Aeon221 said:
Read em, thought they were alright. I prefer Malthus and Das Kapital. Perhaps you recognize them?
Malthus. gag. I hope you don't have plans for a social Darwinist mod. I tend to agree more with the Institute for Food and Development Policy (FoodFirst).
As to Marx, I like some Marx. I think far to many of his fans take historical materialism into a word of absurd reduction. I've recently been reading some late Marx, his ethnological notebooks. From my reading, it seemed to be that Marx was trying understand the development of civilizations (societas to civitas) and the end of the "primitive communism" and the establishment of the State. It seems Marx's thought on this issue is that increasing agricultural efficency did allow for increasing specialization and the creation of more wealth, but not until the institution of private property could surplus value real become extracted by a minority and be accumulated through increasing ownership of land, cattle and slaves.
Aeon221 said:
On the lack of inevitability in specialization: Show me an example of a developed country that does not have a high degree of specialization. One that does not have poverty, disease, and other ailments, and is considered of the first world. And no, Hobbiton does not count. Specialization _is_ inevitable.
Using Rwanda in a discussion about normal economic discussion is like using a person with AIDS in a discussion about normal human health. It adds no weight to any argument _except_ those directly related to the issues causing the ailment. If your argument was that specialization is hindered by AIDS, ethnic cleansing, and civil war, then yes, I would agree.
My point about Rwanda is that about 90% of the population engaged in (mainly subsistence) agriculture. It is also the most densly populated country in Africa. They are using ever scrap of arable land they have, and most of their labor power to support their large population. It's the closest to a Malthusian situation I think you are going to find.
Aeon221 said:
If you look at any other culture with a huge, agriculturally focused economy (eg: Russia, Antebellum South (USA), China, France (pre 18th cent), England, Egypt, Babylon, or most anywhere else you pick if you look back far enough), you will find that there is a _direct_ correlation between the increase in specialization, the increase in standard of living, and the decrease in land farmed. This is not a debatable point. It is a caluculable FACT! Your argument against the importance of specialization is simply silly!
In fact, I will state flat out that it is _impossible_ for a state to avoid specialization and continue to exist in any way whatsoever. A beaurocrat is a specialist, and beaurocrats are required for the type of example you gave: large, agriculture based economies. If you disagree, look at Egypt, where government was first spawned. Math was invented by beaurocrats in order to determine how much water a farmer should get, and what his taxes should be! Math was already up and running while written language was still trying to get out the door! And on to written language. Two of the prototypes of the modern Latin alphabet, Linear A and B, were developed by _traders_! Darn specialists, always doing things to ruin your argument.
I'm not against specialization. I think what I was trying to express with the Rwanda example is that you can take on some modern technologies (medicine) that lead to a population boom, WITHOUT adopting technological agriculture improvements (maybe they don't grow in your climate, maybe you don't have the resources or capital to produce or purchase modern agricultural machinery), and if the gross majority of your population is involved in agriculture you don't have as much population available for specialization.
So, what % of the population of Ancient Egypt were bureaucrats?
(You do mean "bureaucrats" don't you, by the word "beaurocrat"? Your grammatical errors and spelling mistakes seriously detracted from my ability to even consider your points. If you want me to take you seriously, and to respect what you have to say in this matter, please do me the respect of spelling things like bureaucrat properly. -- see, it's not very nice when I do it either).
I tend to think a lot of the administrative specialization is hidden as it's such a small part of the early population; or expressed through the creation of military units (standing armies that cost much in hammers or gold to produce; and have a cost in gold every turn) and the ability to adjust the research rate in regards to available gold. Also buildings as well (palaces, courthouses, libraries, universities, etc...) all express large capital investments and ongoing maintence costs (in gold)
I think the buildings, and the tile values and improvements are enough reflection of some kind of specialization in labor. Certain tiles offer not just food, but production or gold. You can build a mine, a village/town, a workshop, a windmill, plantations, oil rigs, wineries, etc...
Do we really want a butcher, a baker and a candlestickmaker to represent 30% of the population?
One issue about industrial production is that it also becomes more efficient. We might have the same number of people in the U.S. employed in industrial manufacture as we did in the 1950s, but the over all population has increased and the efficiency and productive capacity of those factories has continued to increase; so much so that some of our industrial capacity sits idle not from lack of workers (many who might want those jobs) but from the inability of consumers to actually purchase all the potentially produced goods. So, how to represent this? Will the "proletarian" specialist in the early industrial revolution be worth +3 hammers (or gold for you, since it's all about the money), and then later +6 hammers(or gold)? I don't know... seems like the existing system of factories add +% to hammers, is a pretty good system. It makes little since for me to build most of my factories in a primary agricultural community or on an island that's mostly fishing (but then, how to represent Japanese steel? Hmmm?)
I do think there should be some more food production buildings (like the lighthouse as +food for worked water tiles). I'd like to see canneries added and I like the Smokehouses from Fall From Heaven. Perhaps food production buildings would be the way of increasing the productive capacity of working agricultural tiles as... people have to go to the city for those buildings. Maybe refrigeration technology gives +1 food to all cows, etc...
Aeon221 said:
First off, the proportion varies in response to a catastrophic event, such as a war, famine, technological advance, economic collapse, or comet appearing in the sky.
One thing I have been toying with is a disease mod. It seems that disease is one of the biggest obstacles civilizations have faced and that just isn't sufficently represented to me by Mr. Yuck Stickers on "unhealthy" cities. I'd like to see the black plague emerge out of one civilization and follow trade routes across a continent reducing population centers in it's wake; while the continent not yet in contact with it remains unscathed. I'd like to see typhoid devestating large stacks of military units.
I would like to see some sort of mod that shows the effects of deforestation, salinization and erosion. Overfishing might be good as well.
Aeon221 said:
Secondly, any decent historian will tell you that there were many Green Revolutions in history. The invention of the scratch plough, the wheel, the plough (semi-modern form), the three field system, the invention of a horse friendly harness, the printing press (the number of books printed on husbandry after 1453 is simply staggering, and this had a serious affect on the productivity levels), the enclosure movements under Henry vii and viii, the opening of the Great Plains for farming, and the current biological advances (especially in the matter of rice) are all great examples. I cannot even begin to go over all of them, to be honest, and all of them had a massive effect on the food production levels of the time, and resulted in a _decrease_ in the % of populace involved in agriculture.
Also, you are correct. There were a number of people working on the land. It is not as great as you think (although I am refusing to look at sources for this, so I cannot tell you the exact amount. I know I'm right, and I have enough correct information in my head to prove it.), but the urban/rural % is significantly in favor of rural up until the Industrial Revolution.
Share of the Population in Agriculture, Early Industrial Countries, 1820-1910
"Urbanization began to occur at a larger scale during the later part of the industrial revolution, mainly through a migration from the countryside to cities. By 1870, about half of the population of the first main industrial nations was no longer in the agricultural sector. England had reached this stage since 1820. By 1910, 94% of the English population lived in cities. This spurred a large demand for urban transportation and the development of the first transit systems."
So for the U.S., Germany and France... less than 30% of the population was working at anything besides agriculture. From that population you've got to have the most mundane kind of specialists as well as the most advanced, everyone from miners, to silversmiths, to doctors, to politicians.
In modern China: "With rapid industrialization, the manufacturing sector contributes 51.7% to the Gross Domestic Product and agriculture only 21.2% (in 1993) (ESCAP, 1997), agriculture still playing the founding role in China's economy. 76.17% of the population are involved in agricultural enterprises and the remaining 23.83% in non-agricultural enterprises."
"Agriculture employed more than 75 percent of the total workforce in traditional agrarian societies, and, as late as 1950, about two-thirds throughout the world. Nowadays, in the advanced countries, the share is about 2.5 percent--eleven million people out of 430. In the rest of the world, agricultural workers still account for almost half the labor force, with a world total of some 1.3 billion workers (775 million in China and India alone)." Keep in mind that much of the population might not be in the labor force, being to young or too old.
Aeon221 said:
On Currency: Since Lydia has invented the coin, "money", in whatever form you find it, has been the primary store of value. Certainly, some markets use other stores of value. But whether you say the money in civ is cow chips or platinum bars, it should still be the prime mover.
Things are paid for in money, which the Marxian historian sees as labor, and the current day economist sees as a debt (essentially... money is pretty complicated, and I confess to not totally understanding it). All of them would agree that a game with both money and production is redundant (however happy it would make a Marxist
), as production is subservient to that which controls it: the primary needs (food, shelter, and good health). Whether you provide these things independent of money (communism) or in exchange for it (capitalism), the needs are still there. While either is technically correct, using money is the preferred method, as the other has never once occurred in pure form.
Since I believe that money and production are redundant, I believe that only one should be in the game. Since capitalism (the exchange of labor for a generally agreed on intermediary object which can be exchanged for a primary need) has existed on the ground, and communism (the direct exchange of labor for a primary need) has not, I prefer to model a realistic economy on a capitalist economy.
While I might agree with you that supposedly "communist"/socialist states are actually state-capitalists (that is a monopoly of ownership of the means of production by the party-state. A smaller example would be any time a state nationalizes a particular enterprise or industry) and some of the reasons they can't be called actual communism because they do extract surplus value from the labor of the proletariat, have currency, engage in trade
I don't think money and production are redundant. To me, production-hammers have always represented industrial-productive capital (like a factory or a mine), while money-coin-gold have always represented liquid capital. One of the things I like about CivIV is their restriction of rush buying with money is limited to certain technologies and civics. It's much easier to move finanical capital around the world (within a few seconds these days) than it is for you to move industrial capital. You just can't pick a factor up out of Detroit and drop it Montana. But in Civ IV, any currency I generate in Detroit could then be used to purchase a column of armored tanks in Billings, MT in one turn without too much trouble. I don't think reality works like that.
I will say that I think a game with a basis on labor (which I think is a basis in CIV4) is better than an imaginary economic concept such as debt. Maybe this is what we're butting heads over. I'll stick firm to my guns that "labor creates all wealth". How a society might choose to abstract that value is another matter.
Further, one thing about CIV IV is that all currency is basically regarded as equal. What is it based on? Is it gold or is it fiat? Who backs it? Is there any speculation? Frankly, currency seems like one of the weakest parts of the game, which is another reason I balk at making everything subject to rush buying and the complete elimination of production-hammers.
Oh yeah, while we are throwing out book titles... try David Graeber's "Towards an Anthroplogical Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Desires".
Aeon221 said:
Conclusion: Hopefully this huge GO RED ENGINE GO piece will help you to see why I think specialists are undervalued. In real civ, you will still see only one or two specialists until the cities are fairly well maxed out. At which point, a pitiful few will be spared from working marginal land to act as specialists.
My goal is to increase the minimum point at which you will be willing to work a piece of land, and make specialists an ever more valuable group. At first, you might want a Beaurocrat or two to increase the value of your farms. Afterwards, you might want some manufacturing specialists, or commerce generating ones (craftsmen and merchants), or something of that sort. In vanilla, the farmer is king. In this mod, the specialist will replace him on the throne... if I ever figure out how to make any of it work.
Cities are "maxed out" when all their potentially productive tiles (no mountains, no ice and only deserts with resources) in the fat cross are being worked. So that's 20 or less. Perhaps one solution is that food productive tiles should increase in value. I know when I play I have a tendency to focus my workers on the most productive food areas till I have the best growth rate for the city I can get; and then am far more flexible about what I do with the remaining population... maybe I send them to work in the mines; maybe I have them working as scientists or tax collectors.
The farmer isn't king, rather... I think it's a fair representation that so much of the population is engaged in agriculture that they aren't available to do anything else; and the reason that the majority is engaged in agriculture is because their limited technology or climate. You can make an Iceland civ on a tundra/plain-hill/plain island where it is far more food productive to be fishers than farmers.
If you want more specialists, perhaps the goal should be to increase the population by making production on food tiles more productive.
It seems to me that you are trying to use your mod to solve certain problems in the late game for CIV4. I think for many players, the preceeding several thousand years are just as interesting last 200.
) I have no problem with that.
