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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   4371 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 26, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Tyranny of the wagon equation.

An ox requires a certain amount of food each day. This is true whether it’s hauling trade goods, soldiers, or that food. The further you’re planning to go, the more of your weight has to go towards feeding your transport. It’s even worse for military maneuvers, since your destination is unlikely to sell you supplies.

Boats have a much, much better rate of return, reducing the cost of doing business immensely. So ocean access is like a multiplier on state capacity. At one point, Rome was importing a ridiculous percentage of its food from across the Mediterranean. In turn, that freed up labor for metallurgy and bureaucracy and all those other structural advantages.

Some rough numbers:

Efficiency of transportation. Transport has a cost, and the farther things go, the more the buyer has to pay. This is expressed as a proportion of agricultural produce consumed per mile of transportation. For human bearers and beasts of burden, that cost is 1/30. If goods are transported by cart, it's 1/60. For transport largely by boats, it's 1/300 along rivers, or 1/1500 for transport by sea (exceptionally extensive canal and river systems may come close to this as well). Most cities fall in the range between cart and river travel.

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