They innovated in areas where slaves didn't helped.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_metallurgy#Mechanisation:
“There is direct evidence that the Romans mechanised at least part of the extraction processes. They used water power from water wheels for grinding grains and sawing timber or stone, for example. A set of sixteen such overshot wheels is still visible at Barbegal near Arles dating from the 1st century AD or possibly earlier, the water being supplied by the main aqueduct to Arles.”
I think that aqueduct is an example of energy transmission.
“Ausonius attests the use of a water mill for sawing stone in his poem Mosella from the 4th century AD. They could easily have adapted the technology to crush ore using tilt hammers, and just such is mentioned by Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia dating to about 75 AD, and there is evidence for the method from Dolaucothi in South Wales”
“They also used reverse overshot water-wheel for draining mines, the parts being prefabricated and numbered for ease of assembly. Multiple set of such wheels have been found in Spain at the Rio Tinto copper mines and a fragment of a wheel at Dolaucothi. An incomplete wheel from Spain is now on public show in the British Museum.“
I think that shows innovation in technologies (not as fast as happened in the industrial revolution, but it is innovation)
"Italy never got as large number of mills as Britain as the rivers flowing into Northern Italy have too large variation in water flow. That is part of the reason Romans could never utilize waterwheels to a great extent."
Neoliberal capitalism has given us a lot of very cheap, very technologically advanced stuff. An extremely basic integrated circuit in the 1960s costs the same as an entire iPhone now, accounting for inflation. Accounting for inflation, automobiles are as cheap as they've ever been, and have many more features that work much better than they ever have.
But ... the edges wear thin. A Raspberry Pi (computer) and a Raspberry Pie (food) may be purchased for around the same price. A varied and healthy diet can be quite expensive (though there are deals to be found if you can travel to get them). Companies want to "add value" to food with extensive processing that increases the engineered taste factors to make us consume more. Housing is insanely expensive in many areas. Health care in the United States is not designed for any humans - not doctors, nurses, other professionals, and certainly not patients.
Neoliberal capitalism won't innovate on these areas. Are we just stuck with what we have? Certainly government mandates could change the game, but just like the Romans, people think the system is working because they can buy a smart phone and a gaming console and some cheap snacks and go for a ride in their fine automobile.
We can't see what the collapse will be, and we can't see what's next. I wonder how many Romans talked like this? I don't believe that our doom is inevitable, but I also think that progress requires specific intention, and progress can be very easily disrupted.
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I have a thesis that the economic benefits of integrated circuit microchip and the economic benefits of neoliberalism cannot be distinguished. They both feed each other. I don't see myself putting enough effort into researching it and writing it up, but I strongly believe that thesis.
Wouldn't you put the transition from agriculture based economy under neoliberal capitalism? We went from 90% farm employment to 10% while massively increasing output.
Tech folks don't think food production is exciting so they miss all the innovation.
https://www.vox.com/recode/2022/1/8/22872749/john-deere-self...
As to housing and health care, we don't have "neoliberal capitalism", we have highly regulated, captured, markets. If you moved to zero zoning in SF you'd start to have innovative building.
I'm sorry if I'm misunderstanding, but a couple of reads of your comment and I still think you're complaining that things go well :)
Why would healthcare be inexpensive? Go into a clinic today and there’s a legion of professionals who attend to each patient. Each of them has years of training, even the clerk at the desk.
They use a whole battery of expensive equipment. Multi-million dollar machines to literally see inside your body.
Every piece of tubing, bandage, needle, plastic fitting, etc is sterile, and used only once. They are made in a facility to exacting standards which is in turn monitored and supervised by another network of professionals with reams of policy dictating how the equipment is made, accounted for, and an army of lawyers behind the scenes as well.
The facility itself has exacting standards for cleanliness, emergency power, disaster-resistance.
The medical records are held in computer systems which abide by HIPAA requirements, again with a team of engineers and cybersecurity professionals ensuring that standards are met.
Healthcare is expensive because it’s expensive. The alternative is suffering with untreatable injuries or just dying, which we take for granted because we don’t see it that much anymore. We don’t have country doctors working out of their house charging a few bucks for a visit.
Are there inefficiencies? Is there waste, fraud and abuse? Are there greedy pharmaceutical execs making billions of dollars on the backs of unsuspecting pill poppers? Could we do things better or cheaper? I’m sure we could, but I don’t think there’s some kind of grand conspiracy to make us slaves to our employers vía medicine.
The alternative isn't a lack of healthcare, it's a compassionate experience that understands that we are people, not bags of money. Individual medical centers may live up to that standard, but the industry does not.
There doesn't need to be a grand conspiracy, just aligned incentives. The result is the same. It's also true that modern cutting-edge healthcare is expensive any way you slice it. In free market capitalism it is up to each person to bear that cost. This means that some people will not be able to afford treatment or will be plunged into crippling debt. I'm of the belief that if we can treat someone with a health problem then that treatment should be available to them either for some marginal cost or for free. Basic human needs can not be subject to market pricing as consumers are essentially under duress when making purchasing decisions; they cannot choose to forgo lifesaving medicine should the price be unreasonable.
The Romans had a huge blind spot because of their economic system.
We have a huge blind spot because of our economic system.
What is that blind spot? What's in that blind spot? We're in the last stages of the information revolution. The maturity of the information revolution will continue for as long as civilization does; we are continuing the industrial revolution even now.
The Star Trek Original Series and Next Generation both showed a "post-scarcity" society. What is most scarce in our society that prevents a post-scarcity society? What does an economy look like in post-scarcity?
We have Science Fiction, it's entirely possible that ancient Rome had futurists too.
Think of my comment about RPi/Pie in terms of economic revolutions. A society that can make a pie only needs a few things that are relatively easily gathered. An adult human could reasonably invent a pie in any age, from the Stone Age until now. That such an incredibly simple food may be underpriced by advanced technology requiring millions of cumulative person-hours of technical progress is simply astounding.
Nothing. We could have had post-scarcity society since 1950s at least (Haber Bosch process means enough food for everybody, everything else is optional and/or could be achieved by redistribution). Yet we refused to do it cause we value marginal improvements in our comfort more than survival and lack of serious suffering of others. We're already making things scarce on purpose (see NFTs and art in general). People want things that are scarce even if that's the only property of these things, and they value these desires enough to deny other people resources they need to live.
Thinking that this will somehow change in the future just because of some new technology making more stuff non-scarce is naive. We'll invent something that doesn't exist yet just so that we can have it while others can't. There will never be post-scarcity as long as people are people.
Yes, capitalism will happily cater to your worst vices. But then again, it will just as happily cater to your best virtues. I'd call it a problem of information and education, not a problem of capitalism.
That's the entire point of capitalism. Reinstitution of feudal economy, or even worse, slave economies, through economic system. In post Civil War US and post-emancipation Brazil, the slave economy was reinstituted through 'free market' precisely using capitalist methodology. Former slave owners kept wages low, which forced now-freed slaves to work for even less economic return than before. Because now the slave-owners did not even have to feed their slaves and keep them healthy enough to work. They could just discard them when they couldn't work.
> but just like the Romans, people think the system is working because they can buy a smart phone and a gaming console and some cheap snacks and go for a ride in their fine automobile.
I very much think that people don't think that the system works. Only those who are in or above the top 10% of the society. The rest are aware of the brutal reality of the system and they are unwilling participants in it for that reason. Exactly the same with later Rome. Which is a reason why Rome fall so easily and so fast - there was no difference in between their former Roman masters and their new feudal overlords as far as Romans were concerned.