The Competing States Hypothesis
February 24, 2017 6:32 AM Subscribe
How Europe became so rich - "In a time of great powers and empires, just one region of the world experienced extraordinary economic growth. How?" (via)
It should be emphasised that Europe’s success was not the result of any inherent superiority of European (much less Christian) culture. It was rather what is known as a classical emergent property, a complex and unintended outcome of simpler interactions on the whole. The modern European economic miracle was the result of contingent institutional outcomes. It was neither designed nor planned. But it happened, and once it began, it generated a self-reinforcing dynamic of economic progress that made knowledge-driven growth both possible and sustainable.also btw...
How did this work? In brief, Europe’s political fragmentation spurred productive competition. It meant that European rulers found themselves competing for the best and most productive intellectuals and artisans. The economic historian Eric L Jones called this ‘the States system’. The costs of European political division into multiple competing states were substantial: they included almost incessant warfare, protectionism, and other coordination failures. Many scholars now believe, however, that in the long run the benefits of competing states might have been larger than the costs. In particular, the existence of multiple competing states encouraged scientific and technological innovation.
- Outline: A Culture of Growth - "In Europe between 1500-1700 the educated elite developed a culture and a set of institutions that was more suitable for intellectual innovation and the accumulation of useful knowledge than before."
- Economic history: The roots of growth - "Perhaps 10,000 well-educated Europeans thought of themselves as participants in the search for useful knowledge. Knowledge flowed between them and the tens of thousands of 'trained engineers, capable mechanics, and dextrous craftsmen', the (rather few) industrialist-inventors such as Josiah Wedgwood, and the (rather more) entrepreneurs who had little abstract interest in science or innovation, but found that in a competitive market economy, the dynamic few drag along the inertial many. As Mokyr shows, no other civilization had ever developed a set of institutional practices — such as academies, or disputes resolved by appeals to experiment — that had been adopted by an intellectual cadre so effective at generating incentives to create, discuss, modify, test, disseminate and use ideas." [1,2,3]
- Manifestos and Monopolies - "Start with production: there certainly was a point in human history when economic power was derived through the control of resources and the production of scarce goods... However, for most products this has not been the case for well over a century; first the industrial revolution and then the advent of the assembly-line method of manufacturing resulted in an abundance of products. The new source of economic power became distribution: the ability to get those mass-produced products in front of customers who were inclined to buy them... Today the fundamental impact of the Internet is to make distribution itself a cheap commodity — or in the case of digital content, completely free. And that, by extension, is why I have long argued that the Internet Revolution is as momentous as the Industrial Revolution: it is transforming how and where economic value is generated, and thus where power resides... In this brave new world, power comes not from production, not from distribution, but from controlling consumption: all markets will be demand-driven; the extent to which they already are is a function of how digitized they have become."
- Internet of Things Banking: What Could Possibly Go Wrong? - "Digital levelled the playing field for both established and upstart players, paving the way to move beyond the Age of Information Asymmetry, where information was held under the control of a select few."
- Smart contracts.* - "Auto finance companies 'are using technologies to track the location of borrowers' vehicles in case they need to repossess them', as well as 'devices that enable them to remotely disable a car's ignition after a borrower misses a payment', and 'federal regulators are investigating whether these devices unfairly violate a borrower's' privacy.' "
- China penalises 6.7m debtors with travel ban - "Blacklist part of 'social credit' system used to rate all citizens' misdeeds."
- The Future of Thought, via Thought Vectors - "If we convert a sentence into a vector that captures the meaning of the sentence, then Google can do much better searches; they can search based on what's being said in a document. Also, if you can convert each sentence in a document into a vector, then you can take that sequence of vectors and [try to model] natural reasoning. And that was something that old fashioned AI could never do. If we can read every English document on the web, and turn each sentence into a thought vector, you've got plenty of data for training a system that can reason like people do."
- Are Cyborgs In Our Future? 'Homo Deus' Author Thinks So - "These are not prophecies. We can still do something about it... One thing that we need to do is start thinking far more seriously about global governance because the only solution to such problems will be on a global level, not on a national level. I mean actually of course in the last year or two, we are seeing a retrograde movement away from global thinking and into more nationalist and isolationist thinking. And this is very dangerous. I mean traditionally, people said that nationalism is dangerous because it leads to war, but now nationalism is far more dangerous because not only it leads to war. It also may prevent us from having any effective answer that can help us cope with dangers like the rise of artificial intelligence or the implications of bioengineering."
- Ratchets Within Ratchets - "Scientific/technological progress is a positive ratchet caught within a negative ratchet of societal and political decay: 'The scientists and engineers who created the Antikythera mechanism lived inside a ratchet of progress. But that ratchet of progress lived inside a ratchet of decay, which is why we didn't have an industrial revolution in 100BC. Instead we had war, tyranny, stagnation and (a few hundred years later) collapse.' "
- The Next Age of Invention - "Technology's future is brighter than pessimists allow."
- The Optimistic Leftist - "A new utopian vision for the left's emerging coalition will... include... First... a commitment to abundance... Material abundance is a very good thing... It is only those that already have it that are inclined to downplay its importance."
- The Returns to Societal Capital - "The heart of DeLong's point is that neither trust nor scale are things that are owned by any firm or individual. You could say that we inherited them from our ancestors, or you could say these are emergent properties, or you could say that they are designed by the institutions we choose for ourselves. Regardless, trust and scale are 'ideas' in the broadest sense, and are inputs into the production process in that trust and scale mean our set of rival inputs (labor, capital) can produce more with them than without... What DeLong does with this is to provide what I found to be a unique justification for the public sector. That is, taxes are a way of collecting the royalties on trust and scale that we inherited and/or create ourselves. Taxes are the rents to idea of playing 'cooperate' or having scale. And the proper use of those rents, if I am reading him correctly, is in ensuring that those endowments are perpetuated and handed off to our own children... One idea is that you can use the idea of rents or royalties as a positive justifcation of taxation. We are collecting on the royalties due to us as a citizenry for our trust and scale... the distribution of those rents is perhaps more palatable when seen not as a handout (which makes people feel like a deadbeat) but as something like a dividend on shared ownership of an asset. I feel like this would be one way to think of how a universal basic income could be framed - everyone is getting their share of the collective dividend payment due to the owners of the 'ideas' of trust and scale. It is a sign of ownership, not dependence."
- Agglomeration Economics and Productivity Growth, U.S. Cities, 1880-1930 - "If commodities are fully rival and excludible—i.e., the resources devoted to the production of one unit are thereby used up, and cannot be used to aid in the production of a second unit; and if sellers can easily prevent non-buyers from benefiting from what they produce (and non-buyers can easily prevent sellers from imposing costs on them—then, if the distribution of wealth accords with desert and utility, the competitive market economy in equilibrium does the job. But how often is production really constant returns to scale? And how often are spillovers truly absent? And where and when are markets thick enough to actually be in any form of 'competitive equilibrium?' "
Stealing from the southern hemisphere.
posted by jetsetsc at 7:04 AM on February 24, 2017 [33 favorites]
posted by jetsetsc at 7:04 AM on February 24, 2017 [33 favorites]
Couldn't have been effective at stealing without new technology (no one suggests "science" is intrinsically good)
posted by sammyo at 7:09 AM on February 24, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by sammyo at 7:09 AM on February 24, 2017 [3 favorites]
It should be emphasised that Europe’s success was not the result of any inherent superiority of European (much less Christian) culture.
Though I can't help wondering how much this effect would have been blunted without the reformation to provide a religious fragmentation to go along with political fragmentation. The Catholic church seems to have done a pretty damn good job of censoring and suppressing new ideas in territory where they held influence. As TFA points out, it was in Protestant countries that Galileo's banned books were reprinted.
Basically, "Christendom" was a parallel political control mechanism, and would probably have done a pretty good job filling the role of the Chinese Imperial Court if it was able to operate as a single Empire of Faith, like an umbrella providing the same cultural control across a diverse political landscape. So I suspect there are qualities to European Christianity of the time that, if they didn't create this flowering, at least managed to get out of its way where other great religions did not.
posted by Naberius at 7:14 AM on February 24, 2017 [7 favorites]
Though I can't help wondering how much this effect would have been blunted without the reformation to provide a religious fragmentation to go along with political fragmentation. The Catholic church seems to have done a pretty damn good job of censoring and suppressing new ideas in territory where they held influence. As TFA points out, it was in Protestant countries that Galileo's banned books were reprinted.
Basically, "Christendom" was a parallel political control mechanism, and would probably have done a pretty good job filling the role of the Chinese Imperial Court if it was able to operate as a single Empire of Faith, like an umbrella providing the same cultural control across a diverse political landscape. So I suspect there are qualities to European Christianity of the time that, if they didn't create this flowering, at least managed to get out of its way where other great religions did not.
posted by Naberius at 7:14 AM on February 24, 2017 [7 favorites]
Wait, what about the theft? The guaranteed income that was mercantilsm?
no mention of how Europe harvested the intellectual fruits of the brainpower of the Islamic world?
posted by eustatic at 7:18 AM on February 24, 2017 [14 favorites]
no mention of how Europe harvested the intellectual fruits of the brainpower of the Islamic world?
posted by eustatic at 7:18 AM on February 24, 2017 [14 favorites]
The soil was always richer, and Christianity took hold in such agrarian zones, reflecting the seeded birth, death, and rebirth cycle (also found in precursor ancient religions).
posted by Brian B. at 7:18 AM on February 24, 2017
posted by Brian B. at 7:18 AM on February 24, 2017
I remember a radio discussion comparing "protestant" organizational structure of European companies to Chinese business structure. The trust of non-family members allowed the growth of large companies where the (until recently?) largest traditional Asian companies were bounded by the size of a family unit.
But... isn't...
Are Cyborgs In Our Future? 'Homo Deus' Author Thinks So - "These are not prophecies. We can still do something about it...
more interesting, topical to discuss? (I just have a few pulled muscles and am thinking how much easier and faster it'd be to run with some of those cool blades) We are all cyborg (soon :-)
posted by sammyo at 7:27 AM on February 24, 2017
But... isn't...
Are Cyborgs In Our Future? 'Homo Deus' Author Thinks So - "These are not prophecies. We can still do something about it...
more interesting, topical to discuss? (I just have a few pulled muscles and am thinking how much easier and faster it'd be to run with some of those cool blades) We are all cyborg (soon :-)
posted by sammyo at 7:27 AM on February 24, 2017
On just the first link: there is probably something to Mokyr's competition idea. But what about Tang and Song China? At that time (618-1115 if you're rusty on the dynasties), Europe was a backwater and China was the most innovative civilization on the planet, and even skirted the edges of the industrial revolution, creating a water-powered spinning machine, moveable type, and mechanical clocks.
What happened after that is complex, but one part of it is that Europe in the 1700s had relatively expensive labor, large textile enterprises, and poor transport, which made industrial machines immediately pay off.
posted by zompist at 7:52 AM on February 24, 2017 [5 favorites]
What happened after that is complex, but one part of it is that Europe in the 1700s had relatively expensive labor, large textile enterprises, and poor transport, which made industrial machines immediately pay off.
posted by zompist at 7:52 AM on February 24, 2017 [5 favorites]
The Catholic church seems to have done a pretty damn good job of censoring and suppressing new ideas in territory where they held influence.
Broadly speaking, this is a myth. Yes, you can find specific instances (Galileo is an obvious example, although it's way more complicated than "the Church says Science is Bad"), but you can find other instances where the Church and its functionaries championed learning and new technologies and even science. In short, the medieval and early modern Catholic Church was a land of contrast.
To answer the wider question, I think "Europe lucked into a period of growth and dominance just in time to loot the rest of the world, thus enabling Capitalism" is a good place to start.
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:56 AM on February 24, 2017 [26 favorites]
Broadly speaking, this is a myth. Yes, you can find specific instances (Galileo is an obvious example, although it's way more complicated than "the Church says Science is Bad"), but you can find other instances where the Church and its functionaries championed learning and new technologies and even science. In short, the medieval and early modern Catholic Church was a land of contrast.
To answer the wider question, I think "Europe lucked into a period of growth and dominance just in time to loot the rest of the world, thus enabling Capitalism" is a good place to start.
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:56 AM on February 24, 2017 [26 favorites]
Even the greatest magician in the world cannot pull a rabbit from a hat unless the rabbit is already in the hat.
posted by No Robots at 8:03 AM on February 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by No Robots at 8:03 AM on February 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
There's more to dig into here, but one quick thought in passing on this:
In particular, the existence of multiple competing states encouraged scientific and technological innovation.
Okay, maybe, but aren't we in another unique historical moment where those same competitive dynamics that helped create modernity may now be dangerously counterproductive to attempts to manage and remediate large scale, long term global problems, like human accelerated climate change? Might it not be a serious mistake to think we need the same things now? We don't really need tech innovation that much anymore so much as better politics and social mores around tech, in my opinion. We've already got the technology to solve most of humanity's most urgent problems, we just have resource allocation problems due to politics and debunked economic and scientific myths that influence human society in ways that are counterproductive to making the most beneficial uses of them. That's my read. I don't think we can compete our way out of the unique challenges of the man-made problems created by the solutions those same competitive pressures gave rise to in the first place.
In other words, what if that sort of competition can only generate the kinds of solutions and approaches to human problems that got us in this mess in the first place?
posted by saulgoodman at 8:06 AM on February 24, 2017 [11 favorites]
In particular, the existence of multiple competing states encouraged scientific and technological innovation.
Okay, maybe, but aren't we in another unique historical moment where those same competitive dynamics that helped create modernity may now be dangerously counterproductive to attempts to manage and remediate large scale, long term global problems, like human accelerated climate change? Might it not be a serious mistake to think we need the same things now? We don't really need tech innovation that much anymore so much as better politics and social mores around tech, in my opinion. We've already got the technology to solve most of humanity's most urgent problems, we just have resource allocation problems due to politics and debunked economic and scientific myths that influence human society in ways that are counterproductive to making the most beneficial uses of them. That's my read. I don't think we can compete our way out of the unique challenges of the man-made problems created by the solutions those same competitive pressures gave rise to in the first place.
In other words, what if that sort of competition can only generate the kinds of solutions and approaches to human problems that got us in this mess in the first place?
posted by saulgoodman at 8:06 AM on February 24, 2017 [11 favorites]
But what about Tang and Song China?
Metallurgy?
As horrible as guns are it's pretty complicated to make an alloy that doesn't kill the user. (although the history of science is vastly more subtle and convoluted) that trend of materials that don't exist in nature is certainly as significant as any cultural or social effect.
posted by sammyo at 8:15 AM on February 24, 2017
Metallurgy?
As horrible as guns are it's pretty complicated to make an alloy that doesn't kill the user. (although the history of science is vastly more subtle and convoluted) that trend of materials that don't exist in nature is certainly as significant as any cultural or social effect.
posted by sammyo at 8:15 AM on February 24, 2017
If we convert a sentence into a vector that captures the meaning of the sentence, then Google can do much better searches;I'd love to hear from someone who actually knows about this stuff if this is a legitimate and useful thing that actually makes sense in context. Both the article and most of the ones it links to seem, at least to a non-expert, to be filled both with huge and weird assumptions and also the sort of language and captionless unlabeled images I usually associate with crackpots. Is this woo or actual computer science / linguistics stuff worth spending time thinking about?
posted by eotvos at 8:25 AM on February 24, 2017 [3 favorites]
There's this unfortunate golden ageism on all sides at times. We can't look to our own past for solutions to modern problems. Those solutions were ultimately what caused them. The only way forward from here that isn't catastrophic, as far as I can tell, is some kind of global consensus and good faith cooperation--exactly the kind of stuff that organizational chaos and competitive pressures discourage.
posted by saulgoodman at 8:27 AM on February 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by saulgoodman at 8:27 AM on February 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
Like, I can't even say how many times I've met people who present as environmentally minded, but who romanticize historical polygamist societies or hermetic lifestyles. The heart wants what it wants, I know, but mathematically, polygamous societies and hermits consume more natural resources and just through sheer logistical mechanics are less energy and economically optimally efficient than nuclear families. The nuclear family structure turns out to be just about the most rational structure to build a society on, but conservatives have so badly poisoned the American cultural well with their blatantly dishonest and almost mocking exploitation of the "family values" marketing brand, a lot of otherwise very conscientious and enlightened people feel emnity toward the idea of the nuclear family. I did for most of my life, until I had one of my own. (That's more on the point about Golden Ageism, above.)
posted by saulgoodman at 8:39 AM on February 24, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by saulgoodman at 8:39 AM on February 24, 2017 [2 favorites]
Basically, "Christendom" was a parallel political control mechanism, and would probably have done a pretty good job filling the role of the Chinese Imperial Court if it was able to operate as a single Empire of Faith, like an umbrella providing the same cultural control across a diverse political landscape. So I suspect there are qualities to European Christianity of the time that, if they didn't create this flowering, at least managed to get out of its way where other great religions did not.
The printing press and hand mould (initially welcomed by the Catholic Church as GenjiandProust obliquely points out) was undeniably a force-multiplier for Protestant heresy. So if not science, then at least technology.
posted by Leon at 8:44 AM on February 24, 2017
The printing press and hand mould (initially welcomed by the Catholic Church as GenjiandProust obliquely points out) was undeniably a force-multiplier for Protestant heresy. So if not science, then at least technology.
posted by Leon at 8:44 AM on February 24, 2017
The nuclear family structure turns out to be just about the most rational structure to build a society on
Pretty sure giant hives (cities, in other words) beat out family units in terms of efficiency and resource consumption.
posted by Leon at 8:46 AM on February 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
Pretty sure giant hives (cities, in other words) beat out family units in terms of efficiency and resource consumption.
posted by Leon at 8:46 AM on February 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
Pretty sure giant hives (cities, in other words) beat out family units in terms of efficiency and resource consumption.
The core issues are sexual mores and child rearing. If these are not regulated, cities will not survive.
posted by No Robots at 8:49 AM on February 24, 2017
The core issues are sexual mores and child rearing. If these are not regulated, cities will not survive.
posted by No Robots at 8:49 AM on February 24, 2017
I look forward to reading all of this, but it makes sense on its surface. War drives technology and ingenuity, and if necessity is the mother of invention, then war is the father.
The earliest engineers made weapons. In fact the term "civil engineer" only served to differentiate those few who didn't make weapons (they made targets, as the old joke goes).
posted by rocket88 at 8:52 AM on February 24, 2017 [2 favorites]
The earliest engineers made weapons. In fact the term "civil engineer" only served to differentiate those few who didn't make weapons (they made targets, as the old joke goes).
posted by rocket88 at 8:52 AM on February 24, 2017 [2 favorites]
Tightly networked cities in practice are big resource hogs. People get hooked on consumption. There's debate about it, but that seems to be the empirical reality, is my understanding from Robert Krulwich, anyway, lol. That's about as deep as I go on this question. I'm prepared to be corrected.
posted by saulgoodman at 8:55 AM on February 24, 2017
posted by saulgoodman at 8:55 AM on February 24, 2017
But what about Tang and Song China? At that time (618-1115 if you're rusty on the dynasties), Europe was a backwater and China was the most innovative civilization on the planet, and even skirted the edges of the industrial revolution, creating a water-powered spinning machine, moveable type, and mechanical clocks.
What happened after that is complex, but one part of it is that Europe in the 1700s had relatively expensive labor, large textile enterprises, and poor transport, which made industrial machines immediately pay off.
Western Europe was a backwater. Byzantium controlled the Eastern Mediterranean coast from Sicily down to Egypt, most of the Black Sea, and territories well into central Asia. By 628 they had destroyed Persia, and as well as being the terminus for the Silk Road, they effectively blocked multiple Muslim invasions into Eastern Europe.
It was the gradual reduction of Byzantine power following 1204 that shifted Europe's political and economic center of gravity westward. The final destruction of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century, combined with the simultaneous opening of markets in Asia and the Americas by Western European maritime powers had as much to do with the rise of Western Europe as any inherent aspect of individual European nations. Qing isolationism at the beginning of the 17th century put the final nail in the coffin of the Silk Road, but also ruined Spain, whose silver was suddenly devalued. The Qing could have been a military and naval force to rival Western Europe, but the Manchu were more concerned with internal reorganization and the ever-present threat from central Asia. Into this vacuum came the Dutch and British East India companies, beginning a wave of more intensive, labor- and resource-extraction focused colonization of Africa, India, and SE Asia.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:55 AM on February 24, 2017 [11 favorites]
What happened after that is complex, but one part of it is that Europe in the 1700s had relatively expensive labor, large textile enterprises, and poor transport, which made industrial machines immediately pay off.
Western Europe was a backwater. Byzantium controlled the Eastern Mediterranean coast from Sicily down to Egypt, most of the Black Sea, and territories well into central Asia. By 628 they had destroyed Persia, and as well as being the terminus for the Silk Road, they effectively blocked multiple Muslim invasions into Eastern Europe.
It was the gradual reduction of Byzantine power following 1204 that shifted Europe's political and economic center of gravity westward. The final destruction of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century, combined with the simultaneous opening of markets in Asia and the Americas by Western European maritime powers had as much to do with the rise of Western Europe as any inherent aspect of individual European nations. Qing isolationism at the beginning of the 17th century put the final nail in the coffin of the Silk Road, but also ruined Spain, whose silver was suddenly devalued. The Qing could have been a military and naval force to rival Western Europe, but the Manchu were more concerned with internal reorganization and the ever-present threat from central Asia. Into this vacuum came the Dutch and British East India companies, beginning a wave of more intensive, labor- and resource-extraction focused colonization of Africa, India, and SE Asia.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:55 AM on February 24, 2017 [11 favorites]
The core issues are sexual mores and child rearing. If these are not regulated, cities will not survive.
I would say drainage and waste collection are also pretty important.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:56 AM on February 24, 2017 [12 favorites]
I would say drainage and waste collection are also pretty important.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:56 AM on February 24, 2017 [12 favorites]
The core issues are sexual mores and child rearing. If these are not regulated, cities will not survive.
I would say drainage and waste collection are also pretty important.
Pretty much the same thing.
posted by No Robots at 8:58 AM on February 24, 2017 [5 favorites]
I would say drainage and waste collection are also pretty important.
Pretty much the same thing.
posted by No Robots at 8:58 AM on February 24, 2017 [5 favorites]
Tightly networked cities in practice are big resource hogs. People get hooked on consumption.
Annoyingly I can't find the paper I read, but I do know that I use less energy getting to work in London (15 minute train ride with hundreds of other people) than I do out in the sticks (30 minute car ride on my own), and less energy heating a small flat surrounded on five sides by other small flats, than a large detached house in the suburbs.
posted by Leon at 9:08 AM on February 24, 2017 [3 favorites]
Annoyingly I can't find the paper I read, but I do know that I use less energy getting to work in London (15 minute train ride with hundreds of other people) than I do out in the sticks (30 minute car ride on my own), and less energy heating a small flat surrounded on five sides by other small flats, than a large detached house in the suburbs.
posted by Leon at 9:08 AM on February 24, 2017 [3 favorites]
Tightly networked cities in practice are big resource hogs. People get hooked on consumption.
saulgoodman
Can you provide some sources backing this up? Because I've seen the exact opposite, as Leon alludes to: cities are more resource-efficient due to things like economies of scale and density.
There's a fantasy of the environmental left of a rural, agrarian utopia, but the reality is the most environmentally-friendly way to organize people would be to pack us all into giant hive cities. Spreading people out into small groups is very resource costly.
posted by Sangermaine at 9:18 AM on February 24, 2017 [8 favorites]
saulgoodman
Can you provide some sources backing this up? Because I've seen the exact opposite, as Leon alludes to: cities are more resource-efficient due to things like economies of scale and density.
There's a fantasy of the environmental left of a rural, agrarian utopia, but the reality is the most environmentally-friendly way to organize people would be to pack us all into giant hive cities. Spreading people out into small groups is very resource costly.
posted by Sangermaine at 9:18 AM on February 24, 2017 [8 favorites]
Tightly networked cities in practice are big resource hogs.
Yes, just about everything I've read on this topic suggests the opposite: that cities are far more resource-efficient than dispersed development.
posted by Miko at 9:20 AM on February 24, 2017 [6 favorites]
Yes, just about everything I've read on this topic suggests the opposite: that cities are far more resource-efficient than dispersed development.
posted by Miko at 9:20 AM on February 24, 2017 [6 favorites]
Yeah can you also provide some data to back up your nuclear families are the most rational structure to build society on statement, saulgoodman? I would also note that there's a lot of space between nuclear families and living as hermits or in polygamous families.
posted by peacheater at 9:21 AM on February 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by peacheater at 9:21 AM on February 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
Are Cyborgs In Our Future? 'Homo Deus' Author Thinks So - "These are not prophecies. We can still do something about it...
To speed the day? Sign me up!
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:23 AM on February 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
To speed the day? Sign me up!
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:23 AM on February 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
So the below the fold links start to go all over the place, but isn't the question of how Europe ascended all just a rehash of Guns, Germs and Steel?
The book got some things wrong but it got some things right too.
posted by GuyZero at 9:52 AM on February 24, 2017 [3 favorites]
The book got some things wrong but it got some things right too.
posted by GuyZero at 9:52 AM on February 24, 2017 [3 favorites]
Agreed. It seems like OP put in a lot of effort, but I would have preferred just a single link to the aeon.co article. For me, everything below the fold is more distracting than enlightening.
In addition to GG&S, I'd like to mention Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 by Alfred W. Crosby, which argues that it was a combination of Physical Geography (prevailing winds, temperate climate) and Ecology (weeds, disease, flora, fauna) that enabled Europeans to colonize the Americas and subsequently the rest of the world. A somewhat simplistic picture (and by now, dated), but interesting nonetheless.
posted by Freelance Demiurge at 10:19 AM on February 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
In addition to GG&S, I'd like to mention Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 by Alfred W. Crosby, which argues that it was a combination of Physical Geography (prevailing winds, temperate climate) and Ecology (weeds, disease, flora, fauna) that enabled Europeans to colonize the Americas and subsequently the rest of the world. A somewhat simplistic picture (and by now, dated), but interesting nonetheless.
posted by Freelance Demiurge at 10:19 AM on February 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
If we convert a sentence into a vector that captures the meaning of the sentence, then Google can do much better searches;
I'd love to hear from someone who actually knows about this stuff
The use of the term "vector" here is conflating a tech tool (using numbers) with the dehumanizing aspect of the power of technology. The "big data" tools are not new, it's linear algebra and statistics. The math has been around since the 16th century (well I just googled for linear) but certainly standard for decades. But the ability to do computations on the insane amounts of data needed recent fast disk drives. So a word does hold a concept but a group of words may. So give every three words a unique number (permutations make that a lot of combinations) then run statistics on that.
So can you use some very clever tools that are hard to understand exactly what they do (Support Vector Machine:) to churn through a huge jumble of mess to find a pattern that matches close enough to a previous sample (training data). Sometimes it finds something surprising and sometimes what the operator wants to find.
Just a tool, but a really powerful tool, perhaps not as important as fire or wheel. Close?
posted by sammyo at 10:25 AM on February 24, 2017
I'd love to hear from someone who actually knows about this stuff
The use of the term "vector" here is conflating a tech tool (using numbers) with the dehumanizing aspect of the power of technology. The "big data" tools are not new, it's linear algebra and statistics. The math has been around since the 16th century (well I just googled for linear) but certainly standard for decades. But the ability to do computations on the insane amounts of data needed recent fast disk drives. So a word does hold a concept but a group of words may. So give every three words a unique number (permutations make that a lot of combinations) then run statistics on that.
So can you use some very clever tools that are hard to understand exactly what they do (Support Vector Machine:) to churn through a huge jumble of mess to find a pattern that matches close enough to a previous sample (training data). Sometimes it finds something surprising and sometimes what the operator wants to find.
Just a tool, but a really powerful tool, perhaps not as important as fire or wheel. Close?
posted by sammyo at 10:25 AM on February 24, 2017
It seems absurd to discount Christian evangelism as a critical component of European expansion. This exclusion is part of the desire for a purely materialist understanding of history from which ideas are excluded. While perhaps a reaction against grand narratives, this is itself a pernicious grand narrative.
posted by No Robots at 10:27 AM on February 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by No Robots at 10:27 AM on February 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
There's a weird phenomena anthropologists and planners have been puzzling over where urban environments seem to feed always accelerating rates of per capita resource consumption, is my understanding. There should be efficiency gains achievable there, but we end up consuming so much more at so much faster rates, it doesn't pan out, more of a behavioral problem, maybe? I don't know for sure but that's the most recent thinking on the subject I've heard about.
posted by saulgoodman at 10:29 AM on February 24, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by saulgoodman at 10:29 AM on February 24, 2017 [4 favorites]
It's hard to overstate the importance of the Mongols. One big disadvantage faced by China and Mesopotamia in the age of exploration was recently having been set on fire.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 10:47 AM on February 24, 2017 [7 favorites]
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 10:47 AM on February 24, 2017 [7 favorites]
What? No mention of the tse-tse fly? Or how the oral constitution of the Iroquois Confederacy influenced the Declaration of the Rights of Man?
posted by My Dad at 10:59 AM on February 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by My Dad at 10:59 AM on February 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
I'll go out on a limb and say that science is indeed intrinsically good.
posted by fraxil at 11:11 AM on February 24, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by fraxil at 11:11 AM on February 24, 2017 [3 favorites]
I'll go out on a limb and say that science is indeed intrinsically good.
It's only as good as the ideas behind it.
posted by No Robots at 11:28 AM on February 24, 2017
It's only as good as the ideas behind it.
posted by No Robots at 11:28 AM on February 24, 2017
I haven't read the article and don't have time right now to track this thread, but this is an old hypothesis, one that I think Randall Kennedy discusses in his book on the great powers. However, there is a lot of writing about the role of colonialism in the rise of the West--as well as other non-value-laden causal factors. Just a few theories. Apologies if these are very random ponits.
1. Slavery - There's been a lot of scholarship on slavery as central to the rise of Western capitalism, starting from Eric Williams and most recently written about by Sven Beckert. As Greg Grandin writes:
The argument that capitalism was dependent on slavery is, of course, not new. In 1944, Eric Williams, in Capitalism and Slavery, made the case. In 1968, the historian Lorenzo Greene wrote that slavery “formed the basis of the economic life of New England: about it revolved, and on it depended, most of her other industries.” Even before the expansion of slave labor in the South and into the West, slavery was already an important source of northern profit, as was the already exploding slave trade in the Caribbean and South America. Banks capitalized the slave trade and insurance companies underwrote it. Covering slave voyages helped start Rhode Island’s insurance industry, while in Connecticut, some of the first policies written by Aetna were on slave lives. In turn, profits made from loans and insurance policies were plowed into other northern businesses. Fathers who “made their fortunes outfitting ships for distant voyages” left their money to sons who “built factories, chartered banks, incorporated canal and railroad enterprises, invested in government securities, and speculated in new financial instruments” and donated to build libraries, lecture halls, universities and botanical gardens. Many of the millions of gallons of rum distilled annually in Massachusetts and Rhode Island were used to obtain slaves, who were then brought to the West Indies and traded for sugar and molasses, boiled to make more rum to be used to acquire more slaves. Haiti’s plantation’s purchased 63 percent of pickled fish from New England. In Massachusetts alone, David Brion Davis writes, the “West Indian trade employed some ten thousand seaman, to say nothing of the workers who built, outfitted, and supplied the ships.”
2. Real estate and labor - There's been a lot written about the role of the New World as a way to siphon off a labor surplus from Western Europe and creating an economic context in which the Atlantic west always had high employment.
3. Arable land - Another unexpected benefit of colonialism was the increased acres of arable land to grow crops, such as cotton--a prerequisite for the industrial revolution.
4. Coal deposits - Similarly, England had abundant coal deposits that served as a necessary but not sufficient condition for the Industrial revolution.
And of course, there are things like germs, the creation of a global trading network that spanned the New World and the Indian Ocean, military conquest, etc.
posted by johnasdf at 11:45 AM on February 24, 2017
1. Slavery - There's been a lot of scholarship on slavery as central to the rise of Western capitalism, starting from Eric Williams and most recently written about by Sven Beckert. As Greg Grandin writes:
The argument that capitalism was dependent on slavery is, of course, not new. In 1944, Eric Williams, in Capitalism and Slavery, made the case. In 1968, the historian Lorenzo Greene wrote that slavery “formed the basis of the economic life of New England: about it revolved, and on it depended, most of her other industries.” Even before the expansion of slave labor in the South and into the West, slavery was already an important source of northern profit, as was the already exploding slave trade in the Caribbean and South America. Banks capitalized the slave trade and insurance companies underwrote it. Covering slave voyages helped start Rhode Island’s insurance industry, while in Connecticut, some of the first policies written by Aetna were on slave lives. In turn, profits made from loans and insurance policies were plowed into other northern businesses. Fathers who “made their fortunes outfitting ships for distant voyages” left their money to sons who “built factories, chartered banks, incorporated canal and railroad enterprises, invested in government securities, and speculated in new financial instruments” and donated to build libraries, lecture halls, universities and botanical gardens. Many of the millions of gallons of rum distilled annually in Massachusetts and Rhode Island were used to obtain slaves, who were then brought to the West Indies and traded for sugar and molasses, boiled to make more rum to be used to acquire more slaves. Haiti’s plantation’s purchased 63 percent of pickled fish from New England. In Massachusetts alone, David Brion Davis writes, the “West Indian trade employed some ten thousand seaman, to say nothing of the workers who built, outfitted, and supplied the ships.”
2. Real estate and labor - There's been a lot written about the role of the New World as a way to siphon off a labor surplus from Western Europe and creating an economic context in which the Atlantic west always had high employment.
3. Arable land - Another unexpected benefit of colonialism was the increased acres of arable land to grow crops, such as cotton--a prerequisite for the industrial revolution.
4. Coal deposits - Similarly, England had abundant coal deposits that served as a necessary but not sufficient condition for the Industrial revolution.
And of course, there are things like germs, the creation of a global trading network that spanned the New World and the Indian Ocean, military conquest, etc.
posted by johnasdf at 11:45 AM on February 24, 2017
behavioral problem, maybe?
You think?
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 12:28 PM on February 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
You think?
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 12:28 PM on February 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
This article does not mention the colonialism that provided the raw materials for commerce, that created financial surfeit, to make it possible for the rise of the traveling, educated, scientific, class. The slavery that this was built on is the real stuff of European success. Trade, trade, trade and theft.
This article seems to be about white, christian supremacy. Precisely because it does not detail the cost of other lives disrupted. There is an inherent, even today, disrespect for those who live on the earth, who live in agrarian societies, hunter gatherers, and folks with a low footprint. This is cheesy propaganda, part of the backlash to global thinking, and the respect for other cultural histories, and structures.
posted by Oyéah at 1:21 PM on February 24, 2017 [3 favorites]
This article seems to be about white, christian supremacy. Precisely because it does not detail the cost of other lives disrupted. There is an inherent, even today, disrespect for those who live on the earth, who live in agrarian societies, hunter gatherers, and folks with a low footprint. This is cheesy propaganda, part of the backlash to global thinking, and the respect for other cultural histories, and structures.
posted by Oyéah at 1:21 PM on February 24, 2017 [3 favorites]
Cities and resources: I've been wondering how to simultaneously explain the local per-person efficiency of large cities with their regional and global gluttony. Possibly relevant:
(a) in the US, cities' *net* advantage for CO2 emissions seems to be zero, because our cities grow suburbs.
(b) Cities grow (and grow suburbs) because cities make people rich, from e.g. agglomeration effects. The wealth not going back into high rent for small apartments is mostly paying for resource extraction elsewhere.
(c) The spatial layout that makes apartments easier to heat in cold places makes them harder to cool in hot places (waste heat from heating is an advantage; waste heat from cooling makes everyone worse off). The world is, alas, getting hotter.
(d) To support concentrated humanity and industry, we need to ship a lot of material and make technological processes that could previously be handled biologically (waste management, cooling, daylight). I thought I had a engineer-ecologists' rough cut at the life-cycle costs of some of those systems, but can't find it. Not building it into the living costs of a city dweller is bad accounting, though.
Eventually the marketization and technologization explode, collapse, and the cities get smaller.
And *that* is where I get back to the original Why Europe and Not China? question. As historians point out pretty often, for most of history the question would have been Why China and Not Europe?, and history isn't over. China, like India, has managed very high populations and specializations repeatedly in history, but every boom eats up easy resources that take a long time to recover. Europe is on its, what, third boom? and the US on its first. The burning question is how the US does on the rebound.
posted by clew at 1:36 PM on February 24, 2017 [3 favorites]
(a) in the US, cities' *net* advantage for CO2 emissions seems to be zero, because our cities grow suburbs.
(b) Cities grow (and grow suburbs) because cities make people rich, from e.g. agglomeration effects. The wealth not going back into high rent for small apartments is mostly paying for resource extraction elsewhere.
(c) The spatial layout that makes apartments easier to heat in cold places makes them harder to cool in hot places (waste heat from heating is an advantage; waste heat from cooling makes everyone worse off). The world is, alas, getting hotter.
(d) To support concentrated humanity and industry, we need to ship a lot of material and make technological processes that could previously be handled biologically (waste management, cooling, daylight). I thought I had a engineer-ecologists' rough cut at the life-cycle costs of some of those systems, but can't find it. Not building it into the living costs of a city dweller is bad accounting, though.
Eventually the marketization and technologization explode, collapse, and the cities get smaller.
And *that* is where I get back to the original Why Europe and Not China? question. As historians point out pretty often, for most of history the question would have been Why China and Not Europe?, and history isn't over. China, like India, has managed very high populations and specializations repeatedly in history, but every boom eats up easy resources that take a long time to recover. Europe is on its, what, third boom? and the US on its first. The burning question is how the US does on the rebound.
posted by clew at 1:36 PM on February 24, 2017 [3 favorites]
Tightly networked cities in practice are big resource hogs.
---
Yes, just about everything I've read on this topic suggests the opposite: that cities are far more resource-efficient than dispersed development.
My reading indicates the same; or, at least, that relatively denser populations are more energy efficient than dispersed ones. But my reading on the matter has only concerned the contemporary situation, with electricity consumption and fossil fuel-using technologies like automobiles. No reason to think this held in the Renaissance, say, right? Energy consumption was measured in hay to feed the horses and wax for your candles. There the vast rural areas produced food and the cities were centers of trade, artisanry and administration. I can imagine more 'consumption of resources' taking place per capita by these relatively wealthy sectors in the cities than in the rural areas by the peasantry bound to the land, despite the occasional seigneurial castle.
posted by bertran at 1:41 PM on February 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
---
Yes, just about everything I've read on this topic suggests the opposite: that cities are far more resource-efficient than dispersed development.
My reading indicates the same; or, at least, that relatively denser populations are more energy efficient than dispersed ones. But my reading on the matter has only concerned the contemporary situation, with electricity consumption and fossil fuel-using technologies like automobiles. No reason to think this held in the Renaissance, say, right? Energy consumption was measured in hay to feed the horses and wax for your candles. There the vast rural areas produced food and the cities were centers of trade, artisanry and administration. I can imagine more 'consumption of resources' taking place per capita by these relatively wealthy sectors in the cities than in the rural areas by the peasantry bound to the land, despite the occasional seigneurial castle.
posted by bertran at 1:41 PM on February 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
The question of slavery is an interesting one. It is argued that a capitalist system cannot exist with slavery as it restricts the growth of wage labor and the labor market- this is Weber's point about Rome.
However, Marx argues that any point in history contains vestigial elements of previous eras. Certainly the emergence of Capital in Europe coincides with mass slavery on an almost unparalleled scale in the New World. Even after slavery was ended (at least in Europe) other conditions continued in different parts of the world continued to have similar effects. The mechanization of textile production in England not only ended household and small-scale workshop weaving in England, freeing up workers to enter the wage-labor market (and creating a labor reserve), it also destroyed the textile industry in India. This had the effect of further suppressing wages, and lowering the costs of the raw materials being imported to supply the new mechanized production methods. It got to the point where, by the end of the Civil War, Indian cotton prices were competitive with those of slave-produced Southern cotton.
Even today, many of the raw materials and goods consumed in first-world capitalist countries are produced in places where workers do not participate freely in the labor market, and in some cases, even exist in states of de facto slavery. It might be argued that rather than entering a phase of late-Capitalism, we are only just beginning to enter the first phase of Capitalism that does not contain the stage of primitive accumulation within it.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 1:48 PM on February 24, 2017 [3 favorites]
However, Marx argues that any point in history contains vestigial elements of previous eras. Certainly the emergence of Capital in Europe coincides with mass slavery on an almost unparalleled scale in the New World. Even after slavery was ended (at least in Europe) other conditions continued in different parts of the world continued to have similar effects. The mechanization of textile production in England not only ended household and small-scale workshop weaving in England, freeing up workers to enter the wage-labor market (and creating a labor reserve), it also destroyed the textile industry in India. This had the effect of further suppressing wages, and lowering the costs of the raw materials being imported to supply the new mechanized production methods. It got to the point where, by the end of the Civil War, Indian cotton prices were competitive with those of slave-produced Southern cotton.
Even today, many of the raw materials and goods consumed in first-world capitalist countries are produced in places where workers do not participate freely in the labor market, and in some cases, even exist in states of de facto slavery. It might be argued that rather than entering a phase of late-Capitalism, we are only just beginning to enter the first phase of Capitalism that does not contain the stage of primitive accumulation within it.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 1:48 PM on February 24, 2017 [3 favorites]
I wrote a series of blog posts about this, which mostly took an informational exchange and preservation perspective. I'd like to think I added something to the topic.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 3:47 PM on February 24, 2017
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 3:47 PM on February 24, 2017
Even today, many of the raw materials and goods consumed in first-world capitalist countries are produced in places where workers do not participate freely in the labor market, and in some cases, even exist in states of de facto slavery. It might be argued that rather than entering a phase of late-Capitalism, we are only just beginning to enter the first phase of Capitalism that does not contain the stage of primitive accumulation within it.
Or that a captive labor population may be a necessary requirement to jumpstart capitalism.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:47 PM on February 24, 2017
Or that a captive labor population may be a necessary requirement to jumpstart capitalism.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:47 PM on February 24, 2017
the colonialism that provided the raw materials for commerce, that created financial surfeit, to make it possible for the rise of the traveling, educated, scientific, class. The slavery that this was built on is the real stuff of European success. Trade, trade, trade and theft.
The colonialism that was precluded upon Europe getting the resources to colonize other countries? I feel like "Europe stole from other countries" misses out on the (IMHO) way more interesting question of just why Europe (and not, say, China) wound up in a position to steal from other countries. Making out the West to be particularly evil is just as much about western exceptionalism (and Orientalism) as it is to make Western ideology particularly good.
Slavery is precluded upon surplus land -- it's actually pretty crappy for intensive farming practices. (Surplus land, of course, can be stolen land, or land that's recently depopulated due to plagues, or land that's newly available to cultivate due to new technologies.) So that's a useful method of accumulating resources after one gets an edge, but it still leaves the question open -- why did Europe get that edge to begin with?
posted by steady-state strawberry at 6:01 PM on February 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
The colonialism that was precluded upon Europe getting the resources to colonize other countries? I feel like "Europe stole from other countries" misses out on the (IMHO) way more interesting question of just why Europe (and not, say, China) wound up in a position to steal from other countries. Making out the West to be particularly evil is just as much about western exceptionalism (and Orientalism) as it is to make Western ideology particularly good.
Slavery is precluded upon surplus land -- it's actually pretty crappy for intensive farming practices. (Surplus land, of course, can be stolen land, or land that's recently depopulated due to plagues, or land that's newly available to cultivate due to new technologies.) So that's a useful method of accumulating resources after one gets an edge, but it still leaves the question open -- why did Europe get that edge to begin with?
posted by steady-state strawberry at 6:01 PM on February 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
Slavery is precluded upon...
psst, I don't think that word means what you think it means...
posted by Dysk at 7:03 PM on February 24, 2017 [2 favorites]
psst, I don't think that word means what you think it means...
posted by Dysk at 7:03 PM on February 24, 2017 [2 favorites]
This Cities are Wasteful vs Cities are The Best Way sub discussion really deserves a posting/thread of its own. I have always wondered about this. I feel mistrustful of most of the debate as it usually seems to spring from ideas that at their base have a moral or aesthetic impetus. Intuitively one would think that Cities More Efficient is obvious but I'm really not so sure. You would have to look at a lot of inputs and knock on effects to come up with an answer, and it might be very hard to really exclude your own opinions from placing a thumb on the scale. Also it is very dynamic, I mean, if you look at Portland Oregon for instance, the city created a huge super fund site under an earlier regime of what city was. Another peculiar feedback loop might be the second home phenomena. I grew up in NY City and a lot of people, not just the elites, had second homes. I remember in the 80's several people I met were buying houses in Pennsylvania, I guess to satisfy the urge to own a home, while living in NYC. Don't get me wrong I personally for the most part cannot stand Portland's Suburbs and vehemently disagree with the advocates of sprawl, (oh yes they do exist here,) however, I just don't think the "debate" is as simple as most advocates of one or the other think.
posted by Pembquist at 7:47 PM on February 24, 2017
posted by Pembquist at 7:47 PM on February 24, 2017
I can imagine more 'consumption of resources' taking place per capita by these relatively wealthy sectors in the cities than in the rural areas by the peasantry bound to the land, despite the occasional seigneurial castle.
It's complex but I still wouldn't think so. Simply the concentration of markets in the cities would create a more efficient distribution system for hay, produce, etc than you could possibly achieve in rural regions where not everyone grows hay, but everyone needs it, and has to traverse longer distances to sell and buy it. And anyway, historically, cities had so many extremely poor people that I don't know that the per capita consumption would overwhelm the hinterlands. The aristocracy has mostly represented 1% of the population or less, and the "middle classes were" far smaller until the 19th century numbering only about 15% even by 1900 (they were not the "median" or "mode" classes). Cities in a sense made it more possible for extremely poor people with no land resources to survive.
Then, too, another thing is that cities produce effects that are utterly unique to cities that you can't get any other way - and a lot of that is intellectual/social/cultural, and hard to quantify, but certainly desirable in any system that can build on incubation. The processes that enable a 21st-century farm to be somewhat efficient (disregarding fossil fuel inputs) were not developed in rural hinterlands but in labs and pharma-tech sectors that cities support and foster and in institutions that cities fund.
It does deserve its own post.
posted by Miko at 8:03 PM on February 24, 2017 [3 favorites]
It's complex but I still wouldn't think so. Simply the concentration of markets in the cities would create a more efficient distribution system for hay, produce, etc than you could possibly achieve in rural regions where not everyone grows hay, but everyone needs it, and has to traverse longer distances to sell and buy it. And anyway, historically, cities had so many extremely poor people that I don't know that the per capita consumption would overwhelm the hinterlands. The aristocracy has mostly represented 1% of the population or less, and the "middle classes were" far smaller until the 19th century numbering only about 15% even by 1900 (they were not the "median" or "mode" classes). Cities in a sense made it more possible for extremely poor people with no land resources to survive.
Then, too, another thing is that cities produce effects that are utterly unique to cities that you can't get any other way - and a lot of that is intellectual/social/cultural, and hard to quantify, but certainly desirable in any system that can build on incubation. The processes that enable a 21st-century farm to be somewhat efficient (disregarding fossil fuel inputs) were not developed in rural hinterlands but in labs and pharma-tech sectors that cities support and foster and in institutions that cities fund.
It does deserve its own post.
posted by Miko at 8:03 PM on February 24, 2017 [3 favorites]
the city created a huge super fund site under an earlier regime of what city was
And when you throw this in I also think you have to look at what midcentury white flight and environmental racism and classism was all about. It wasn't a regime of "city" that made that sort of decision, but a regime that said cities were to be left to the most desperate. Because the fortunes of the future and the good life for the white elite lay elsewhere.
posted by Miko at 8:05 PM on February 24, 2017
And when you throw this in I also think you have to look at what midcentury white flight and environmental racism and classism was all about. It wasn't a regime of "city" that made that sort of decision, but a regime that said cities were to be left to the most desperate. Because the fortunes of the future and the good life for the white elite lay elsewhere.
posted by Miko at 8:05 PM on February 24, 2017
One of the more depressing things about the 2016 election has been realizing that most people just learned the lesson they wanted to learn from it.
posted by AdamCSnider at 11:35 PM on February 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by AdamCSnider at 11:35 PM on February 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
Looks like the issues I'm thinking of apply mainly to so-called mega cities--major metropolitan areas like Manhattan, Chicago, etc. These larger major urban hubs account for a vastly disproportionate share of overall national resource consumption right now, on a per capita basis, in practice, regardless of the planning theory and presumed efficiencies of scale.
posted by saulgoodman at 8:13 AM on February 25, 2017
posted by saulgoodman at 8:13 AM on February 25, 2017
As much as urban dwellers dismiss and aim contempt at more rural lifestyles and flyover states, the rural and less urban areas are in practice doing a much better job of using natural resources efficiently.
posted by saulgoodman at 8:17 AM on February 25, 2017
posted by saulgoodman at 8:17 AM on February 25, 2017
Maybe that's part of why so many conservative environmentalists question the sincerity of the Dems' commitment to environmental issues and see it as all party politics. They definitely do seem to see the Dems as the party of big cities like New York and Chicago.
posted by saulgoodman at 8:27 AM on February 25, 2017
posted by saulgoodman at 8:27 AM on February 25, 2017
the rural and less urban areas are in practice doing a much better job of using natural resources efficiently.
Citations needed.
"Rural and less urban areas" are almost certainly going to consume fewer resources, but they're consuming fewer resources because there are fewer people. That doesn't make them better at exploiting resources on a person-by-person basis.
The paradox you are probably thinking about is the Jevons paradox, which states that technological progress which reduces resource consumption may result in a "rebound" effect in which people find other ways to use the same resource because it's cheaper. However, that doesn't have anything to do with the relative resource consumption of city vs. rural dwellers.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 9:09 AM on February 25, 2017 [2 favorites]
Citations needed.
"Rural and less urban areas" are almost certainly going to consume fewer resources, but they're consuming fewer resources because there are fewer people. That doesn't make them better at exploiting resources on a person-by-person basis.
The paradox you are probably thinking about is the Jevons paradox, which states that technological progress which reduces resource consumption may result in a "rebound" effect in which people find other ways to use the same resource because it's cheaper. However, that doesn't have anything to do with the relative resource consumption of city vs. rural dwellers.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 9:09 AM on February 25, 2017 [2 favorites]
I was going off the research I linked above. The mega cities currently consume disproportionate amounts of natural resources per capita is how I'm reading that. Am I misreading? It's possible. My attention to detail is pretty crap these days.
posted by saulgoodman at 9:41 AM on February 25, 2017
posted by saulgoodman at 9:41 AM on February 25, 2017
I don't think that's what the article is saying. For example, it says:
The total energy consumption of the 27 megacities is 26,347 PJ, which is ∼6.7% of global energy consumption. This percentage is about the same as the percentage of global population that lives in megacities.
posted by peacheater at 9:45 AM on February 25, 2017 [2 favorites]
The total energy consumption of the 27 megacities is 26,347 PJ, which is ∼6.7% of global energy consumption. This percentage is about the same as the percentage of global population that lives in megacities.
posted by peacheater at 9:45 AM on February 25, 2017 [2 favorites]
The Radiolab show I heard suggested the interpretation I'm leaning on here, but I can't vouch for its rigor or accuracy. I'll try to find a cite for that later. That program very explicitly argued that the megacities are currently responsible for the majority of natural resource consumption at a disproportionate per capita consumption rate, but I want to be sure that's accurate, too.
posted by saulgoodman at 9:50 AM on February 25, 2017
posted by saulgoodman at 9:50 AM on February 25, 2017
Can't find the cite I wanted, but this one sort of supports the claims. Not sure if CNN can be considered a reputable source, but the stories primary sources seem to be.
Yet according to U.N. Habitat, the world's cities emit almost 80 percent of global carbon dioxide as well as "significant amounts of other greenhouse gases
posted by saulgoodman at 10:19 AM on February 25, 2017
Yet according to U.N. Habitat, the world's cities emit almost 80 percent of global carbon dioxide as well as "significant amounts of other greenhouse gases
posted by saulgoodman at 10:19 AM on February 25, 2017
The use of the term "vector" here is conflating a tech tool (using numbers) with the dehumanizing aspect of the power of technology.Now I'm even more confused. Dehumanizing aspect of technology? Is this something coming from the articles I didn't read, or am I just missing something fundamental here?
My initial (and to be fair, unexpressed) question was more along the lines of, how do you define the space in the first place? How do you decide on the magnitude of vectors in it? If image and sentence tags are yes/no binary options, as shown in the examples, does that actually provide enough information to do anything useful? If one in a hundred images include "smile" and one in a thousand include "skeptical," and a one in a million includes both, you could invent a dot product between the two. . . but it's not at all clear it has any relationship to actual meaning, and it seems like your choice of data set would overwhelm any fundamental truth that comes up in the outcome. To say that the overlap between smile and skeptical is 10^-8 or whatever doesn't describe my understanding of the world in any meaningful way, and reporting that a sentence that includes a smile is 10^-8 likely to include skepticism sounds like crazy talk. In short, is a linear space anything close to a useful model for meaning?
The part where it gets decided whether or not "smiling" and "crying" are orthogonal seems incredibly hard and vital to me, given any set of text or image inputs and meaning tags I can imagine generating. Finding away to define the overlap between "joyful" and "happy" seems even harder, given the paucity of text sources or tag lists that are likely to include both in contexts similar enough they'd be recognized by matching to nearby words.
The articles seem to skip right over the really hard part and spends all its time on the easy part - thinking about relationships in a space that's already defined. How do you define that space in the first place? Performing linear algebra on measurements is great, but only if the measurements make sense and actually are measurements.
(It's entirely possible I'm missing something fundamental here. Like I said, I know nothing about the topic.)
posted by eotvos at 2:07 PM on February 25, 2017 [1 favorite]
The Crosby book linked upthread is far more enlightening than almost any other conversation about this.
posted by aspersioncast at 1:46 PM on February 26, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by aspersioncast at 1:46 PM on February 26, 2017 [1 favorite]
Insanely fuzzy discussion.
the rural and less urban areas are in practice doing a much better job of using natural resources efficiently.
This is a vast generalization. Using fewer resources is not the same thing as using resources efficiently. Efficiency is defined in relationship to some sort of output. A lower demand for resources can also come from much lower economic activity and productivity - sure, maybe you use less, but you do and create less as well. By this definition of "efficient," the poorest people will always be the most "efficient" users of resources.
What the article notes that the discussion doesn't is that a consideration of "efficiency" demands a consideration of results/output - a link to productivity, whether economic or in other forms. So the real question is: could you retain the same levels of productivity and resource use that cities produce in less dense areas of development? I doubt it, because so much of productivity depends on proximity. So, of course on the face of it, a city like, I don't know, Philadelphia may consume more resources than the entire state of Idaho, which is rural, but has about the same number in terms of population. Yet the per capita GDP contribution for Philly is close to $60,000, while Idaho's is only $35, 235. Philly is smaller and more dense, but clearly much more efficient -- its per capita figure is much higher, exceeding the cost of resources used to a much greater proportion.
posted by Miko at 9:08 PM on February 26, 2017 [3 favorites]
the rural and less urban areas are in practice doing a much better job of using natural resources efficiently.
This is a vast generalization. Using fewer resources is not the same thing as using resources efficiently. Efficiency is defined in relationship to some sort of output. A lower demand for resources can also come from much lower economic activity and productivity - sure, maybe you use less, but you do and create less as well. By this definition of "efficient," the poorest people will always be the most "efficient" users of resources.
What the article notes that the discussion doesn't is that a consideration of "efficiency" demands a consideration of results/output - a link to productivity, whether economic or in other forms. So the real question is: could you retain the same levels of productivity and resource use that cities produce in less dense areas of development? I doubt it, because so much of productivity depends on proximity. So, of course on the face of it, a city like, I don't know, Philadelphia may consume more resources than the entire state of Idaho, which is rural, but has about the same number in terms of population. Yet the per capita GDP contribution for Philly is close to $60,000, while Idaho's is only $35, 235. Philly is smaller and more dense, but clearly much more efficient -- its per capita figure is much higher, exceeding the cost of resources used to a much greater proportion.
posted by Miko at 9:08 PM on February 26, 2017 [3 favorites]
« Older Feel The Pulse Of The Morning Once Again | We can fly with our spirit Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
(cue the Dolby "Science" audio clip)
posted by sammyo at 6:56 AM on February 24, 2017 [3 favorites]