reliably distinguish them given the data: https://www.healthline.com/health/history-type-1-diabetes#4
> No, it is a disease of consumption of toxic omega 6 polyunsaturated fats.
Citation?
> Fat people existed in medieval times. They did not get "type 2 diabetes".
Citation?
> And those incidents were due to being cut off from supplies
And from food spoiling.
> Another army preventing your food from getting to you is not an indication that you are unable to grow enough food and thus "everyone is spending all day trying to stave off starvation"
Good thing I never said that.
> Except none of those things. [Winter] are the times they spent feasting. We still have several of the same traditional feasts, just renamed to pretend they are christian.
Wrong: "The winter solstice was immensely important because the people were economically dependent on monitoring the progress of the seasons. Starvation was common during the first months of the winter, January to April (northern hemisphere) or July to October (southern hemisphere), also known as "the famine months". In temperate climates, the midwinter festival was the last feast celebration, before deep winter began. Most cattle were slaughtered so they would not have to be fed during the winter, so it was almost the only time of year when a plentiful supply of fresh meat was available.[5] The majority of wine and beer made during the year was finally fermented and ready for drinking at this time."
So basically the reason for the feasts is so they didn't have to waste precious food on keeping animals alive, because otherwise they'd all starve, like I said.
> Modern rates are higher than any other point in recorded history. We have poorer data from ancient times, but we do still have data. You even linked to some.
I linked to evidence that quite literally say we don't have enough historical data to infer the actual rates of suicide. So no, it doesn't at all indicate anything like what you claim.
> There is no reason to assume suicide rates were higher in medieval times just because you want to believe the iron age was some horrific time.
Except no one is making that claim. What I am saying is that your claim that modern rates are higher is baseless.
> Again, the people who still live in the stone age today and are healthier and happier than us right now and have essentially no modern "mental illnesses" like depression or social anxiety
You've fallen into the common trap of romanticizing the past. Some aspects of older cultures indeed are healthier, but your apparent inclination to claim that rates of happiness and health are far worse today than they ever were is completely baseless.
>Many things didn't exist before the 1900s, that still doesn't entail they are harmful.
Stop trying to reverse my statement because you think that will allow you to dismiss it. I said they are harmful, and they did not exist before the 1900s. Not they are harmful because they didn't exist before the 1900s. Their harm is known by the negative health effects of their consumption. Those negative health effects did not exist for people before the 1900s.
>Now where's the evidence that these deficiencies were not prevalent or worse throughout history, which is what you're actually claiming.
I see a pattern here where you state that common scientific knowledge is wrong unless I provide citations for it, then when I do you just ignore those citations and the entire subject and proceed to call some other common scientific knowledge wrong. You can use google too.
I am well aware that people post common misconceptions on their blogs. If I link to a blog post about how the earth is really flat will that make it so?
>Citation?
Again, this is not wikipedia. If you want to call someone a liar, do so. If you want to find out information, do so. You don't get to delete opinions you don't like if you spam "citation needed" enough in a conversation. The history of type 2 diabetes is easy to learn about, it did not exist until the early 1900s.
>And from food spoiling.
Which is obviously caused by being unable to produce enough food and requiring all adults to spend their entire lives toiling in the fields to avoid starvation, thus supporting your belief.
>So basically the reason for the feasts is so they didn't have to waste precious food on keeping animals alive, because otherwise they'd all starve
They didn't waste food, therefore they were all starving. Brilliant logic.
>I linked to evidence that quite literally say we don't have enough historical data to infer the actual rates of suicide
You linked to poor evidence for suicide rates. That is not the same as no evidence. This kind of tactic is just silly. "Oh, well the evidence that shows their suicide rate was much lower has limited sample sizes, so we should just assume that in reality they had much higher suicide rates".
>What I am saying is that your claim that modern rates are higher is baseless.
And yet you provided evidence to contradict your claim.
>Wrong
Neither of your links are even related to my statement, so going "DURRRR RONG!!11" seems a little odd.
>You've fallen into the common trap of romanticizing the past
That's possible. Or perhaps you've fallen into the much more common trap of romanticizing the present.
>but your apparent inclination to claim that rates of happiness and health are far worse today than they ever were is completely baseless.
Again, there's a big difference between "the evidence is not strong enough to know that with 100% certainty" which is the case and "completely baseless" which is what you wish.
> Stop trying to reverse my statement because you think that will allow you to dismiss it. I said they are harmful
And yet, you have provided no evidence of such. The evidence of harm is far from conclusive, and given the replication crisis, your stating these claims as facts is completely unjustified.
> Not they are harmful because they didn't exist before the 1900s.
What do you think the non-existence of these things prior to the 1900s proves exactly, that you keep bringing it up as if it's a relevant point? My points about the 1900s appear to be just as relevant to the discussion as your points.
> I see a pattern here where you state that common scientific knowledge is wrong unless I provide citations for it
I see a pattern where you keep claiming something is "common scientific knowledge" without any providing evidence of such a consensus.
> then when I do you just ignore those citations and the entire subject and proceed to call some other common scientific knowledge wrong. You can use google too.
When you do? When was that exactly? You've provided a single link to some articles that talk about CO2's effects on plant growth, completely ignoring the fact that I had already acknowledged that even if nutritional density were decreasing, the abundance is sufficient to feed the growing population.
Further, I'm not the one making dozens of unsubstantiated claims, you are. The burden of proof is on you here, not me to prove or disprove your claims, and yet I've gone out of my way to correct your misconceptions about history.
> I am well aware that people post common misconceptions on their blogs. If I link to a blog post about how the earth is really flat will that make it so?
Convenient that you ignore the paper that mentions the prevalence of osteoporosis is due to the aging population. Here's another one for you to deny: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24087808
> The history of type 2 diabetes is easy to learn about, it did not exist until the early 1900s.
Oh, do you mean it did not exist as a diagnosis? Because that seems like a fairly trivial point. If you literally mean that humans from history did not suffer from maladies that are a result of our biology, then that's a much stronger claim, so prove it.
> They didn't waste food, therefore they were all starving. Brilliant logic.
Nice how you just skip all the mentions of how common starvation was, and the actual justification for feasting in early winter.
> You linked to poor evidence for suicide rates. That is not the same as no evidence.
I asked for evidence. You have not provided any. Numerous sources I found all discuss how no robust evidence exists. Thus far, there is literally no reason to believe your claims, and considerable reason to disbelieve them.
> Neither of your links are even related to my statement, so going "DURRRR RONG!!11" seems a little odd.
You claimed that stone age hunter/gatherer societies were healthier. The first link I provided definitively proves otherwise.
You claimed that stone age hunter/gatherer societies didn't suffer from mental illness like depression. Historical documents discussing depressive symptoms are common. Are we to take this as evidence of some depression-like condition that's not depression? Are you seriously claiming that that's more believable?
> That's possible. Or perhaps you've fallen into the much more common trap of romanticizing the present.
Except I haven't made any such claims. At best, I've implied that there is no reason to think historical humans were much different in the maladies they suffered, except modern circumstances and abundance have clearly led to significantly lower infant and adult mortality. Which is actually well documented, commonly known fact, and runs contrary to what you have claimed.
> Again, there's a big difference between "the evidence is not strong enough to know that with 100% certainty" which is the case and "completely baseless" which is what you wish.
Since you've provided no evidence at all, and the evidence I've cited so far actually runs counter to what you claim, "baseless" is pretty accurate.
>The evidence of harm is far from conclusive, and given the replication crisis, your stating these claims as facts is completely unjustified.
Then say "I don't believe that" instead of trying to engage in silly arguments that have no possibility of productive outcomes.
>What do you think the non-existence of these things prior to the 1900s proves exactly
That people did not consume them prior to that time. As I very clearly stated, multiple times.
>completely ignoring the fact that I had already acknowledged that even if nutritional density were decreasing, the abundance is sufficient to feed the growing population.
That's a problem, not a solution. "We have to consume too many calories to get the same amount of vitamins and minerals they did" is not solved by saying "but we have lots of low quality food!". Obesity is not a solution to nutrient deficiencies.
>The burden of proof is on you here
There is no burden of proof. This is a discussion.
>Convenient that you ignore the paper that mentions the prevalence of osteoporosis is due to the aging population
Because it is of no relevance at all. The increase in osteoporosis in recent decades is in part due to the increased average age. That does not contradict the fact that osteoporosis rates in the 20th century are far higher than we have archeological evidence for in any other period.
>Oh, do you mean it did not exist as a diagnosis?
No, it did not exist. Diabetes was entirely and solely the disease we now call type 1 diabetes. That was the only diabetes. "Type 2 diabetes" has no relation to actual diabetes, has nothing to do with pancreatic malfunction, and did not exist prior to the 1920s.
>Nice how you just skip all the mentions of how common starvation was
Because that was not fact, it was opinion. I am well aware of the popular misconception, pointing to someone else repeating it does not add anything.
>and the actual justification for feasting in early winter.
That is not what it says. It claims people starve later in winter. Feasting before that would not change that outcome, and the quote you presented does not suggest it would.
>I asked for evidence. You have not provided any.
You did.
>Numerous sources I found all discuss how no robust evidence exists.
Again, stating that all available evidence points to A but is "not robust enough" therefore we should assume the opposite of A is absurd.
>The first link I provided definitively proves otherwise.
The first link does not look at a single hunter/gatherer society. It looks at minority indigenous populations living as second class citizens in modern countries. Amerindians living on reservations are not hunter/gatherers.
>You claimed that stone age hunter/gatherer societies didn't suffer from mental illness like depression. Historical documents discussing depressive symptoms are common.
No they are not, they are rare, not from hunter/gatherer societies, and they describe the condition as one of cities. Almost as if what I said about it being caused by human settlements exceeding the population humans evolved to handle is correct.
>Except I haven't made any such claims.
You have, repeatedly. You romanticize our disease rates, our abundant toxic waste which we can consume so much of and become morbidly obese and die, thus proving how great modern society is and how healthy we are.
>Which is actually well documented, commonly known fact, and runs contrary to what you have claimed.
No it is not. Average life expectancy has increased almost entirely due to antibiotics. Lots of people lived to their 80s, and did not suffer from the modern diseases we now pretend are just part of being old. Indirectly saying "but lots of people died of bacterial infections" does not mean we can simply pretend those infections were "type 2 diabetes".
>and the evidence I've cited so far
None? Linking to something irrelevant is not citing evidence.
I have not made any extraordinary claims, I have repeated the very standard scientific consensus, which is constantly repeated in the popular media. I do not presume that every piece of common knowledge is going to be considered an "extraordinary claim" by someone who hates search engines.
>Worrying about society overeating wasn’t even a thing in the US until the 50s.
So, our modern lifestyle is good because we've only been worried about it killing us since we've had it?
It is not common knowledge that a hunter gatherer lifestyle without medicine/food science/etc is better. It is not reported in popular media and it’s not backed by scientific research. It is an extraordinary claim.
>our modern lifestyle is good because we've only been worried about it killing us since we've had it?
Nope. It’s good because it’s provided us with abundance to the point where we are no longer struggling just to feed ourselves.
We have orders of magnitude safer food, fewer mentally ill than feudal folk. And we have medicine that works. Its disingenuous and incorrect to dismiss it so glibly.
I am not dismissing medicine. But the existence of medicine now does not mean life centuries ago was a horrifying existence struggling to survive as popular culture suggests. There are still primitive people now, whose existence is far closer to that subsistence stereotype than medieval Europeans were. They are overwhelmingly happy and healthy. They eat better than we do, are healthier than we are, and work less than we do. If they had modern medicine, it is hard to argue they wouldn't be better off than us in every way.
But they don’t have modern medicine, and they don’t have the means to deal with droughts, or other natural disasters. Indigenous tribes who have contact with society are overwhelmingly unhappy with some of the highest suicide rates in the world. The ones who don’t have contact don’t have their happiness measured in any meaningful or comparable way... because they don’t have contact.
Additionally, if they are in any kind of environment where they have to do manual labor for food, they work way more than most Americans do. Standing around for 40 hours a week making coffees for people is a walk in the park compared to tilling a field with a hoe.
People like the indigenous Kitava have no such problems. Because they are not living as an underclass minority in another culture. They have contact with modern people, but they choose to live traditionally.
>Additionally, if they are in any kind of environment where they have to do manual labor for food
That would be every kind of environment...
>they work way more than most Americans do.
They do not. Again, see the Kitava. They barely have a concept of work.
>Standing around for 40 hours a week making coffees for people is a walk in the park compared to tilling a field with a hoe
Tilling a field with a hoe is a completely unnecessary act. Your cultural bias makes you assume this is some universal penance that must be paid in order to extract food from the soil. It is not.
>Yes, we've covered that haven't we? In the very post you just replied to, in order to add absolutely nothing to the discussion?
I’m pointing out that it’s a massive caveat. It’s like claiming they built a plane and other than it not being able to fly, it’s just as good as the ones we have. A society without modern medicine is significantly worse off.
>That would be any kind of environment
No, you should learn about the industrial scale farming that feeds most of the planet
>They barely have a concept of work
Oh? What happens when nobody wants to hunt then? Work is what members of a society do to keep it going. If they aren’t smart enough to recognize it, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
>Tilling a field with a hoe is a completely unnecessary...
Let me stop you there. Hunter gatherer approaches do not scale. Growing food is entirely necessary to prevent 50 and 100 year storms/droughts from causing mass suffering and starvation.
It’s not cultural bias. It’s foresight to plan for the future and actually feed everyone rather than killing babies and old people during hard times.
No they didn't. We have books on farming that are 2000 years old, people have read them even. Just because movies show dirty peasants hoeing fields doesn't mean that was reality.
If we're talking the middle ages in Europe, then 90% of folk farmed as serfs or peasants. When they weren't dead from frequent droughts or plagues. "No they didn't" isn't an argument.
The myth is that 90% were involved in food production in any way. Butchers and millers and brewers and bakers are part of that 90%, they were not doing anything in any fields. But that myth is based on England under Roman rule, where vast quantities of food were grown by slaves and shipped to Rome. After the fall of Rome, people returned to farming for the local population, and so needed fewer farmers. The period is even characterized by the three orders: those who fight, those who work and those who pray. These were societies that had enough food production that a major portion of the population could spend their time praying instead of doing anything productive. And the "those who work" includes carpenters, blacksmiths, masons, etc. not just farmers.
And that's not what is in dispute anyways. Hoeing fields is. Farmer does not equal hoeing fields. Tillage was done as little as necessary, and was done mainly using horses or oxen pulling plows and cultivators. A hoe was used seldom, and mainly in the vegetable garden. As I said, we have actual period texts on how to farm. All the way back to Rome, Greece and ancient China. None of them describe the modern hollywood portrayal of mentally handicapped peasants spending their lives hitting the ground with sticks.
We also have records of actual farm manors and how much labor each farmer was required to provide for the lord every year. They worked less than us, and had 8 weeks a year without work which they spent playing sports and games in the village green. We have skeletons that show they were taller than us, which indicates better nutrition. But because the late 1700s and early 1800s saw massive numbers of people move to cities and suffer terrible malnutrition and poverty, everyone just assumes things were even worse before that. All available evidence says otherwise. Things have always been bad in cities, especially due to disease, but rural life appears to have been pretty decent and was the majority of the population. Localized famines were rare enough to be major historical events mentioned all across Europe.
Would you please read the site guidelines and not post like this to HN? It's against the rules, no matter how wrong or provocative another comment may be.
More generally, please don't do flamewars or post in the flamewar style to this site.
>that the people born into the top 1% almost always remain there, and people born in the bottom 99% almost always remain there.
The former isn’t true for income and doesn’t remain true for wealth for more than a couple generations. The latter is of course true because... math. 99% of the people are always going to be in the bottom 99%.
When you talk about the 1 percent for income, you are capturing doctors, lawyers, professors, and small business owners with your angst. Many of those people absolutely earned their position by busting their ass. You don’t become a successful spinal surgeon by having daddy grease the wheels. You do it by taking on $400k in debt and spending most of your 20s in school.
You are woefully misinformed if you think wealth inequality has only been around for 100-150 years.
>statement isn't that 99% of people are in the bottom 99%, it is that it is the same people staying there.
That’s not true though. A non-negligible portion of the richest people are first generation. And again, of course most of the 99% will stay in the 99% because math. Even with a complete turnover in one year, 98% didn’t move.
>deliberately misleading corporate propaganda piece about income would be productive?
It’s not propaganda when it comes mostly from the people on the left using it to argue for higher income taxes. Higher income taxes are an attack on income inequality, not wealth inequality. You might think it’s propaganda, but it would behoove you to listen to people on the left to hear what they are proposing.
We absolutely do, but because we are bombarded with propaganda telling us they "earned it" by "working hard" and "pulling themselves up by their bootstraps" we pretend it is just a co-incidence that the people born into the top 1% almost always remain there, and people born in the bottom 99% almost always remain there.
>After public schooling became a things, suddenly just being able to read and write is not a distinguishing feature
It never was. The aristocracy were educated specifically on economics, justice, etc. It wasn't simply a matter of being able to read.