Greed was different in the Middle Ages.

[white_wolf]

I found this article rather interesting. It isn't about capitalism so much as how views on wealth and greed have changed over the centuries. What is acceptable behavior on Wall Street now, might very well get you killed in Medieval Europe. I also think that this is article is interesting in that since it shows that greed hasn't always been encourage, then maybe a future society will have even more negative attitude toward greed. I'll cross post it in the morning, but GD moves too fast for late night posts to really be seen and I thought it might be an interesting read her and open us help to a discussion on how different societies view money and wealth.

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/august/greed-middle-ages-080212.html

[silverweb]

1. Sounds very interesting.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]Bookmarked for the morning, as I'm supposed to be working for my corporate overlords right now.

[supernova]

2. Great article

Thanks for posting it, white-wolf.

I think, what it shows more than anything how much they appreciated the idea that up and down the social ladder, they all depended upon each other for survival. The peasant couldn't survive without land for subsistence farming and protection from the local Lord. The Lord in turn, couldn't survive without peasants to work the estate and provide services in the towns that sprang up around the estate.

We have gotten away from that idea of appreciating that everyone has a part to play in our lives.

[TheKentuckian]

3. Good little read

[HiPointDem]

4. I think you used to see the same kind of dynamic in small towns. You couldn't be mean to

people because there were so many interconnections and dependencies, you had to make the effort to be fair.

I think it's not so much people's view of money & wealth, but that in a smaller-scale society the zero-sum nature of wealth is easier to see -- how A got rich by stealing from B, etc. -- and power is more balanced. B could rally his relatives and friends and murder A in his bed, stop laboring in A's fields, etc.

Old-time mores used to include not bragging or displaying wealth conspicuously, not complimenting people on possessions -- all I suspect evolved to keep envy to a minimum & maintain social harmony. Thus modesty was a virtue. Nowadays we're counseled the opposite -- to "advertise our brand" -- though most people still don't like a conspicuous braggart. But envy-inciting display of wealth & status is ubiquitous.

[limpyhobbler]

5. ...

yeah you know I think it's interesting that alot of cultural conservatives seem to share
a pretty similar attitude toward greed and consumer culture. Similar I mean in some ways to those of us who would offer a critique of consumerism and a culture of greed from the left.

Those are sort of the cultual reactionaries who want to go back to when times were simpler or whatever. A lot of them also have a disdain for banks and bankers, conspicuous consumption, urbanization, and just many of the symptoms of modern capitalism.

I mean, they are experiencing the effects of capitalism in action: commodification of all resources including human beings, atomization and pressure on family units, corporate propaganda designed to get you to keep consuming, alienation from work and community.

Also they may not like the many of the good things that have come with our liberal verison of capitalism, like social emancipation of women, minorities, etc.

I just realized I don't have a point. But maybe there is some weird overlap where cultural conservatives offer in their own misguided way a critique of the cultural effects of modern capitalism.