Autonomous Truck Completes driverless run

[Draco Dracul]

If having large amounts of capital was the driving force behind industrialization, why were fuedal empires, like Russia, some of the last places in Europe to industrialize? Because it took until the modern day for us to have the kind of wealth disparity that existed in fuedal nations of the time.

Because they didn't have large amounts of capital. No feedback effect. A few people with a lot and not much incentive to gain more by development; they just had the invade someone approach to getting more personal wealth.

I'm going to have to ask what do you think capital is? Because saying that people that controlled basically all the wealth didn't have capital is a wierd statement.

[Madner Kami]

If having large amounts of capital was the driving force behind industrialization, why were fuedal empires, like Russia, some of the last places in Europe to industrialize? Because it took until the modern day for us to have the kind of wealth disparity that existed in fuedal nations of the time.

Because they didn't have large amounts of capital. No feedback effect. A few people with a lot and not much incentive to gain more by development; they just had the invade someone approach to getting more personal wealth.

I'm going to have to ask what do you think capital is? Because saying that people that controlled basically all the wealth didn't have capital is a wierd statement.

Just being rich doesn't do anything, especially when being rich is very relative. Russia was mainly a connection of miniscule fiefdoms and while that is true for the more western variants of feudalism as well (particular the Holy Roman Empire iteration of what is now Germany), Russia lacked several critical components, namely trade, infrastructure, large cities and an (increasingly) indipendent and expanding group of the population that can best be described as traders and tradesmen which would develop into the middle class we know today and which was so critically important for the birth of capitalism. Russia, for the most part, was nothing but largely isolated farmsteads sending a few coins to their local lord, while Europe was an increasingly metropolitan, highly interconnected and highly interactive area.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Yeah I came across a bit on that here:

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.10 ... -24892-6_2

[Draco Dracul]

If having large amounts of capital was the driving force behind industrialization, why were fuedal empires, like Russia, some of the last places in Europe to industrialize? Because it took until the modern day for us to have the kind of wealth disparity that existed in fuedal nations of the time.

Because they didn't have large amounts of capital. No feedback effect. A few people with a lot and not much incentive to gain more by development; they just had the invade someone approach to getting more personal wealth.

I'm going to have to ask what do you think capital is? Because saying that people that controlled basically all the wealth didn't have capital is a wierd statement.

Just being rich doesn't do anything, especially when being rich is very relative. Russia was mainly a connection of miniscule fiefdoms and while that is true for the more western variants of feudalism as well (particular the Holy Roman Empire iteration of what is now Germany), Russia lacked several critical components, namely trade, infrastructure, large cities and an (increasingly) indipendent and expanding group of the population that can best be described as traders and tradesmen which would develop into the middle class we know today and which was so critically important for the birth of capitalism.

Technically they would develop into the upperclass we know today or sink back into the lower class as "the middle class" is largely a lie to meant to keep the working class divided against itself.

Russia, for the most part, was nothing but largely isolated farmsteads sending a few coins to their local lord, while Europe was an increasingly metropolitan, highly interconnected and highly interactive area.

And that's the result of capital being more concentrated in Russia than it was in most of the rest of Europe. Capital pooled in one place rather than moving stagnates.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

No wonder nobody cares about wwi

[phantom000]

If having large amounts of capital was the driving force behind industrialization, why were fuedal empires, like Russia, some of the last places in Europe to industrialize? Because it took until the modern day for us to have the kind of wealth disparity that existed in fuedal nations of the time.

Because they didn't have large amounts of capital. No feedback effect. A few people with a lot and not much incentive to gain more by development; they just had the invade someone approach to getting more personal wealth.

I'm going to have to ask what do you think capital is? Because saying that people that controlled basically all the wealth didn't have capital is a wierd statement.

Just being rich doesn't do anything, especially when being rich is very relative. Russia was mainly a connection of miniscule fiefdoms and while that is true for the more western variants of feudalism as well (particular the Holy Roman Empire iteration of what is now Germany), Russia lacked several critical components, namely trade, infrastructure, large cities and an (increasingly) indipendent and expanding group of the population that can best be described as traders and tradesmen which would develop into the middle class we know today and which was so critically important for the birth of capitalism. Russia, for the most part, was nothing but largely isolated farmsteads sending a few coins to their local lord, while Europe was an increasingly metropolitan, highly interconnected and highly interactive area.

I think everyone is kinda confusing 'capital' with 'liquidity' which, well, aren't completely different but they're not exactly the same thing either.

Liquidity: a concept in economics involving the convertibility of assets and obligations.
Capital: a factor of production that is not wanted for itself but for its ability to help in producing other goods

'Liquid capital' is what we think of as 'cash' because it's the most easily converted, which after all is the entire point of money in the first place. Medieval Europe was comparatively stagnant because they had very little ready cash. Places like England, France and Italy weren't exactly poor but its hard to invest in commercial ventures when even the king had to measure his wealth in cattle, sheep and grain instead of gold and silver. Serfdom was a way to collect taxes from a population that had no money so they collected labor instead.

The push for industrialization came from a need to meet steadily rising demand for manufactured products, such as cloths and tools which meant make them faster and cheaper. To do that they had to rely more on machines, a trend that had been going on since the Romans actually, but then the machines themselves had to get faster and faster, which led to what James Burke described as a 'technological cascade' because if the machines allow you to produce goods faster and better then you can also produce the machines faster and better.

I think the reason England was the first to industrialize was because they had an unusually high population density, thanks to good farmland and new cultivation techniques, and a very high amount liquid capital thanks to their growing trade empire. Russia was much slower to industrialize because at the time it was almost the exact opposite, low population density and little liquid capital.

[Nealithi]

This is an aside. But the last two pages of this thread have really achieved a first for me. Well since I became an adult.
In the past two pages you guys have made me feel stupid.

I can read the words but following all the implications is actually giving me a headache. I am not saying any one of you is wrong. But that getting into colonizing and India vs Russia and the growth of the modern world economically has gone so far over my head I am waiting for the plane to de-orbit.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

This is an aside. But the last two pages of this thread have really achieved a first for me. Well since I became an adult.
In the past two pages you guys have made me feel stupid.

I can read the words but following all the implications is actually giving me a headache. I am not saying any one of you is wrong. But that getting into colonizing and India vs Russia and the growth of the modern world economically has gone so far over my head I am waiting for the plane to de-orbit.

What do you want to know?

[phantom000]

This is an aside. But the last two pages of this thread have really achieved a first for me. Well since I became an adult.
In the past two pages you guys have made me feel stupid.

I can read the words but following all the implications is actually giving me a headache. I am not saying any one of you is wrong. But that getting into colonizing and India vs Russia and the growth of the modern world economically has gone so far over my head I am waiting for the plane to de-orbit.

Well, that's what happens when grad-students start arguing.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I don't think the distinction of capital and liquidity is the issue.

Liquidity is just money (or ultimately fungible assets), but very specifically money, and not really termed for social concentration of wealth but the singular product manufactured by society designed specifically to change hands (and deteriorate in value as a natural course of population growth).

Capital is a slightly more parent term and denotes the more mathematical type framing of an economic/commercial valued substance. Capital reference includes money and fungible assets at its most base but also what that money turns into as a manifestation of one's operation with more specific terms of structure and human variables.

Wealth, as the main issue of conflict, is an issue from the outset. Feudal monarchies had wealth in the hands of more permanent caste structures of people that would pretty much just hold land in their families until the end of time, under rule of shifting rulers and an ever stagnant population of mass servants.

Every country has a set ingredient list of abolishing serfdom, establishing a nation-state, and developing a more integrated economic system involving land ownership, not in any particular order.

The key polarity here, is that while Britain focused a lot more on microdevelopment of its economic infrastructure, Germany had a much more stronger sense of unification and followed an intellectual pursuit and became the heaviest market in Europe. Unlike Britain and France, they grew in size while maintaining the same GDP per capita, which might have led to their monarchical dissolution resulting in them siding with Austria in their conflict with Serbia. Anyhoo, Britain tends to come off more like Firangis while Russia adequately is represented by the Deep Space 9 station itself who was siding with the Klingons (French) and Romulans (Sweden/Italy) in the Dominion conflict.