Elon Musk: Always A Douche

[Admiral Yi]

What was the reason Romans distributed grain to the populace, and bread at the circus?  What was the reason the State (or the provincial cities) did sometimes organize circus and gladiatorial games?

To stop the continuous rebellions that had plagued the Republic up to that point?

[Admiral Yi]

If anyone is curious, the grain dole began in 123 BC.  Spartacus' revolt was in 73 BC.

[Sheilbh]

There has been countryside before the evolution of homo sapiens so that is silly.

I said "cities and countryside"

Rome was a town long before bread and circus were provided.

Although Rome was big on the other common form of ancient welfare: land grants. It also had pretty efficient ways of capturing the rural surplus of its neighbours

What was the form of welfare under Henry VIII? 

Quite

I think there's two interesting sides to this. So the first is that I think Medieval England develops the first form of agricultural capitalism that helps shape the way the West is now - so the start of food stamps and housing vouchers is here.

Another way the start of Western welfare is under Henry VIII. Welfare was the responsibility of the Church which had its own resources which were used giving alms, running estates, feeding the poor, healing the sick etc. In the Medieval world that was part of the role of the Church who were, broadly, out of the early capitalist economy in English agriculture. With the dissolution of the monasteries there is a big increase in poverty and the institutions that dealt with it were abolished. All the way through the Tudor eras there are loads of Poor Laws and vagabondage acts to help the deserving poor (through local taxes) and punish the undeserving poor. So, again, I think the modern Western welfare state probably has its origin with Henry VIII.

Classical Athens?

All Greek city states heavily regulated grain. The role of public buyers of grain was an elected office in Athens. From what we know the city states regulated the price of staple foods and many gave free distributions of grain not to the poor, but to all citizens.

Demosthenes was a grain buyer, for example. Aristotle talks about this - explicitly that it was necessary to keep the masses happy for the position of the rich to be secure.

Similarly meals following sacrifices and at public festivals (which were very regular) were typically free (again not aimed at the poor but citizens and some residents - however there's reference to the poor getting larger portions). Obviously Athens also paid her citizens for participating in democratic meetings or juries. Some Greek city states also paid for city-employed doctors (often elected) who could be consulted for free and there were provisions made for care for invalids and widows (I think in part because of the relationship between that and the citizen army).

I think welfare, tax, power and war are all bound up together in quite complex ways - and Ancient Greece actually shows this. As people pay taxes or are called on by the state to fight, they push for enhanced power within the state, having increased power in the state they want to benefit from the welfare or other benefits of the state (patronage etc). Ancient Greece is a really interesting example because of how welfare, service and citizenship are tied together.

Edit: But I don't think that's necessarily how people at the time necessarily frame it. There I think it's necessary for stability and referring to ideal social orders. After all I broadly think another relatively recent and I think relatively Western thing is the view that change is good/progress exists (and I think we might have lost that).

But, for example, why I think American welfare peaks - in particular in extending to all races - during Vietnam and the draft and both fall away in the following years.

The first Bengal famine (the one under the Company) was not criticized as bad rebellion management but on purely humanitarian grounds.  And a rebellion did not break out incidentally.

Sure. My argument isn't that every famine or shortage resulted in rebellion, but that it was a precipitating condition of basically almost every rebellion. Similarly not that rebellion was the only frame, but that it was a frame that justified this forms of pre-bureaucratic welfare. I think the other really important one was a more broadly conservative one that the welfare supported a virtuous, stable social order - allowing imbalances and not having a very heavy state hand could create situations of urban shortage, poor peasants and rich merchants, for example. That might be bad in itself from, say, a Confucian perspective but it would also be a social challenge for, say, a feudal system too (again Henry VIII is interesting here).

[Tonitrus]

If anyone is curious, the grain dole began in 123 BC.  Spartacus' revolt was in 73 BC.

Free grain probably didn't make the lives of slaves and gladiators a much happier one.

[Admiral Yi]

Sure. My argument isn't that every famine or shortage resulted in rebellion, but that it was a precipitating condition of basically almost every rebellion.

I was ready to concede all your points (they're all good but I liked the role of the Church in medieval society the most) until you came out with this doozie.  Really?  Betcha I can rattle of 20 rebellions in which famine/hunger did not factor.

[Sheilbh]

I was ready to concede all your points (they're all good but I liked the role of the Church in medieval society the most) until you came out with this doozie.  Really?  Betcha I can rattle of 20 rebellions in which famine/hunger did not factor.

To go a little Dirty Harry, I think the question you need to ask yourself is how much wiggle room did I mean to give myself with "basically almost"

But I would be interested anyway - and not necessarily famine or shortage. In fairness I should have said that, I think for obvious reasons, that famine rarely leads to rebellion - but shortage and associated price rises etc definitely does. I'm terribly Marxist on this I tend to think the material conditions before rebellions are always important - I don't think they're the "cause" or the only issue, but I think they're always present. And as a generalisation I suspect most of the time those material conditions are not "we're all doing well!"

[Razgovory]

Grain doles probably predate writing.  The first economic system recorded was a palace economy, where the government collected all the goods and then redistributed them.

[Admiral Yi]

I was ready to concede all your points (they're all good but I liked the role of the Church in medieval society the most) until you came out with this doozie.  Really?  Betcha I can rattle of 20 rebellions in which famine/hunger did not factor.

To go a little Dirty Harry, I think the question you need to ask yourself is how much wiggle room did I mean to give myself with "basically almost"

But I would be interested anyway - and not necessarily famine or shortage. In fairness I should have said that, I think for obvious reasons, that famine rarely leads to rebellion - but shortage and associated price rises etc definitely does. I'm terribly Marxist on this I tend to think the material conditions before rebellions are always important - I don't think they're the "cause" or the only issue, but I think they're always present. And as a generalisation I suspect most of the time those material conditions are not "we're all doing well!"

I agree that all Marxist inspired rebellions have been based to some extent on we're not all doing well.  But what fraction of total rebellions is that? 

[viper37]

What was the reason Romans distributed grain to the populace, and bread at the circus?  What was the reason the State (or the provincial cities) did sometimes organize circus and gladiatorial games?

To stop the continuous rebellions that had plagued the Republic up to that point?

There were such things happening during the Republic era, it was only a continuation of the practice.

But you do recognize that government social spending can be a necessity to reduce social unrest?

[Admiral Yi]

There were such things happening during the Republic era, it was only a continuation of the practice.

But you do recognize that government social spending can be a necessity to reduce social unrest?

173 BC was the Republic era.

Nobody has provided data on the cost efficiency of social spending to reduce social unrest.

[Oexmelin]

It costs 100 gold to move the slider towards social harmony.

I can't understand what you are asking. What's the standard measure of social unrest? What would « data » look like? When?

Revolutions are amongst the hardest elements of human history to analyze, to say nothing of the difficulty of comparing the Roman Republic to Bolshevik Russia.

Still, in all unequal polities, the core issue of governing has always been to make the greater number obey the smaller number. Elites, at least, worried quite a bit about that simple data point.

[Josquius]

What about the renaissance?

Lots of stuff. Lots of artists deciding to break with tradition and use new styles and  tempt the church with pagan symbolism, investing in new fangled printing machines, the early adopters with new military techniques, the reformation, etc...
The entire period is one of leaps of faith.

The American revolution was not a leap of faith.  Other countries had fought wars of independence.

The Netherlands is about the only thing that came remotely close at that period but it was massively different and done on different bases. The American Revolution was a huge leap of faith. It  truly was something not done before.

 

Other countries had adopted democracy.

Who?

D-day was not a leap of faith.  Plenty of amphibious landings had been conducted in the Pacific.  A pilot project was conducted at Dieppe, from which we learned what not to do.  Calculated risk taking is not the same as a leap of faith.

The evidence from Dieppe would suggest its something that absolutely shouldn't be done.
D-Day was a massive leap of faith. It was on a scale that had never been seen before.
It was a massive leap of faith.  The phrase itself was used in the 80th anniversary speech.

I don't understand how your last two sentences relate to each other.  Please elaborate.

A common argument I've seen from gun nuts in the US is Washington DC (for example) have really tight gun laws but a high crime rate, ergo its clear that tight gun laws actually increase crime.
Anybody with half a brain can see the clear problems in this argument. When you can just walk between the city and not-city potentially without even noticing you've done so then you can just get a gun elsewhere and bring it in.
The smaller the sub-area you try and impose gun laws on, the less effectual they'll be. They need to be on a proper nation-wide level with controlled borders (insert MAGA scoffing here) to work properly.

It doesn't require any leap of faith to think lower crime is better than higher crime.  The leap of faith comes in when a political idea claims it will lower crime without any proof that it will.

This is a problem I find I typically have in trying to connect with a right wing way of thinking. This very black and white binary view of things. There's either full evidence something will definitely work, or no evidence.
Its rare that something is done beyond a very small scale laboratory level without any evidence. There's always some evidence. The issue is you'll never get to 100% certainty, you therefore have to make a judgement call of how much evidence you're satisfied with.

[Admiral Yi]

It costs 100 gold to move the slider towards social harmony.

I can't understand what you are asking. What's the standard measure of social unrest? What would « data » look like? When?

Cost of social spending needed to reduce unrest risk by 1% vs. cost of security services to reduce unrest risk by 1%.

Revolutions are amongst the hardest elements of human history to analyze, to say nothing of the difficulty of comparing the Roman Republic to Bolshevik Russia.

Still, in all unequal polities, the core issue of governing has always been to make the greater number obey the smaller number. Elites, at least, worried quite a bit about that simple data point.

Then your beef is with those people who have been championing social spending as rebellion insurance.

[Admiral Yi]

@Squeeze.  An artist paints one painting, it sells or it doesn't sell.  That's more like a pilot project.  Painting 1,000 paintings in a new style would be a leap of faith.

Other countries had fought for and won independence from mother countries before.  The process and likely effects were not total mysteries.  The effects of not having a monarch could be referenced to the Netherlands, Switzerland, Rome, Venice, Athens.

Dieppe came after several US Pacific amphibious operations.  The US learned lessons from them and honed techniques to improve the odds.  Casualties could be estimated.  There was a basis of reference.

The impact of a total gun ban can estimated on the basis of physics.  Fewer guns on the street means fewer chances to commit gun violence.  If we change the policy to assault weapon style(r) guns only, it's harder to estimate the impact of a ban on mass shootings.  And regardless, we were talking about the impact of social spending on crime.

Your generalization about conservatives is silly, like almost all your generalizations about conservatives.  Conservatives make choices under conditions of uncertainty.  All crisis response is under conditions of uncertainty.  Wubya invaded Iraq with less than perfect certainty.  He launched No Child Left Behind under conditions of uncertainty.

[Syt]