Here are some notes I’ve taken after reading “A Splendid Exchange” by William Bernstein, a superbly written book on the history of trade.

Nothing new under the sun / Many different suns

  • Things are as they were / History repeats itself. Things have always been the same: merchandising, “luxury-loving women”, entrepreneurs, corruption, globalization, interdependence (as early as the Stone Age). Our current world runs on the same underpinnings as past worlds.
    • Now as before, people use products without knowing how they are made or work. “The Romans knew Chinese silk but not China” (Internet, infrastructure) ; Romans thought silk grew on trees (faulty conceptual models), and hailing from two different countries (due to coming to Rome from two different routes — one overland and one overseas — though they actually both stemmed from China; brain’s instinct to see patterns and make sense of things).
      • “Fog of war”: Romans only knew part of the map. Only when you see all of the map, do you realize that everything is interconnected, on the other end. (× Good and Evil; Yin and Yang).
      • External tools are replacing ancestral know-how. As civilizations evolve, people increasingly delegate activites they used to do themselves, thereby progresively losing the ability to perform these activities themselves, unaided.
  • Different things get prized at different times. Romans used to prize Chinese silk.
  • Things once precious are now common (black pepper). Things precious today might become common tomorrow.
    • Likewise, things common today might become precious tomorrow. Hence: cull and confer (value) (discern and appreciate)
      • Discernment and appreciation elevate their objects — however mundane or widespread — to preciousness.
        • By discerning and appreciating fully for oneself, we untangle our taste from the vagaries of trends and history — setting our own standards for what is to be appreciated, regardless of preciousness or mundaneness.
        • The abundance of riches in the modern world has desensitized us and led to a desacralization of goods, a loss of appreciation — though expensive items are still prized as objects of prestige.
    • Though a universally liked drug, sugar used to be rare and only picked up from the 15th century with slave-worked plantations in the New World (South America & Caribbeans), with many Westerners emigrating to take advantage of the boon.
    • Barley was the common grain in Greece, as wheat was harder to cultivate in dry soils (and was thus reserved only for festive days) (× once precious, now common)
  • As in time, so in space. Just like different things get valued at different times, different things get valued in different places — and at the different scales (× Communities; chosen family; people)
    • In China, silver was worth its weight in gold (and then some). The Chinese didn’t think much of gold and were more fond of silver.
      • Gold was worth more silver in Spain than in China.
    • Things common for some are valued by others.
      • Especially when they are scarce for them.
      • This discrepancy of value (for a same commodity) lays the turf to middlemen (brokers).
        • The business of brokers is to sell goods to people who value it more than the people you bought them from. (× “Safe purchases/bargains” (re-sellable at a profit) on thrift stores, second-hand marketplaces, etc.)

Brokers not broke

  • Middlemanship (intermediation) has always been very popular (and lucrative).
    • Passing the baton, very many times. Just like now, ancient trade covered long distances, made of very many segments operated by very many middlemen (× Internet’s peer-to-peer addressing protocol (IP Routing))
      • Physical trade routes exist today in part as infrastructure (e.g. the Internet infrastructure (for trading of bits)).
      • The Chinese would only bring their silk to the first middlemen (in the Bay of Bengal), the first stage in a long journey to Rome.
    • Each new intermediary marks an increase in price. (Also for the end-consumer, for whom the process might be less apparent.) With each subsequent leg of the journey, the price of the commodity would increase.
      • The intrinsic value of a product (if there exists such a thing) becomes combined with the (aggregated) value of its history (Point of view of the object.)
        • Value and price are fundamentally subjective, based on guesstimating something’s value or price for oneself, and negotiation skills. Value and price are dependent on the buyer and the seller (producer).
      • Every reseller (middleman) adds their own margin, tantamount to the value of their effort (and then some). (Point of view of the (re)seller.)
      • Every buyer is willing to pay a premium for the effort they have been spared, for example in acquiring the resource themselves. (Point of view of the buyer.)
        • Trade lets us reap the products and benefits, without having to suffer the circumstances of their creation (scorching sun, menial labour, etc.)
    • Middlemanship can be more lucrative than either or two ends (buying, or selling).

Places be getting rich

  • Locales also profit from trade.
    • Life deals everyone random cards to start from. (Wheel of Fortune.) The geographical/geopolitical luck of the draw (for the states — happening to be located in a strategic or resource-laden location).
      • Change hills to go to more strategic places, even if they have become so by stroke of fate. Go to the interesting places to evolve — even if they have no merit in that.
      • The luck of the draw gives different people different assets (that they can develop) (× RPG character building). For example, the Chinese with silk and spices; the Roman empire with minerals (through advanced mining techniques).
        • Be like the camel: develop your unique environmental advantage: e.g. camels w/ storing water for surviving in the desert away from the oases with their large predators.
          • The spacing of caravanserais was determined by the maximum distance camels could travel (safely) without water (three days) (Natural reasons for things.)
          • (× hone in on your assets; double down on your strong points instead of putting too much energy into trying to “catch up” with the rest: capitalize on your strengths (The Design of Everyday Things))
      • Lessons you do not have to learn (because they do not concern you). Some face setbacks that are completely out of the picture for others.
        • The narrow West needed control over maritime choke points and improved at it (especially Greece), while the East generally didn’t need to worry about it, what with the vast expanse of Indian Ocean — which also made the East more vulnerable to maritime attacks or attacks on sea lanes.
        • (× other people struggling with things you do not struggle with)
      • Periodical random event (from Providence) (chaotic divine intervention): asteroid triggering the ice age and (slowly) extincting dinosaurs (K-Pg event) (× Improv routine “CHAOS!” element).
        • (× Drugs)

General Trade

  • Nature used to dictate trade. (Monsoon) seasons would drive the cadence of ships going East to China (summer monsoon) or back West to Rome (winter monsoon).
    • In our heavily globalized world, the multiplicity of seasons around the world at any given time combined with the efficiency and transparency of transport have rendered seasons effectively obsolete (“transcending nature”).
  • Present-day markets have their historical roots in periodic gatherings of nomadic merchants.
  • Colony (trading) outposts were akin to present-day embassies.
  • People would choose trading routes as they would choose products. Trading routes got popular for the same reason products get popular (cheapness, practicality). Emergent use of both stems from the same basic psychological instincts.
  • Trade (and trips), once perilous, is now easy. Celebrate it!
    • “Lost with all hands”: human loss has always been trivialized, in wars then as in wars now, in expeditions then as in expeditions now (× migrant boats to Spain/Italy/Greece).
    • Traders in the Muslim world used to always travel with a (trader) companion (“rafiq”) to help ensure each other’s safety. (x The Sirens of Titan) (buddy system) (× military)
      • External pressures onto the bond made it even tighter. (If one person disappeared or died, the other person would be tortured or executed by the state under suspicion of theft.) From socially constructed to actually paramount.
  • The Columbian Exchange involved trading crops between the Old World and the New World.
    • Trading crops across different cultures and geographies is akin to trading ideas between peoples, between people (e.g. acquiring knowledge from books).
    • Dissemination. Stone materials used to spread far away from their original quarry; just like ideas spread from the source.
    • Trade makes us both prosperous and vulnerable (interdependent) — richer (of insights, × relationships) and more dependent (for better and for worse).
      • Trade allows for weak or vulnerable people(s) to survive, by being supported by others (or imports).
  • New, more efficient resources can mark a new period. Corn and potato crops from the New World were way more productive than existing wheat and therefore started becoming popular in Europe.
  • Asynchronous agreements (× blockchain consensus) (“silent trade”): one party would lay their merchandise on the beach and send a smoke signal; the other party would scrutinize the goods and lay a suitable amount of gold then retreat; the first party, if satisfied with the offer, would take the gold and depart; and the second party would take the goods. (Otherwise, the first party would leave the goods on the beach, calling for further negotiation.) (per Herodotus, about the trade between Carthaginians and Libyan natives)
  • Repatriating elephants (Ptolemy II): crazy ambitious projects that somehow get carried through by will and persistence. Elephants were brought from the heartland of Africa to Alexandria (Ptolemaic Egypt), traversing deserts and seas. (Though Hannibal was first at transporting elephants overseas.)
  • Trade can mend fences. Cordell Hull’s parable illustrates the moral value of trade; a win-win agreement resolving a bad relationship between two brothers. (× mutually beneficial relationships)

Ships be shipping

  • Go fast or go big? Anciens times distinguished between warships (fast and narrow) and cargo ships (slow and with high capacity) (× software development frameworks and programming languages)
  • Wind and current are the two natural elements propelling ships.
    • Oars and propellers later allowed ships to go against the wind or current (to an extent).
    • The Nile is unique in that it has current and wind of opposite directions (river flowing north; wind blowing south); allowing for “natural” passage in both directions (floating north and sailing south.)
  • Centralize information for better decisions. Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal (child of João I) was named so for being world’s biggest patron of maritime research — collecting and centralizing the biggest store of navigational maps in the world.
    • His goal was to reach the Indies overseas around the Cape of Good Hope; as overland routes were occupied by the Ottoman Empire and Mamluk sultanate.
  • Shipping perishables was made possible by putting ice in shipments (19th century).

Togethership

  • Couples as the best of both worlds, and surpassing any one of their parts (African dromedary and Asian Bactrian crossbreeding into a “F1 hybrid super camel”); as an entity able to navigate the world with the best assets of each of their parts.
    • Mules are hybrid usually of a female horse and a male donkey; as a female donkey would have difficulty delivering the oversized foal.
  • Union of two paradigms through the union of two people. Two people can unite personally and thereby bridge two families or paradigms. King João I of Portugal married Philippa of Lancaster (from the English Royal family), thereby creating an alliance between the two kingdoms. Marriages between rulers.
    • England & Portugal: the oldest still ongoing bilateral alliance. (From the depths of the Black Death) The alliance between England and Portugal through the Treaty of Windsor (14th century (Philippa later fell to the Plague)) is the oldest still ongoing bilateral alliance — having as an effect that England and Portugal since then never waged war against each other, not even indirectly.
  • Abundance trumps competition. The endless stretches of land made rivalry between Spain and Portugal secondary, encouraging them to find a quick amiable agreement. (× Polyamory)
    • Agreements prior to imminent breakthroughs: the Treaty of Tordesillas preemptively bisected the world, as the Spanish and Portuguese were actively about to explore new territories. This was done by the Pope, the great arbiter and overlord of European powers.
      • Territories West of the Tordesillas line would belong to the Spaniards; territories East of the line would belong to the Portuguese.
        • The Treaty of Tordesillas was later complemented by the Treaty of Zaragoza, for the Eastern delimitation.
  • Two enemies can be on friendly terms with a third party. China & Japan both trading with Portugal around the 16th century, though they had some strifes.

Trading pathogens / Hitching rides

  • Trades spreads pathogens.
    • The good and the bad of the people you do business with. (× couples)
    • An open pathway for the good people is also an open pathway for the bad people
      • (Knowledge of the existence or possibility of evil or calculation breaks everything, produces suspicion and clouds one’s good instinct, × “coming of age” (from naiveness) — no coming back)
      • Trading pathways carried fleas from China to the Mongol and Ottoman empires, ringing in the Black Death of the 14th century.
  • Groups adapted to their own environments, but not to others. The world used to be made of discrete “disease pools”, with each population having adopted to their environment.
  • Instinctively destructive human behaviour: as cities got infected by the Black Death, survivors would flee, and spread the epidemic even further.
    • Magical thinking and persecution: Jews were blamed by Christians for contaminating wells and being instigators of the Black Death.
  • Diseases and other unexpected events suddenly halt advancement and progress. Count your blessings. COVID-19; Venice’s development with the construction of ports being halted by the Black Death (akin to Amsterdam’s halts in maritime development in part due to the Great Plague of Amsterdam in the 17th century)
    • Diseases of exchange discourage exchange. STDs. Epidemics stunt trade.
  • Europe after the Black Death: having become resilient doesn’t mean you are harmless. Europeans could evolve to become more immune to various diseases brought about by trade — but still carried them, and this would prove devastating with the invasion of the New World.

Economics and politics of trading

  • Trade is a levelling mechanism (× The Toyota Way), in that external suppliers can make up for episodic dearth.
    • At the same time, free trade makes local farmers more vulnerable, as they lose the agency to raise prices in case of bad crops (due to the ongoing supply of foreign produce from foreign farms at a competitive price), and as the low prices from imported goods might force them to lower their prices (due for example to economies of scale or heavy subsidies in the foreign country).
    • The interdependence of trade reduces the likelihood of conflict (European Union).
  • The law of comparative advantage (Ricardo) lets two subjects decide on what to produce, respectively, in order to maximize global output.
    • Applied to societies: this would mean letting everyone do what they do best (what has the most value for society, among all the things the person can do) (ideal world).
    • The law of comparative advantage as a behavioural guideline makes intuitive sense: it lets everybody do what they do best, and “pay” with it, things other people do best.
    • Money (credit) lets you receive a product or service in exchange of something you offered somebody else. (System of credits) (× the blessing of italki). Money (credit) lets you benefit from the services of somebody (good at their trade) without having to offer them something of direct value to them.
    • Money as common currency simplifies trade. Money simplified commerce by only needing to set a price for a single pair for each type of goods (as opposed to having to set a price for every possible combination of what is being sold and what can be bought for it).
  • By forbidding imports and encouraging national production (of a good that the nation is not actually efficient at making), a law can actually make a nation less productive (than it would otherwise, in the big picture; by virtue of the law of comparative advantage). Instead, focus and double down on what you do best. × capitalize on your strengths (The Design of Everyday Things)
    • Autarky — “a condition in which nations achieve self-sufficiency in all products, no matter how inept they are at producing them.”
  • Stolper/Samuelson: protectionism favours owners of a scarce factor, free trade favours owners of an abundant factor; factors being labor, land and capital. The winning policy usually favours at least two of the three factors.
  • Protection(ism) invites retaliation: refusing imports harms exports.
    • × Relationships: When you protect yourself or get defensive, the other does as well. If you get more vulnerable, you invite in more vulnerability from the other as well. If you do not share, you cannot receive. Intimacy is a two-way road. (Following suit; × A)
  • Modern-day Jordan as an example of protectionism: when employing foreigners, employers need to prove to the government that they couldn’t have found a local to do the job.
  • The VOC (Netherlands) and EIC (England) were given monopoly by the State, to simplify taxation, for consolidation of power, military support and aims, and financial support.
  • The mercantilist ideal: importing raw products and exporting finished manufactured products.
  • Prohibition triggers increased desirability and smuggling (“forbidden fruit”) — 1701 English Act banning imported cotton (calico) in favour of local wool; Prohibition era. Protectionist acts backfiring.
    • Likewise, high tariffs encourage smuggling.
      • Made popular through smuggling: tea smuggling made it more popular as tea was sold for more affordable prices.
      • When it comes to smuggling, locals know best.
  • Encourage what you like rather than discourage what you don’t like. (× Sex Talks)
  • Covert targeted laws: The English Navigation Law of 1651 restricted trading to English ships or ships from the exporting country, effectively targeting the Dutch (who would import foreign spices into England).
  • EIC used fashion to increase sales of cotton. The royal family would wear cotton, mimicked by the aristocracy, the minor nobility, all the way down to the peasants. Artificial increasing of demand by manipulation of desires. Leveraging human psychology.
    • Cotton was focussed on by the EIC since losing the Spice Islands to the Dutch (17th century)
    • After cotton, the EIC focussed on Chinese tea, using the same mechanisms as fashion (introducing it to the Royal family).
    • Aristocrats however grew annoyed at the popularization of luxuries.
    • Because tea and sugar worked in tandem, producers often supported each other (× synergic partnerships; mutually beneficial relationships
  • Textile used to be a store of value, and people would wear them.
  • Easy to grow, difficult to process. Sugar and cotton are both easy to grow but require tremendous effort to process.
  • The Chinese geographically contained European involvement and expats (“Canton System”).
    • The Chinese have always been pretty self-sufficient and isolationists — not too involved in trade, as merchants were also seen badly in society, contrary to England.

Progress

  • Need expedites progress.
    • As a method of learning: be confronted with a problem to look up solutions with a purpose. Challenging yourself.
    • Long-distance navigation propelled advancement in time-keeping devices.
      • By using precise time-keeping devices (and the position of the sun), sailors could deduct their exact location. Longitude aboard a ship was measured using time clocks (comparing local noon to noon of a known longitude ­— effectively (empirically) comparing timezones.) (Noon-sight navigation)
        • Bad visibility meant bad navigation. Overcast weather prevented shipmen from using celestial navigation.
  • Opposing technology and progress (Luddites, Ned Ludd) (18th, 19th century — Industrial Age). Textile-processing machines putting weavers and spinners out of work. Fears around AI replacing current-day employees.
    • “Resisting change”: with imports (⇒ protectionism), as with technological innovations (⇒ luddism). Instead, adapting to change.
    • Things always get replaced, made obsolete, as all is impermanent. Be flexible. Your core profession is not going to stay.

Finance

  • Split risk enables big ventures. (“Dutch finance”; crowdfunding) Substantial projects with high risk are enabled by the big risk being split in many small portions (carried by many people)
  • Futures markets as future-proofing agreements. Futures markets are a way for a buyer and seller to agree on a transaction with the present circumstances (effectively freezing them), for a commodity needing time to get acquired and delivered (e.g. a travel to the East Indies). This protected the buyer from price increases and the seller from price drops.

Ideology, military and politics

  • Any activity can be practice grounds for your ideology. (“It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it”.) Muslims spread their religion through their practice of trading. (× All about Love: do any job well, and with love) (× Café Zart ; De Sering: “this is what we do on the surface — that is what we are actually about”).
    • Deliberately chosen, activities can simply be a means to an end. (× S)
      • Consciousness of one’s deeper reasons for doing something, or knowledge what purpose it serves in the grand scheme of things, can help ground and continuously provide purpose and engagement.
  • Governing a country is akin to managing a company.
  • One person goes away and the whole thing crumbles. Things generally went to shit after the reign of Marcus Aurelius. (× The E-Myth Revisited; making your company not dependent on you.) (× Alexander The Great)
  • Policies always favour some and handicap others — hence the difficulty of politics.
    • In the best cases, “trade policies benefit most, harm a few.”
  • A population thrives, just like a species thrives in a favourable environment.
    • Give good conditions to people and they flock (Jews in Livorno).
  • Conquest was akin to the acquisition of new skills (or assets). Greeks colonized Sicily to make use of its precious volcanic soil.
  • Military victories are akin to personal milestones in one’s cognitive journey — unlocking new territories, strengthening one’s position.
    • Securing one’s empire’s position/foothold is akin to settling and grounding oneself, building stability. The amassing (importing) of riches as acquiring so many skills and assets (for oneself, thereby developing oneself, one’s base — enriching oneself.)
  • Now as before, people raid for resources. Herders use to raid Sumerian farmers for resources.
    • Nomads or travellers have access to a broader range of resources. Herders and Sumerian farmers’ arm race. Herders and Sumerian farmers were engaging in an arms’ race; with herders gaining the upper hand through protecting themselves from the farmers’ maces (a piece of stone attached to a stick of wood) with headgear made of copper obtained from neighbouring traders.
    • This being said, in general, farmers and hunter-gatherer tribes co-existed peacefully, sometimes traded (copper-grain trade)
  • Invasion squelches culture (by imposing one’s own). Monoculture of European crops displaced the existing ecosystem. The new replaces the existing, for better and for worse. Things get lost. Replacement (change) is both a gain and a loss.
  • Poor people might get poorer even though society as a whole is getting richer. Though the means/median might be increasing, the low end might become even lower due to increased variance. Free trade makes society richer but disparities bigger. A rising means or median can still concur with the worst-offs becoming even worse off.
  • Poor people might get rich less fast than the rich — thereby increasing disparity (variance).
  • Means vs median: “When Bill gates walks into a room, their mean income skyrockets while their median changes hardly at all.”
  • Moral corruption & vanity: the East-West trade precipitated the fall of the Roman Empire by letting them live “above their means” and depleting them of their riches. “Italy was spending more than it was producing.” Sustainability.
    • The Roman Empire’s gold and silver as life energy — and where you spend it.
  • Change has historically been made by people with a vested interest in it — not theoreticians (Marx).

Start with the Greeks

  • Greece was a conglomerate of warring city-states — not a nation.
    • Greece’s environment made the populations gather on the coasts and focus on trading. (Character built out of necessity. (× character building))
    • Greece was one of the first empires to have a very vested interest in controlling maritime choke points, as it was wholly dependent on imports (of grains) for basic subsistence (× × different lessons / setbacks). Basic instincts can lead to empires.
    • First-order external threats united the city states (against the common enemy) (× A Paradise Built in Hell: external conflicts unite) — albeit briefly
    • Competition (for resources) lead to rivalry. Athens and Sparta — as vying for subsistence in the face of a booming population (Peloponnesian War)
    • Commerce naturally shifts to where it’s most profitable. Athenian commerce shifted north (around the Black Sea), as Egyptians weren’t valuing their goods as much.
    • Securing access to resources. (× Personal finance.) By securing access to the port of Piraeus (with the Long Walls), Athens made itself able to resist overland siege (and successfully did so (second Persian invasion and the better part of the Peloponnesian war). (Innovative defence strategies, × radical innovation) (Pericles)
    • Little did you know that Athenian patrols of the Black Sea (against piracy) are akin to regularly cleaning one’s lodgings and decluttering
    • Attack resources (rather than the fort) (Achille’s heel; scorched earth). Spartans intercepted ships from the Black Sea in a critical period, instead of going for Athens directly.
      • What worked in the past might not work in the future. The Long Walls of Athens defended them against Persians, but didn’t help against the Spartans.
      • Realize your dependence on your resources.
        • Dependence can easily be forgotten, though it is very dangerous.
          • Realize what (systems, institutions) you are dependent on.
      • Attacking resources avoids direct confrontation. Killing indirectly, through privation of resources, avoids direct confrontation.
      • After their victory of Athens, Spartans ordered the dismantling of the Long Walls in 404 BC (-404 Long Walls Not Found)

Islam, Mecca, folklore

  • Peace as the more profitable option. (Peace through diplomacy.) Providing safe conduct but taxing passer-bys was more profitable than raiding ever-shrinking caravans around Mecca. The Quraish sheikh Qussay took over Mecca and convinced his people and nearby tribes to tax passers-by instead of raiding them. (500-600 AD)
  • One can be valued for providing a link to God(s); e.g. Mecca’s Kaaba; priests.
  • Cargo cult. When Abraha (Christian Abyssinian) unsuccessfully attacked Mecca with elephants, Meccans had never seen elephants before and credited divine intervention for their appearance and defeat (Q105, “with pebbles dropped by birds”), calling that year “The Year of The Elephant”
    • The Year of the Elephant, 571 AD, was used as epoch in the Islamic world until Muhammad left Mecca for Medina in 622 AD (Hijrah) (622 sans Muhammad à Mecca), marking the beginning of the Hijrah calendar (before returning in 630 AD and replacing the idols of the Kaaba, replacing the Quraish rulers)
    • Big creatures must be divine. Meccans mythologizing of elephants was akin to (later) Chinese association of giraffes with the qilin, a chimera from Chinese folklore.
      • A giraffe was sent from the Sultan of Bengal to the Ming court as a gift in 1414 ­— marking their first encounter with the animal. (Mythical encounters.)
      • Seeing something for the first time. Indonesians never saw snow.
    • Coincidental events foster magical thinking or myth-making (“fooled by randomness”) (though everything is also, constantly magic — as it’s also all about how you experience it (The Surrender Experiment, Michael Singer; LSD, meditative states, etc.) (× brain’s instinct to make sense of things; Romans’ two Chinas)
      • Muhammad’s birth happening the same year as the magical sight of elephants by Meccan contributed to the myth surrounding him.
      • × The Prester John archetype (myth): an unknown, unlocated ally sending messages. A beacon of hope.
  • A good philosophy make for astonishing results. Muslim’s creed of only robbing infidels made it spread extremely fast, as it 1) encouraged conquered populations to convert, and 2) encouraged Muslims to conquer further and further to loot in order to subsist.
    • Islam spread both through conquest and conversion.
    • Religions spread like pandemics (or like stone).
  • Conquests lead to intellectual advancement. (× Relationships; relationships give you access to new resources)
    • The Islamic victory over the Tang Chinese at the Battle of Talas in 751 gave them access to papermaking, thereby setting foundations for the beginning of the Islamic Golden Age (~700-1300 AD) (while not severing ties with the Tang dynasty)
      • Later transfers include gunpowder, printing, the magnetic compass.
      • The “inner” Middle Ages (700-1300 AD) were dominated by the Muslims (“Islamic Golden Age”), with the Abbasid caliphate. The Middle Ages were internally Islamic.
        • The Islamic Golden Age akin to the Pax Romana (~ 0-200 AD, heralded by Octavian) 0 to 200… years of peace (Gabriel Romana Marquez)
        • The Islamic Golden Age finished with the invasion of Mongols in the 13th century, plague in the 14th (Black Death The Black Death struck while not even being legal yet), and Vasco da Gama’s in the 15th and 16th century bypassing the Red Sea area by circumventing Africa around the Cape of Good Hope.
  • Islam was a religion of trade (Muhammad was a trader).
  • Perquisites of an echelon can defeat its purpose. Mamluk slaves (soldier slaves) would rise to power based on merit and loyalty, before slowly getting corrupted by the perks of their position and eventually be replaced, by force or nature, by a new generation of rulers.
  • Rearing populations for war: Mamluk slaves would be acquired as boys, then be converted and trained for war — they made excellent warriors.
  • With the victory of the Ottoman Empire of the Mamluk sultanate, Mamluk slaves over time got replaced by Janissaries (during the whole of the Ottoman Empire, ~1400-1900), also slave soldiers, but Janissaries were conscripted (as boys) within the Ottoman Empire’s Christian villages and towns. (Also, Mamluks were cavalry soldiers while Janissaries were infantry.)
  • Internal strifes make more vulnerable to external attacks. (In the case that external threats did not call forth unity (× A Paradise Built in Hell: external conflicts unite)) Christian Crusaders’ victory over Jerusalem was made easier by internal conflicts between the Fatimid caliphate and the Seljuk Turks (1099 AD — the First Crusade, following Pope Urban II’s call to regain control over the Holy Land. Urban II almost eleven hundred (1099 AD))
  • Mystic origins of coffee. The spread of coffee was facilitated by its regular use by Sufis, who were not hermits but rather active “in the world”
    • Coffee as a social lubricant.

Slavery

  • Human slaves were bought in Central Asia and sold against spices by Italians to the Muslims.
  • Humans in exchange for spices. Slaves from Central Asia were bought by Muslims against spices, to fight as soldiers — Italians being the middlemen slave traders. (1200-1500 AD)
    • Later, in the 17th century, this turned into humans in exchange of alcohol (slaves traded against rum) by Caribbean traders.
  • Single-minded efforts, not caring for the means, yield drastic human costs. (Sugarcane plantations of the 17th centuries in the Caribbeans)
    • Sugarcane was the deadliest of crops — with hordes of slaves dying — all of this for the enjoyment of the aristocracy and population of England.

That Pink Floyd album

  • Medieval pigs were valued for transforming resources (fodder into human-consumable proteins) and being a store (of redeemable proteins).
    • In a way, pigs were playing a part (middleman) in the value chain of fodder-to-human-proteins.
      • Pigs as fodder refiners.
    • Pigs were data analysts. Pigs were valued for their ability to produce something valuable out of something we humans cannot directly use.
      • We are nowadays dependent on people knowing how to transform (raw) materials.
        • A power dynamic gets established for things we cannot do ourselves.
        • The means of production is a great lever of power. When these people revolt, the world comes to a halt.
    • Investing pigs. (Compounding.) Spaniard (to-be) settlers would release a pair of pigs on an uncolonized island to come back a few years later to an abundance of pork.
  • Overabundance yields waste (rotting meat). (× The Toyota Way, not overproducing.) The New World provided a very favourable environment to imported livestock, to the extent that new colonies could not make use of it all and some carcasses would be left to rot.
    • Overproduction leads to wear (overburden) of the means of production (× The Toyota Way). Overgrazing by the surplus of cattle was eroding the landscape.
      • Rabbits introduced in Australia in the 19th century multiplied and ravaged the landscape, as they didn’t have any predator. The Nile Perch introduced in Lake Victoria (Kenya) in the 1950s by the British to promote fishing decimated the local biodiversity.
        • Predators as a (population) regulating mechanism (systems thinking).
        • Australians introduced a century later a pathogen uniquely lethal to rabbits (the myxoma virus), in an attempt to curb their development; successfully killed 99.8% of rabbits, before natural selection of mutations kicked in and made the new generations of rabbits immune to the virus.
          • Natural selection of pathogens: not only did the rabbits become immune, but the virus mutated as well to favour strands that would make for a slower death of a host (and of the virus, allowing it to multiply more effectively) — thereby getting less effective in killing the population over time. (Disease equilibration)
    • Too much of one thing damages the other. (× Every policy…)
  • Rescued because of one’s value. (× Linchpin) Camels were rescued from the brink of extinction through domestication because of their value as pack animal, the only way humans could transport freight over long distances in the desert. (× camel’s environmental advantage)
  • Danes were hogging hogs and making for the lion’s share of pork exports — not the most vegan country.

Another header

  • Obsidian, before becoming a formidable note-taking tool, was a volcanic rock and one of the earliest and most prized commodities to be transported by ship; valued for being easily chipped into cutting tools.
  • Bronze mise-en-place/pre-batching. Traders used to transport copper and tin in the same proportions as needed to make the bronze alloy (ten to one). The base metal of copper was abundant, while tin had to be imported from far-away places.
  • Dating through what is current. Objects used to be dated by mention of a contemporaneous figure or event
    • Years were not standardized at that point; while the emperor in power was unambiguous.
    • Gold and silver coins used to be embossed with an image of the emperor at the time of its minting.
    • (× proving we are past a certain date using newspaper headlines; bitcoin hashes)
  • To not think critically is to follow blindly. “Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.” (Keynes)
  • Democracy: “the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time” (Churchill)