is there a parallel here to gunpowder? i.e. european feudal era cavalry, expensive and needing trained warrior elites to maintain - giving way to relatively untrained masses, and then the eventual political grants to reward those masses? The only difference is that you seem to be saying that bronze (centralized kingdoms) -> iron (democratized, more polities) but definitely the shift from cavalry to gunpowder saw the reverse.
I believe there is a parallel. But with gunpowder you’d have two different effects. Firearms would lead to decentralization (in theory), while cannons would lead to centralization due to costs. If you are interested, Michael-David Mangini and Casey Petrof have a working paper on the gunpowder revolution in medieval Europe.
I think it was Mokyr (the latest Nobel in Economics) who argued that the invention of gunpowder led to the fall of feudalism. The argument is that gunpowder shifted the balance of power from the the feudal lords to the monarchs as it reduced the costs of controlling the territory from a central capital. Also, these new technologies led to more capital intensive and larger armies. That helped to centralize power in the monarch and incentivized better taxation systems which empowered the monarch more.
Patrick, my first comment on this was on one of your postings of it (I’m not sure I understand this app). How I see the history is from what I think is strong evidence that the first very successful managed economy of the diverse Fertil Crescent economy overheated repeatedly in Mesopotamia creating what was recorded as The Tower of Babel, but from a systems view, did not refer to a tower of stone, but the tower if confusion (babel) of a whole societal collapse. I think as the first example of what happens to capitalism if not reprogrammed in time, i a growth-to-fatal-confusion example could be a great part to add to the overall story of rampant bonfires of innovation, often leading to great trauma.
Patrick, my first comment on this was on one of your postings of it (I’m not sure I understand this app). How I see the history is from what I think is strong evidence that the first very successful managed economy of the diverse Fertil Crescent economy overheated repeatedly in Mesopotamia creating what was recorded as The Tower of Babel, but from a systems view, did not refer to a tower of stone, but the tower if confusion (babel) of a whole societal collapse. I think as the first example of what happens to capitalism if not reprogrammed in time, i a growth-to-fatal-confusion example could be a great part to add to the overall story of rampant bonfires of innovation, often leading to great trauma.
The question is whether technology of the future will lead to further centralization or fragmentation. This seems to be dependent on the scale of supply chains required. I think AI tends to favor centralization, while biotech tends to favor fragmentation.
is there a parallel here to gunpowder? i.e. european feudal era cavalry, expensive and needing trained warrior elites to maintain - giving way to relatively untrained masses, and then the eventual political grants to reward those masses? The only difference is that you seem to be saying that bronze (centralized kingdoms) -> iron (democratized, more polities) but definitely the shift from cavalry to gunpowder saw the reverse.
I believe there is a parallel. But with gunpowder you’d have two different effects. Firearms would lead to decentralization (in theory), while cannons would lead to centralization due to costs. If you are interested, Michael-David Mangini and Casey Petrof have a working paper on the gunpowder revolution in medieval Europe.
I think it was Mokyr (the latest Nobel in Economics) who argued that the invention of gunpowder led to the fall of feudalism. The argument is that gunpowder shifted the balance of power from the the feudal lords to the monarchs as it reduced the costs of controlling the territory from a central capital. Also, these new technologies led to more capital intensive and larger armies. That helped to centralize power in the monarch and incentivized better taxation systems which empowered the monarch more.
Patrick, my first comment on this was on one of your postings of it (I’m not sure I understand this app). How I see the history is from what I think is strong evidence that the first very successful managed economy of the diverse Fertil Crescent economy overheated repeatedly in Mesopotamia creating what was recorded as The Tower of Babel, but from a systems view, did not refer to a tower of stone, but the tower if confusion (babel) of a whole societal collapse. I think as the first example of what happens to capitalism if not reprogrammed in time, i a growth-to-fatal-confusion example could be a great part to add to the overall story of rampant bonfires of innovation, often leading to great trauma.
Patrick, my first comment on this was on one of your postings of it (I’m not sure I understand this app). How I see the history is from what I think is strong evidence that the first very successful managed economy of the diverse Fertil Crescent economy overheated repeatedly in Mesopotamia creating what was recorded as The Tower of Babel, but from a systems view, did not refer to a tower of stone, but the tower if confusion (babel) of a whole societal collapse. I think as the first example of what happens to capitalism if not reprogrammed in time, i a growth-to-fatal-confusion example could be a great part to add to the overall story of rampant bonfires of innovation, often leading to great trauma.
The question is whether technology of the future will lead to further centralization or fragmentation. This seems to be dependent on the scale of supply chains required. I think AI tends to favor centralization, while biotech tends to favor fragmentation.
this makes me we want to play/make a Bronze-Iron Age 4x game