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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   25104 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 25, 2023

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You probably had what, 2-3 million people in England?

Actually almost 5 million! But it would crash to under 2 million by 1450 thanks to the Black Death and its many echoes. The ones who survived the plague enjoyed much higher quality of life as Malthusian constraints were lifted.

Nowhere else would have even close to that concentration of people who had enough money to hire a prostitute.

I think you're probably right. But what a revealing statement. Things were so bad that women who might have wanted to resort to prostitution couldn't because there weren't enough clients with means to pay!

But what a revealing statement. Things were so bad that women who might have wanted to resort to prostitution couldn't because there weren't enough clients with means to pay!

It just shows that rich men were concentrated in cities, and their extra wealth was greater than the higher cost of living of the city.

What do you find revealing about this? Is the idea that there were huge wealth disparities in the past a revelation to you?

Things were so bad that women who might have wanted to resort to prostitution couldn't because there weren't enough clients with means to pay!

Isn’t this an (odd) interpretation of virtually any supply and demand curve? The only thing stopping me from stripping naked on public TV is that nobody is willing to pay me a billion dollars to do it.

The only thing stopping me from stripping naked on public TV is that nobody is willing to pay me a billion dollars to do it.

We've already established what kind of person you are @you-get-an-upvote. Now we're just haggling over the price.

What a revealing statement. Things are so bad on Earth that somebody who wants to strip naked for money can’t because there aren’t enough clients to pay!

I apologize for my snark earlier.

I don't understand the objection. An affluent person doing something for $1 billion is different than a person in abject poverty doing that same thing to survive.

No worries, sorry for the snarky reply.

Yes that's true, I was just illustrating that quantity supplied increases whenever demand increases, and this isn't considered "revealing" in most circumstances. Nobody would say "aha! It's been revealed that you-get-an-upvote wants to be a stripper" or "aha! The US wants to export bananas" if demand increases enough, so I'm not sure why you're saying it about the women in 1300s London.

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