[HN Gopher] Blame the Gerbils
___________________________________________________________________
Blame the Gerbils
Author : Vigier
Score : 39 points
Date : 2024-11-12 04:43 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lrb.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lrb.co.uk)
| treetalker wrote:
| https://archive.is/4YwT6
| delichon wrote:
| After reading this, "Celebrating the Gerbils" may be a more apt
| title. He is "blaming" them for the rise of Europe via the after
| effects of the transmission of a terrible disease. It is a sort
| of justification for the policy positions of a recent Marvel
| villain. Gamora : I was a child when you took me.
| Thanos : I saved you. Gamora : No. We were happy on my home
| planet. Thanos : You were going to bed hungry, scrounging
| for scraps. Your planet was on the brink of collapse. I'm the one
| who stopped that. You know what's happened since then? The
| children born have known nothing but full bellies and clear
| skies. It's a paradise. Gamora : Because you murdered half
| the planet. Thanos : A small price to pay for salvation.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| Unrelated, but surely thanos would need to murder half the
| universe every few years to keep the charade running
| otikik wrote:
| Yeah, he divided a geometric curve by 2
| misnome wrote:
| Yes, this always extremely bothered me.
| shawn_w wrote:
| He's known as the Mad Titan, not the Smart Titan.
| Vecr wrote:
| Thanos had a horrible policy. In many cases it wouldn't help
| (either it would cause societal collapse or things would go
| back to being a problem), and even when it does it would
| usually not be worth it.
|
| If he has to get rid of 50% of the people, shouldn't he at
| least put them into some sort of computer system, so the
| remaining people could at least talk to them after?
|
| Then put a guardian system in orbit around every planet to
| protect the uploads and prevent any recurrences of problems.
| andrewfurey2003 wrote:
| Bro its a movie.
| Vecr wrote:
| I didn't watch it (I read a plot summery) but I did watch
| what I think was _Captain America_ or _Captain America: The
| Winter Soldier_ and they had a guy uploaded into a
| computer. That 's earlier in the timeline, right? So it's
| proven doable in the universe they set up with the films.
| andrewfurey2003 wrote:
| Yeah but that doesn't sell movie tickets
| tolerance wrote:
| I don't exactly know how you drew your conclusion from the
| text, but the justification that you've identified with the aid
| of that movie dialogue makes sense to me. Although I don't read
| the justification itself from the book review, the example
| you're giving seems to indicate to the inherent bias that I
| would expect from a book that covers European expansion.
|
| So are you interpreting that the book is framing European
| expansion post-plague as Europe "saving" territories that
| didn't experience the advantages that they did?
|
| If so, good catch and a cautionary tale.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| > It is a sort of justification for the policy positions of a
| recent Marvel villain.
|
| Just because it goes against someone's taste doesn't mean it
| isn't true. Historical analysis obviously shouldn't depend on
| whether it jibes with the sentiments of people who write Marvel
| characters.
|
| We do have a real world example of this effect that's much more
| recent than the plague, China's one child policy. And one
| outcome is exactly what's observed in the article, higher
| household saving and educational spending per child and as a
| consequence accelerated capital accumulation in one generation.
| By creating a smaller cohort and funneling all resources into
| that cohort they leapfrogged over the high population growth
| low per capita investment Malthusian trap that the article
| talks about.
|
| https://personal.lse.ac.uk/jink/pdf/onechildpolicy_ccj.pdf
| nkpv wrote:
| There was talk of gerbils !!!
| Hilift wrote:
| >England did not return to its pre-plague population until about
| 1625, 280 years after the first strike. During most of that
| period Western Europe had about half the population it had in
| 1345. And yet 1400-1500 'is the very century in which Western
| Europe's global expansion began', the period of what has been
| called 'the Great Divergence' between Europe and the rest of the
| world. 'The Black Death and the Rise of Europe', as Belich's
| subtitle has it, do seem to be linked in time, and it may not be
| a coincidence.
|
| This period also coincided with the renaissance and the European
| wars of religion. Europe was a busy place.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-11-12 23:01 UTC)