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6/28/2025, 10:05:46 AM
>>2079266
>I understand that's the case for modern economies, but does the same go for premodern ones as well?
It doesn't. In an agrarian economy, unfree labor, whether that's slavery, serfdom, or some cultural equivalent, has advantages.
As an example, Mark Elvin's proposed that, among other reasons of course, it was part of why China didn't have a native industrial revolution. China's move from serfdom to peasant cottage industry in textiles prevented the management of the process by the educated upper classes, whose counterparts in Europe drove a lot of innovation.
Once society is rich enough to offer more or less universal education, that doesn't matter obviously. But there absolutely are benefits to having a leisured class with an economic interest in their properties becoming more productive.
>I understand that's the case for modern economies, but does the same go for premodern ones as well?
It doesn't. In an agrarian economy, unfree labor, whether that's slavery, serfdom, or some cultural equivalent, has advantages.
As an example, Mark Elvin's proposed that, among other reasons of course, it was part of why China didn't have a native industrial revolution. China's move from serfdom to peasant cottage industry in textiles prevented the management of the process by the educated upper classes, whose counterparts in Europe drove a lot of innovation.
Once society is rich enough to offer more or less universal education, that doesn't matter obviously. But there absolutely are benefits to having a leisured class with an economic interest in their properties becoming more productive.
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