D&D - Mediaval Social, Political & Economical Structure.

[S'mon]

the civilized world has always been tied up in a more or less global more or less liberal* economic system. It's easy to simplify the past, but the past was never simple.

*Liberal in the sense that the people who bought things here and sold them there could pocket the profits of the transactions and become wealthy thereby.

But what's your definition of 'civilised'?! I always thought it meant something like "lives in cities", plus perhaps "post tribal". Sometimes the word civilisation is misused to mean 'culture', eg "The Yanomani civiliation" but I always thought that eg "The Indus River Valley Civilisation" was a legitimate use of the term.

 

[pemerton]

This was in 1998, I think her gross income was about £14K, the tax rate AIR was 25%, plus 10% National Insurance which applied to almost all her income. The allowance I think was £4.5K.

I missed the national insurance bit. In Australia there is a 1.5& medicare levy in addition to the 15% rate, although I think that it may be less than 1.5% for low income earners. (Superannuation in Australia is funded by a 9% levy on employers which is then paid into private funds - so sort of like a tax-farmed payroll tax.)

Besides confirming what I already knew - namely, that Australia has fairly low income tax rates by OECD standards - your story shows that the UK tax free threshold is revised from time to time - whereas in Australia it has been at $6,000 for a long time. The minimum wage in Australia is about $30,000 full time, and I think the median full time wage would be around $50,000, so the tax free threshold is not a very big part of any full time worker's income.

There is some talk at the moment about singificantly increasing the threshold as part of the income tax changes that would be associated with introducing a carbon tax, but the current political state of play in Australia is such that it's hard to know what will eventually result from these deliberations . . .

had no income at the time, doing my PhD - we had actually been better off with me getting a tax-free student access fund grant from my University.

Overall not a good situation. I can see why sobbing was in order!

I had an easier financial time with my PhD - I had a tax exempt stipend (about $17,000 pa) plus money from sessional teaching, and my partner was working full time as a high school teacher (earning somewhere in the mid-40-thousands, I think). This was 2000-2003 - I ended up getting my job before I actually finished my doctorate (in 2006), which solved whatever minimimal financial pressures we had.

 

[RedTonic]

I'm not sure about the "how long" - over time complexity builds up, but redundant law can also be swept away. The law of land tenure was more complex in pre-modern than modern Britain, for example. But I agree with your points about "function" and "historical conditions".

As far as I know, it's not really the practice to, ah, "tidy up" the law books and remove outdated, redundant, or contradictory law & precedent. Doing so would be costly, among other things. (Also, if we ditched all the blue laws, we wouldn't have them to joke about.)

 

[Celebrim]

But what's your definition of 'civilised'?! I always thought it meant something like "lives in cities"...

That's how I was using the term. I wasn't loading it up. Anywhere you find cities, you find long distance - and often indeed global - trade. Isolation is the exception, not the expectation. Even in pre-Columbian North America, which we don't normally think of as civilized (possibly because small pox and horses tipped the balance between the agarian city dwellers and their nomadic competitors) we find continent spanning trade - Michigan copper and wild rice turns up in the desert southwest. Colorado obsidian turns up in the northeast. There is this undocumented vast, for lack of a better term, capitalist network of trading going on prior to the development of written language or the wheel.

In the rest of the world, with writing, wheels, and sailing ships it's even more so. Lately there has been this fad for 'locally grown food'. But even the notion that global trade in food is a recent phenomenom turns out not to be completely true. Whereever you find cities, you find trade in food and it turns out that a not insubstantial amount of that food is coming from somewhere other than the local farmland. Indeed, pretty much any city bigger than 'village' turns out to have had a food network extending hundreds of miles going all the way back to Roman times, and if we had records probably before that.

 

[pemerton]

As with the Marx interpretation, it's hard to go fully into the global economy issue within the confines of board rules.

I would put it like this - there has always been widespread trade, but the orientation of entire local economies towards participation in the global economic system is something more modern. Or to put it another way - in early times, naturally enough the rich have more than the poor. But the shaping of entire economies to satisfy the consumption demands of the rich in a more-or-less global market is a more modern thing.

Some indicia of the change are the giving over of large tracts of formerly subsistence agricultural land to commercial (and especially non-staple food) crops. And the growth of urban slums.

In case it's not obvious, the main picture of the modern economy (and the social structures that it produces) that I'm drawing on here is Weberian/post-Weberian.

 

[Celebrim]

As with the Marx interpretation, it's hard to go fully into the global economy issue within the confines of board rules.

I would put it like this - there has always been widespread trade, but the orientation of entire local economies towards participation in the global economic system is something more modern.

The percentage of the world economy which has become globalized has increased, but the notion that specific local economies depend in large part or entirely on global trade is not something more modern. There have been villages in China producing porceline for the international luxury market since at least the European dark ages, and villages in Switzerland almost wholly devoted to lace production for a continent wide luxury market since the middle ages.

Or to put it another way, we are having this argument...

Good Will hunting bar scene.

 

[pemerton]

the notion that specific local economies depend in large part or entirely on global trade is not something more modern.

That's not quite what I said.

There have been villages in China producing porceline for the international luxury market since at least the European dark ages

China also achieved real economic growth in the Song dynasty, although it didn't last, and was still more important than Britain as a centre of world production through to the late 18th century. China is something of a puzzle case for Weber-style accounts of modernity - one treatment that I know of that seems at least plausible is Marshall Hodgson's.

This is one of the challenges in setting a fantasy RPG in China.

Or to put it another way, we are having this argument

I'm not sure I follow. I'm being sincere in this discussion. I'm saying what I think, and doing my best to explain where I'm coming from in relation to some potentially controversial claims.

I teach social theory in a leading Australian law school. I have been published in serious law and philosophy journals. I'm not trying to "pull rank" in this discussion, but I don't quite see why I should hold back either in deploying what I regard as my expertise. (It's certainly common on this forum to see professional engineers, IT experts, game designers etc deploy their expertise when relevant.)

If you think I'm wrong, by all means says so. Or if you think board rules preclude it, say that instead. It's a completely reasonable move to make in these sorts of discussions, which obviously touch on important political questions. But I don't understand why you want to take it to a meta-level about who's (self-)educated and who's just a wanker.

 

[Raven Crowking]

who's just a wanker.

Please don't pull me into this.......


RC

 

[Celebrim]

That's not quite what I said.

Ok, so now I'm confused. You said:

"there has always been widespread trade, but the orientation of entire local economies towards participation in the global economic system is something more modern."

Explain.

I'm not sure I follow. I'm being sincere in this discussion. I'm saying what I think, and doing my best to explain where I'm coming from in relation to some potentially controversial claims.

Me too, and by no means am I upset. I didn't mean that we were having the argument in that movie in the sense of a social contest or one any other meta-level where the content is irrelevant except as a means of demonstrating superiority. I mean that we are literally discussing the substance of that argument, in that the substance of the argument was supposed to be whether or not the pre-Revolutionary War American colonies had an economy that was dominately modern and industrial or dominately pre-modern agarian. I'm working on the assumption here that you have more of your own opinion on the matter and own take on the whole notion of how a modern economy can be defined (if indeed its a really meaningful distinction in the first place) than the 'villain' in the peice. If you must view the discussion as a metaargument, then let's persume that I'm viewing you as Will, and me as the thoughtless villain with only superficial knowledge.

Although personally, I'm not interested in meta arguments, but in the knowledge and thought itself.

So by all means, unload, because if this is your area of expertise, then I'd love to hear you info dump because there would be a good chance then that I'd learn something new (which is generally not a threat in most internet discussion).

 

[S'mon]

I would put it like this - there has always been widespread trade, but the orientation of entire local economies towards participation in the global economic system is something more modern.

That's my impression too, although it is a gradient rather than either/or. Egyptian mummies have been found containing South American cocaine AIR, but I doubt ancient Egyptian peasants were wearing Chinese-manufactured loincloths.