Comment by ceuk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ceuk | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Can you expand on the idea that slave labour is "vastly less efficient"? Is it just a motivation thing?

And is there any good evidence/sources for this? Surely both groups generally performed pretty extreme levels of backbreaking labour. I can't exactly imagine a slave slacking off while literally being whipped.

Also, even if feudalism made us more efficient at food production as you say* - did it not also make societies less effective at producing great works of infrastructure (roads being a good example) than imperial Rome? One just needs to compare the dark ages/low middle ages to the Roman era to see the stark contrast.

Isn't the entire narrative basically: Roman prosperity -> bad times -> rediscovery of classic values (renaissance) -> parity with the Romans 1000 years later?

Genuine questions, not trying to be combative. My history just might not be very good

* Also I'd be interested to find out if there were more famines during pax romana or in the period after the fall of the western empire..

Yes, I made an edit but I will put it also here:

> The important part is incentives to work harder. Slaves only have the incentives to avoid the whip. They do not own what they produce. They need to be closely supervised and micromanaged. In contrast many forms of serfdom allowed to the serfs to keep some of the stuff they produced so they had incentives to work more efficiently.

Serfs often were provided a bit of land of their own that they could cultivate for themselves.

Note that many people point out rightfully that where were many forms of serfdom and some where closer so slavery while others were more free. Also the development of big cities only really happened towards the end of the medieval period so it was a longer process and not like immediate benefit.

> Isn't the entire narrative basically: Roman prosperity -> bad times -> rediscovery of classic values (renaissance) -> parity with the Romans 1000 years later?

Yes that is the narrative created by renaissance people to explain whey they are better than the people in the medieval period. It is basically propaganda that has survived till this day.

The truth is things got much worse before they got better. The whole inquisition, witch hunts, religious fundamentalism, yeah that happened AFTER the medieval period. That is modernity. It was this transition period that saw lots of war and plagues and much uncertainty. So it is natural that people longed for a romanticized golden age that they project their ideas on.

The dark ages were originally called dark in the sense that there are less written sources from this time period. They are "dark" in the sense that historians know less about them time, like blind spots. They are not dark because times where horrible. That is a modern interpretation.

Roads are a poor example. Goods and people travelled far more efficiently by water, roads were primarily for military use.

Historians today don't use the term "dark ages" because in reality they weren't that dark.

The term "dark ages" was used to refer to how we (i.e. people in the present/historians) didn't have a lot of info about that period. As in, something dark is something you can't see into very well. The ages indeed weren't dark themselves though, that's a misunderstanding of the term and that misconception is exactly why historians try to avoid the term nowadays.

Roads were primarily built for military use, but once they were built anyone travelling on foot would benefit from them, which meant had real economic impacts. That said, boats can carry far more goods than pack mules far faster, and don't eat a ton of fodder every day. There's a reason all the big old cities are on rivers. It's also why the Roman empire was primarily on the Mediterranean.

If anyone wants to read pages and pages of info about classical-era and roman roads, I recommend https://acoup.blog/2023/06/02/collections-roman-roads/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com