The villager parable is too egalitarian. That's not really how it worked.
For most of history, peasants were sustenance farmers, meaning they grew their own food and if the harvest was bad, they could starve. For them, there was no such thing as insurance and they really needed ways to reduce risk. For example, they'd feast their neighbors so that when times were hard, the neighbors would hopefully help them out in turn. Investing in close-knit relationships isn't like barter - it's more like informal credit. Kinship networks still work something like this today.
And this meant they didn't really need money. Social obligations were everything.
But how do people who aren't peasants themselves get food? By extracting rents and taxes, in return for protection and certain services, perhaps plowing fields. Local "big men" might take payment in kind, but for a more organized government, they'd collect taxes using money, which gave the peasants incentives to grow and sell food for money.
So villages would monetize or demonetize depending on the state of nearby governments. A monetized society allows people who aren't farmers to buy food. It allows cities to exist. Therefore, civilization was built on military force, taxes, and rent extracted from peasants, who were the basis of a mostly agricultural economy.
Be glad our civilization isn't built on sustenance farming anymore.
>By extracting rents and taxes, in return for protection and certain services, perhaps plowing fields.
Why use the term extract rather than trade? Protection was quite valuable. Those peasants could have tried their luck planting a field in the middle of nowhere, far from any village. There was plenty of unused land.
They didn't because the peasant and their family would not last long.
This idea that civilization is somehow oppressive rather than a great achievement just doesn't make sense. Force is the natural way of things. Alone those peasants would likely have 100% of the harvest taken by force, whether it be by wild animals, roving bandits, even locusts. It's a far better deal to have some percentage of it taken in return for having it protected.
> Those peasants could have tried their luck planting a field in the middle of nowhere, far from any village.
Except not really. Peasants were considered the property of their lords. If they decided to go and “try their luck” at a neutral location and that was reported to their lord, armed men on horseback would be very likely to show up not long after, to return them back to the lord’s land, but not without a solid beating and/or maiming first.
Sometimes, certain forms of civilization just are oppressive, rather than collaborative. They tend to be out-competed by forms that are less oppressive, true, but it’s not guaranteed and not always fast and not always permanent.
Typically that was not the case as far as I'm aware. It's why the black plague gave them so much leverage. They could go to a different lord.
But often the land belonged to the lords or at least they could take it within their region at their pleasing. There were not that much "neutral locations".
That wilderness was common land or hunting grounds belonging to someone.
I think we're both somewhat right, somewhat wrong. _Some_ peasants -- serfs -- were considered property of their lords, or well, of the land that the lord oversaw. If they ran away, they were rounded up and brought back, usually with a beating or worse. But there were also free peasants that rented said land. I didn't really mention them, because they deliberately chose to rent said land - they _could_ have tried their luck anywhere, but they _decided_ to try their luck on this lord's lands, and so, I thought, weren't really relevant to the conversation.
But it's not exactly irrelevant, either, right? It does add to the confusion to leave it out, so, my bad.
As far as the black plague, what gave even serfs so much leverage was the fact that there were so few people in all categories around anymore. Fewer peasants to work the land, so the prices of the free peasants went up commensurately. But even serfs who wants to run far away and set themselves up as free peasants elsewhere could frequently get away with it because a) fewer men on horseback to spare to chase them down, and b) the other lord they went and rented land from didn't have enough peasants to work his land either, and had a real vested interest in making sure they weren't caught and brought back to their original lord.
skybrian · · focus · HN ↗
For most of history, peasants were sustenance farmers, meaning they grew their own food and if the harvest was bad, they could starve. For them, there was no such thing as insurance and they really needed ways to reduce risk. For example, they'd feast their neighbors so that when times were hard, the neighbors would hopefully help them out in turn. Investing in close-knit relationships isn't like barter - it's more like informal credit. Kinship networks still work something like this today.
And this meant they didn't really need money. Social obligations were everything.
But how do people who aren't peasants themselves get food? By extracting rents and taxes, in return for protection and certain services, perhaps plowing fields. Local "big men" might take payment in kind, but for a more organized government, they'd collect taxes using money, which gave the peasants incentives to grow and sell food for money.
So villages would monetize or demonetize depending on the state of nearby governments. A monetized society allows people who aren't farmers to buy food. It allows cities to exist. Therefore, civilization was built on military force, taxes, and rent extracted from peasants, who were the basis of a mostly agricultural economy.
Be glad our civilization isn't built on sustenance farming anymore.
aeternum · · focus · HN ↗
Why use the term extract rather than trade? Protection was quite valuable. Those peasants could have tried their luck planting a field in the middle of nowhere, far from any village. There was plenty of unused land.
They didn't because the peasant and their family would not last long.
This idea that civilization is somehow oppressive rather than a great achievement just doesn't make sense. Force is the natural way of things. Alone those peasants would likely have 100% of the harvest taken by force, whether it be by wild animals, roving bandits, even locusts. It's a far better deal to have some percentage of it taken in return for having it protected.
In nature, protection is the thing that matters.
DanHulton · · focus · HN ↗
Except not really. Peasants were considered the property of their lords. If they decided to go and “try their luck” at a neutral location and that was reported to their lord, armed men on horseback would be very likely to show up not long after, to return them back to the lord’s land, but not without a solid beating and/or maiming first.
Sometimes, certain forms of civilization just are oppressive, rather than collaborative. They tend to be out-competed by forms that are less oppressive, true, but it’s not guaranteed and not always fast and not always permanent.
modo_mario · · focus · HN ↗
But often the land belonged to the lords or at least they could take it within their region at their pleasing. There were not that much "neutral locations". That wilderness was common land or hunting grounds belonging to someone.
DanHulton · · focus · HN ↗
But it's not exactly irrelevant, either, right? It does add to the confusion to leave it out, so, my bad.
As far as the black plague, what gave even serfs so much leverage was the fact that there were so few people in all categories around anymore. Fewer peasants to work the land, so the prices of the free peasants went up commensurately. But even serfs who wants to run far away and set themselves up as free peasants elsewhere could frequently get away with it because a) fewer men on horseback to spare to chase them down, and b) the other lord they went and rented land from didn't have enough peasants to work his land either, and had a real vested interest in making sure they weren't caught and brought back to their original lord.