291300+ entries in 0.166s
mircea_popescu: you can have space dust. but NOT in
this band around a planet.
mircea_popescu: there's quite an uncanny valley between
the 60-80%ish of
the "civilised world" and
the 5-15% of
the rest.
mircea_popescu: almost all subhuman congregations of
the mongoloids in
the pacific islands qualify
throughout. and
the similarly subhuman aztecs qualify. and most of
the north american
tribes.
mircea_popescu: in any case : a marginally acceptable definition of "palace economy" is :
tax over 50% of gdp. by
this rule
the usg, eu etc qualify. nothing else in
the world does.
mircea_popescu: not so. it was on
the contrary, quite autonomous
thing.
mircea_popescu: anyway. you'll have A LOT of
trouble proving 1800s england was a "palatial economy".
tax was ~inexistent at
the
time.
mircea_popescu: this moves
the discussion
to a debate as
to
the
true substance of
that place.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform
the fact still remains you picked something
that only ever appeared in one place.
mircea_popescu: it only appeared in one place,
thus
therefore if you claim
that one place was "palatial",
then boom, and if you claim it isn't,
then equally boom.
mircea_popescu: the reason you can't see it
there has
to do with
the definitions rather
than with
the fact of
the matter.
mircea_popescu: you'll have
to define your
terms. how about,
the cussacks ?
the danubian pastoral communities ?
the northern carpathians woodworking culture ? what do you wish
to see ?
mircea_popescu: you can produce examples of subhuman populations. be
they
there or here or anywhere,
they're still subhuman, and sum
to 0.
mircea_popescu: "why won't you be reasonable, mr X!" "because i'd like
to do something!"
mircea_popescu: we're standing on
the shoulders of unreasonable and naught else.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform not product in any sense. everything we use is
the accidental byproduct of what
the palace would have wanted
to but didn't manage
to "bring under control".
mircea_popescu: it lies convincingly for some, but
this happenstance doesn't speak in favour of
their intelligence.
mircea_popescu: how about computing ?
the whole century's worth of palace cs yielded... 500 boatloads of "culture" and nothring right, proper or even usable.
mircea_popescu: what now ? your doghouse
theory just died,
turns out
the doghouse's
the other way.
mircea_popescu: point in case :
there isn't a 1% as much bitcoin-culture in all
the usg.mit, usg.whartever sponsored "teams" and "think
tanks" and etc of what's here.
mircea_popescu: no palatial-style masturbation pretending
to be culture.
mircea_popescu: not in
the slightest. one doesn't follow from
the other.
mircea_popescu: intelligent people become anything
they wish, which is incidentally
the only definition of intelligence worth
the mention. if not "social sciences" useful.
mircea_popescu: which is why and wherefore
the wot will spread at
the point of
the sword and no other way.
mircea_popescu: the point being -
that not only is
the palace economy drone incapable of living as an effectual human being. it is much more importantly UNWILLING
TO BECOME ONE. which is
the main point.
mircea_popescu: and
then rape
the daughters and
tie
them seven
to a pole and so on. what.
mircea_popescu: shit, i could DEFINITELY burn down
the ~10mn strong buenos aires with a
thousand people,
that were actual people ie,
the sort one'd run into back in
the yugoslav war days.
mircea_popescu: cortes burned
the whole
thing with what, five hundred men ?
mircea_popescu: anyway,
the situation at
the
time is very much reminiscent of
the current usg palace economy. one warrior is more
than a match for many
thousand "upstanding citizens". if seven ships worth 1k people sporting kalash with infinte ammo landed on us west coast, which consisted of "start-up culture" only,
the result would be very much what happened at
the end of
the bronze age, or for
that matter at
the end of
the aztec empire.
mircea_popescu: (memorably, a pharaoh of
the period speaks of
the HORROR of
the SEVEN!!111!! ships
that came and ravaged his lands. imagine - seven's enough, not even a
thousand warriors' worth.)
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform
that's not
the whole story, but yes, "pharaoh" means great house, for one
thing, and it's not practical given
the resources of
the
time
to build a great house in any other system.
mircea_popescu: (its evolution in
turn based on a very simple notion, directly accessible
to
the very simple minds
then roaming
the earth - as quarry
taken is
to be distributed by
the hunt boss, so everything is a quarry and so everything is
to be split up.
this works for non-pastoral societies quite well, but when it runs into
the better organised, smarter and generally more effectual shepherds and riders
they get raped.)
mircea_popescu: but
the important point is
that
the highly centralized, redistributive socialism of
the 1300s gave way
to a very independent, village-centered economy of
the early iron age.
mircea_popescu: pretty much all
the "ancient
towns"
that did make it, memphis
to
tyre and sardis etc were rebuilt after being sacked at
that
time as well.
mircea_popescu: in fact,
the classics agree, if mostly
tacitly,
that
the loss was indeed greater, culturally,
than
the end of
the roman empire.
mircea_popescu: pylos, mycene, knossos,
troy, hattusa,
tarsus, ugarith, qadesh, byblos,
there's many dozens more, all
towns
that were major centers [of palace economy] and were never heard from again.
mircea_popescu: not just. hittites, minoans, egyptians, you name it. all fell
the weight of
the greek-ish "people of
the sea"
mircea_popescu: they were ~all palace economies,
they were all wiped in
the ~same half century cca 1300 bc, as
the iron age begun
mircea_popescu: anyway, if you're doing palace economy studies,
the inca are a dubious, mostly backward in fact and hallucinated in
theory and description example. meanwhile,
the late bronze age anatolia, levant and golden crescent are much better studied, understood and documented.
mircea_popescu: more like variation i
think. rabbits, pigs, all have
this boom feeding
thing.
mircea_popescu: there's some dispersion re
this property in nature. some animals will eat
themselves sick. some won't.
mircea_popescu: incidentally : no camel back ever breaks.
the animal won't stand if it ~thinks~ it's overloaded.
mircea_popescu: i don't
think it's a matter of scarcity necessarily.
that
the sea flows
through fjords does not mean
the sea is finite.
mircea_popescu: there is
that. but
the clockwork of pretense doesn't actually prevent
the general point.
mircea_popescu: in a language not even understood, under many layers of dirt,
the capital of name unknown never fell.
mircea_popescu: pretendjuice is
the least finite of all resources. even
today, after all
the men are dead and all
the women long raped into usefullness,
the hittite empire pretend still lives, unsung and alone.
a111: Logged on 2014-11-13 19:06 asciilifeform: bip64, aside from complicating
the protocol and giving relevance
to
the gavin shitgang, is also a jam-tomorrow chumpatronic engineering structural element
mircea_popescu: can "work"
the same way everything else
they do "works".
mircea_popescu: they lost
that war, years ago. it's on
trilema actually.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform nobody cares enough about fiat. all backing will be
through bitcoin, because bitcoin has monopoly on currency now.