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Squalid posted:this might surprise you but killing landlords will not actually put a roof over anyone's head, although undoubtedly its a more interesting subject than modern economics. I mean technically it would, as demand for land drops precipitately and price follows suit, in some places becoming negative as landowners desperately seek someone to take over before it causes them to get guillotined. Cheap land in turn allows low-income families to purchase a plot and live on it. I'm not saying that this is the most efficient way to reach a market-based solution, just that it would in time succeed at the stated goal.
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Dec 10, 2019 06:14
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Squalid posted:this might surprise you but killing landlords will not actually put a roof over anyone's head, although undoubtedly its a more interesting subject than modern economics. what do you think would have changed if the gracchi hadn't been assassinated
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Dec 10, 2019 06:16
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Okay I think this is getting a bit far off the ancient road.
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Dec 10, 2019 06:50
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Senior Dog posted:what do you think would have changed if the gracchi hadn't been assassinated Rome would have turned into that mouse utopia experiment.
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Dec 10, 2019 07:27
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Squalid posted:i really don't follow. I don't understand how you can conflate land with housing units since land can be used for many purposes besides rental units. I don't understand your story about shifting chains of custody or how it changes incentives for investment. I don't understand why you would think this kind of taxation is "easier" than property taxes, which are common place around the world and generally supported by economists. Although I do at least understand why someone would prefer to repeat hollow slogans and focus on cheap power fantasies rather than economics, dismal a subject as it is, and I regret my unwillingness to back down on this point. Your first point about using the land for other things is valid, but often constrained by either zoning, or the fact that cheap housing may be the next best option to expensive housing. Slum lording is still quite good money after all. The point about shifting chains of custody is to point out that the underlying supply here is inflexible. Unlike a more typical good like a toaster or widget, which a supplier can simply make less of, the land is always there. Taxes on inelastic goods, like land or food, are generally considered economically efficient, in that they cause no dead weight loss. Classic Georgism does advocate for property taxes instead of rent control for a number of reasons, but there are a few reasons why rent control is nice. Rent control is easier than property taxes in a few ways. One, it is not actually a tax, and something normal everyday homeowners with mortgages don't need to worry about. This makes it vastly more palatable in a lot of ways, since the average homeowner looking at a big old tax added onto their mortgage and gets upset. Rent control fucks landlords, but that's about it. Two, a classic property tax involves slicing a chunk of the value off of the land holder's profits and moving it to the government. In theory, this is then spent on schools and welfare and social programs and poo poo. Thus the value stays on the system and is not 'lost.' But you do have to go through that step of redistribution and that isn't going to necessarily e.g. help renters directly. This is a "complicated" system of redistribution. Rent control, in effect, just straight subsidized renters at landlords expense. This can be seen as "simpler" in a lot of ways. Third, a classic Georigist property tax requires assessments of the unimproved value of the land, sans buildings or oil derricks or what have you. This sounds easy but is actually hard. To circle this around to ancient poo poo, you can generally tell when a polity is doing well when they can accurately assess the value of the land. You have to send people out to the land, figure out who owns it, and figure out (in ye olden times) how much could grow there. Over estimate, and you'll over tax your peasants and they'll rebel. Under estimate, and your neighbor who got it right will rip your face off. This requires expertise and loyal buerocrats, and losing the capacity to assess land is one good step on a downward spiral for a polity. This is the simple case, where you're "just" figuring out the hypothetical caloric output any given combination of sunlight and soil quality can get you. But in modern times, in urban areas, the value of land is arguably harder to quantify. As any good HOA will gladly remind you, anything might affect the inherent property value of a particular plot. Bins left out, hedges untrimmed, access to public transit, melanin content of the population, all of these can affect the value of land without the actual building on the site playing into it. Efficiently administrating a land value tax would be really hard, an ever changing project, and probably lead to some heisenbergian nightmare where in reassessing causes changes in the market requiring rereassessment. And again, all that has nothing to do with what you actually chose to do with the land. Are you building a factory? A nice home for yourself? A thriving local business? Doesn't matter. Rent control just says "gently caress that, if you are renting this out then you're just (economically) leeches anyway, have some price control." Its theoretically less efficient, but its taxing an economically dead behavior and redistributing cleanly to a group that, by definition, is less well off, neatly (as I linked before) easing burdens on other aspects of the state welfare apparatus without requiring direct administrative costs. Again, this does depend on how its implemented, but the same goes for a property tax. In short:p Rent control good. Property taxes good. Public housing good.
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Dec 10, 2019 07:32
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Grand Fromage posted:Okay I think this is getting a bit far off the ancient road. Oops, sorry, was on the last page.
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Dec 10, 2019 07:32
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The Romans apparently for the most part lived in apartment buildings made out of primitive materials, though by reports they also had running water. While they were apparently prone to collapse and burning down, it seemed to work out for them. Interestingly enough, their top floors would be the ones that had the lowest rent, because - naturally - there were no elevators, so you'd have to buck your rear end up and down 9 flights of stairs every day. Apparently Mussolini and co. uncovered a mostly intact insula while loving around and digging up part of Rome. There's an animation of a laser scan of the building here: https://vimeo.com/109825918 It looks like a Nosferatu vampire's going to jump out and attack at any point, doesn't it?
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Dec 10, 2019 10:05
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Grand Fromage posted:Okay I think this is getting a bit far off the ancient road. Speaking of ancient roads, did Romans have buses? I was thinking about it and there was certainly large enough cities to merit using wagons to get around, especially if you're carrying amphora around. #ClassicNUMTOTS Kaal fucked around with this message at 14:09 on Dec 10, 2019 |
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Dec 10, 2019 14:06
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Kaal posted:Speaking of ancient roads, did Romans have buses? I was thinking about it and there was certainly large enough cities to merit using wagons to get around, especially if you're carrying amphora around. #ClassicNUMTOTS No room for them really, the roads between cities could have accommodated buses but not those within cities for the most part. If you wanted to catch a ride somewhere on somebody’s wagon you could probably just do that — in a lot of places in the world you still can.
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Dec 10, 2019 14:25
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How would a Roman an average family move to a different city? Do they already own a cart if they are rich enough to move? Or do they buy or rent a cart or hire a driver? It is probably all the above, depending on period or socioeconomic status. What would a Roman middle manager who get assigned a post in Lutecia or something do about his family?
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Dec 10, 2019 15:24
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Grand Fromage posted:Okay I think this is getting a bit far off the ancient road. E: shutting up
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Dec 10, 2019 15:28
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Was having an old patrician name still meaningful later on in the empire? Like would being a patrician Cornelius or Claudius help at all if you were trying to be a governor or something under Diocletian?
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Dec 10, 2019 16:35
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VictualSquid posted:How would a Roman an average family move to a different city? Do they already own a cart if they are rich enough to move? Or do they buy or rent a cart or hire a driver? I think this would depend on what you mean by "average." The most common Roman citizens in the cities were itinerant laborers who found work in what they were good at wherever work was available. Apartments got cheaper and smaller the higher up you went, so chances are they wouldn't really have more possessions than they could carry and wouldn't be traveling far for work in general. Anyone wealthy enough to have their own house would probably be wealthy enough to ensure their family is provided for if they have to travel elsewhere for their post, and could hire or own a 4-wheeled covered stagecoach called a raeda if they needed to travel with their family and baggage. I don't think they would just completely uproot and move everything from one empty house to another like we do.
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Dec 10, 2019 16:53
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OctaviusBeaver posted:Was having an old patrician name still meaningful later on in the empire? Like would being a patrician Cornelius or Claudius help at all if you were trying to be a governor or something under Diocletian? Kind of, but not really. The actual old patrician families were almost all wiped out in the civil wars and early empire and certainly there was only very tenuous connection to the republican nobility in the equestrian elite of the post-crisis government. If you were named Cornelius or whatever in the time of Diocletian, people would probably have been more inclined to think “oh, he must be descended from a Cornelian freedman” than “oh, he must be a blue blood”. The gens Anicia, which was quite prominent in the 4th-6th centuries and at times seems to have been considered the noblest house in the empire, claimed descent from the Anicii of the republic, but the first consulship of those Anicii was held in 160 BC — the optimates of the late republic would probably have thought of them as parvenus.
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Dec 10, 2019 17:01
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Nessus posted:The Romans apparently for the most part lived in apartment buildings made out of primitive materials, though by reports they also had running water. While they were apparently prone to collapse and burning down, it seemed to work out for them. Interestingly enough, their top floors would be the ones that had the lowest rent, because - naturally - there were no elevators, so you'd have to buck your rear end up and down 9 flights of stairs every day. That reminds me of the quote about turning a city of bricks into a city of marble. I'd love to see what, say, punic wars era Rome looked like because my mental image of it is definitely the city of marble, and it's all temples and forums and aquaducts rather than dumpy apartments.
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Dec 11, 2019 02:35
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Even principate era Rome would've mostly been a Kowloon Walled City nightmare once you got away from the big public areas and into the residential districts.
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Dec 11, 2019 02:44
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Even the big public areas....We see maps of the Forum, and the maps themselves are deceptive, because you don't have the temporary structures, and the people, and the animals, and the garbage, and the odors, and so on. It gives people an idealized view.
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Dec 11, 2019 02:56
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Oh sure, but they wouldn't have been so closed in. I really think that when you look at pics of Kowloon Walled City, you're getting an excellent vibe of what most of the pleb residential areas of a big Roman city were like. The forums would've been dirty and crowded, but you'd be able to see the sky.
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Dec 11, 2019 03:07
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OctaviusBeaver posted:Was having an old patrician name still meaningful later on in the empire? Like would being a patrician Cornelius or Claudius help at all if you were trying to be a governor or something under Diocletian? I love how the nobles of Renaissance Italy who were all essentially German descendants of Guthrum the Basher or Agiulf the Stabber tried to pretend they were pure Italians descended from pure Roman families.
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Dec 11, 2019 03:46
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Was there any sort of medical knowledge or tradition discouraging women from drinking alcohol during pregnancy? Did women drink as much as men in general? Are they any busts depicting people that appear to have foetal alcohol syndrome, or records showing the same?
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Dec 11, 2019 06:36
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turntabler posted:Was there any sort of medical knowledge or tradition discouraging women from drinking alcohol during pregnancy? Did women drink as much as men in general? Are they any busts depicting people that appear to have foetal alcohol syndrome, or records showing the same? I don't know what time period you mean, but a bunch of 15th century medical works suggest a pregnant woman should avoid water and drink wine, as it will make the baby strong and also more likely it will be a boy.
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Dec 11, 2019 06:51
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Epicurius posted:I don't know what time period you mean, but a bunch of 15th century medical works suggest a pregnant woman should avoid water and drink wine, as it will make the baby strong and also more likely it will be a boy. I did mean ancient Rome but am keen for any interesting info in general. Thanks!
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Dec 11, 2019 07:00
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Senior Dog posted:what do you think would have changed if the gracchi hadn't been assassinated the brothers gracchi did nothing wrong
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Dec 11, 2019 07:49
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turntabler posted:Was there any sort of medical knowledge or tradition discouraging women from drinking alcohol during pregnancy? Did women drink as much as men in general? Are they any busts depicting people that appear to have foetal alcohol syndrome, or records showing the same? Traditionalist Romans abhorred alcohol generally, and in the early Republic drinking was nominally prohibited to women as well as slaves and men under 35. This changed over time, as women's rights broadly improved. That being said, even in the imperial period Roman society was fairly conservative about intoxication generally. Wine was typically leavened with water, beers were usually low-gravity sessions, and drugs like opium or cannabis were generally used sparingly and not recreationally. Studies show that light drinking (1-4 units per week) presents little risk of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, and mental deficit generally requires routine binge-drinking and/or 9+ units per week. This sort of consumption would be seen as a serious moral failing by Roman society, and any FAS children would likely be viewed in religious terms rather than a purely medical one. Epicurius posted:I don't know what time period you mean, but a bunch of 15th century medical works suggest a pregnant woman should avoid water and drink wine, as it will make the baby strong and also more likely it will be a boy. Statistically this is actually true! Light to moderate alcohol consumption can increase birth weights and increase the chance of male children. Not that 15th century doctors were that interested in evidence-based medicine, much less a mild statistical correlation. This isn't really the sort of thing that modern pediatricians will recommend, of course, in an era where any alcohol consumption by pregnant women is seen as too high a risk. Of course modern understanding of risk is constantly developing - latest studies on air quality indicate that it can have a much more significant impact than typical alcohol consumption. Studies on areas with routinely poor outdoor air quality (i.e. Chinese factory cities or American wildfire areas) indicate not only statistical impacts but direct infringement on fetal development (particulate traveling through the mother and into the fetus). Preliminary studies on indoor air quality (mothers typically spend most of their time indoors, particularly near-term) indicate that living within 50 meters of a road (i.e. being urban) has a more detrimental impact on birth weight than routine alcohol consumption. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5139916/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6518425/ Kaal fucked around with this message at 15:06 on Dec 11, 2019 |
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Dec 11, 2019 14:32
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turntabler posted:Was there any sort of medical knowledge or tradition discouraging women from drinking alcohol during pregnancy? Did women drink as much as men in general? Are they any busts depicting people that appear to have foetal alcohol syndrome, or records showing the same? It's important to note that fetal alcohol syndrome is actually pretty rare. Even among heavy binge drinkers it only manifests in about 5% of cases, and you have to consume a ridiculous amount of alcohol to count as a binge drinker (think multiple bottles of wine per day). While the ancients didn't understand what FAS was, it wouldn't be common enough for them to really identify a trend. In any case, the Romans discouraged binge drinking and public drunkenness and watered down their wine as a matter of course.
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Dec 11, 2019 14:43
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chitoryu12 posted:It's important to note that fetal alcohol syndrome is actually pretty rare. Even among heavy binge drinkers it only manifests in about 5% of cases, and you have to consume a ridiculous amount of alcohol to count as a binge drinker (think multiple bottles of wine per day). While the ancients didn't understand what FAS was, it wouldn't be common enough for them to really identify a trend. In any case, the Romans discouraged binge drinking and public drunkenness and watered down their wine as a matter of course. You might be interested to read about how even the impact of binge drinking has been misunderstood by modern doctors. Statistically the impact of a handful of binge episodes in the course of a pregnancy is insignificant, and it is the interaction between binge episodes and high levels of routine drinking that is most concerning. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5139916/
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Dec 11, 2019 15:13
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skasion posted:No room for them really, the roads between cities could have accommodated buses but not those within cities for the most part. If you wanted to catch a ride somewhere on somebody’s wagon you could probably just do that — in a lot of places in the world you still can.
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Dec 11, 2019 16:46
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Everyone remembers the famous dictum, after all: "Cartage delenda est."
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Dec 11, 2019 16:52
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Kaal posted:You might be interested to read about how even the impact of binge drinking has been misunderstood by modern doctors. Statistically the impact of a handful of binge episodes in the course of a pregnancy is insignificant, and it is the interaction between binge episodes and high levels of routine drinking that is most concerning. My understanding on this subject is the exact effects of alcohol on pregnancy is not at all well understood (in part, because double-blind studies and the like that would let you really get the data you need to drill down on it would be stupendously, hilariously unethical) and the general sense of what level of alcohol is a risk changes nearly year to year (and there is concern that there's effects that are more subtle than full-blown fetal alcohol syndrome that would require good data to tease out). So even doctors are very wary of making definitive pronouncements on the subject, so non-doctors probably shouldn't either  .The impression I get is that a few years ago there was more of a "eh, one glass of wine a week/month isn't going to be a big deal" and now there's more of a concern there is no 'safe' level (but that is more "we have no idea what a safe level would be, so we will not say any specific amount is safe" rather than "we have hard data that each glass of wine makes your baby 0.5% dumber"). But unfortunately that is true for a staggering amount of "is X safe for pregnant women?" kind of things.
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Dec 11, 2019 17:09
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nrook posted:Everyone remembers the famous dictum, after all: 
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Dec 11, 2019 17:36
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evilweasel posted:My understanding on this subject is the exact effects of alcohol on pregnancy is not at all well understood (in part, because double-blind studies and the like that would let you really get the data you need to drill down on it would be stupendously, hilariously unethical) and the general sense of what level of alcohol is a risk changes nearly year to year (and there is concern that there's effects that are more subtle than full-blown fetal alcohol syndrome that would require good data to tease out). So even doctors are very wary of making definitive pronouncements on the subject, so non-doctors probably shouldn't either Doctors (and Americans especially) want to avoid taking a stand because of their professional lawsuit-avoidance concerns. But when the vast majority of women drink to some degree during a pregnancy, and at the same time contend with guilt and a black hole of information on the subject, it seems a poor idea for experts to simply say "what you don't do probably can't hurt you". Especially when all evidence shows that the impact of light to moderate alcohol consumption is insignificant. The whole "no safe level" thing is just a confusion about statistically proving a negative. There's no "safe level" of car trips either, that doesn't mean that pregnant mothers should avoid being in cars. The whole thing just reeks of superstition to me, to be honest. And I say that as someone who hardly drinks anymore - maybe a couple units per week. This sort of thing certainly goes beyond the history thread though. Ancient Roman pregnancy practices are actually relatively well-known thanks to some well-preserved texts, including one specifically about Gynecology. It talks in great detail about the invention of midwifery, surgical techniques, diets for expecting mothers (I hope you enjoy eggs and rice), etc. It's interesting stuff. Kaal fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Dec 11, 2019 |
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Dec 11, 2019 18:41
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Halloween Jack posted:I remember Mike Duncan saying that there was a rule against bringing cartage into Rome during the day, which is part of why it was so dangerous at night. Any idea how long that practice continued, or if they implemented it in other cities? That seems to have been a common traffic management rule in many cities. No idea about a timeframe, but it was apparently general Roman practice.
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Dec 11, 2019 22:06
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Kaal posted:Ancient Roman pregnancy practices are actually relatively well-known thanks to some well-preserved texts, including one specifically about Gynecology. It talks in great detail about the invention of midwifery, surgical techniques, diets for expecting mothers (I hope you enjoy eggs and rice), etc. It's interesting stuff. edit: if there's anything in there about surgical abortion (not chemical), please give me a reference for what text you're quoting, i found a reference to the practice in the 1620s and i need a footnote. (I already have Tertullian and Ovid)
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Dec 11, 2019 22:08
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HEY GUNS posted:well post the eggs and rice, dude I wish I had better sources on the eggs and rice. A variety of articles have talked about it, but they all cite various books. Eggs and rice were simply bland foods that were intended to soothe pregnancy pains. I would guess that it would be something along the lines of an omelette like this one (Ova Spongia Ex Lacte): https://www.mrbreakfast.com/breakfast/recreating-worlds-omelette-recipe/ Check out Soranus of Ephesus' Gynecology. He's got a section entitled "XIX. Whether One Ought to Make Use of Abortives and Contraceptives and How?" as well as another entitled "III. On Extraction by Hooks and Embryotomy." I don't have access to it from here, but it might prove useful. The parts I could read from the Google preview were pretty great though, going into technique and observation ("good midwives are ___, and it's more important that they are experienced than that they are themselves mothers") as well as the more metaphysical ("Lets chat about how mental and moral changes can affect the health of the fetus"). I know that the Romans could successfully perform cesarean sections, though from what I believe most surgical extractions were fatal to the mother and generally conducted only in the course of triage when only the child could be saved. But the mere fact that he was talking about embryotomy makes me think that they were attempting surgical abortions for the benefit of the mother as we would know them today. At a guess, I'd think it would be particularly necessary during severe stillbirths or other late-term problems. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=acls;cc=acls;view=toc;idno=heb04290.0001.001 https://books.google.com/books?id=YsKWfh31gxwC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false Kaal fucked around with this message at 23:54 on Dec 11, 2019 |
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Dec 11, 2019 23:42
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Kaal posted:I wish I had better sources on the eggs and rice. A variety of articles have talked about it, but they all cite various books. Eggs and rice were simply bland foods that were intended to soothe pregnancy pains. I would guess that it would be something along the lines of an omelette like this one (Ova Spongia Ex Lacte): https://www.mrbreakfast.com/breakfast/recreating-worlds-omelette-recipe/ The woman I'm thinking of one hundred percent lived. Her husband later murdered her, but not for that.
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Dec 12, 2019 01:58
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Thanks for the excellent answers re drinking in pregnancy! In my TV show influenced mind the patrician women just sat around drinking it up all day and had lots of affected children that were not spoken of. Interesting to know that wasn't the case.
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Dec 12, 2019 02:23
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There are a lot of things like that which when you think about them and have the realization it doesn't make sense, that's because it doesn't, you're right. Like the idea we discussed before of ancient people drinking alcohol all the time instead of water. It just doesn't hold up to any scrutiny, and that's because it's not true.
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Dec 12, 2019 02:30
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Nessus posted:The Romans apparently for the most part lived in apartment buildings made out of primitive materials, though by reports they also had running water. While they were apparently prone to collapse and burning down, it seemed to work out for them. Interestingly enough, their top floors would be the ones that had the lowest rent, because - naturally - there were no elevators, so you'd have to buck your rear end up and down 9 flights of stairs every day. That's really amazing. thanks for the share
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Dec 12, 2019 04:29
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Do we know when the shift occurred in Greco-Roman areas of the preference for smaller penises to big swingin’ dicks?
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Dec 12, 2019 05:22
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Pontius Pilate posted:Do we know when the shift occurred in Greco-Roman areas of the preference for smaller penises to big swingin’ dicks?
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Dec 12, 2019 05:36
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