Author: stevenattewell

I saw your answer about how long it would take for cows to go from scrawny to beefy under your economic development plans, and that raised a question I hadn’t previously thought of: how much of your economic development plans are based on hindsight/presentism? If some lord or lady were to take over any of these regions with an eye towards economic development, how well would you be able to make an argument for any of your plans based solely on what you/they know right there in Westeros?

To quote myself:

Anonymous asked: In your economic development posts how much of the analysis is based on what is known now vs what was known “back then”? How much of what was known to some could reasonably be expected to be known by your average ruler?

I try to stay within the boundaries of what could be known to an early-modern ruler. I.E, no inventing the steam engine out of nowhere.

Obviously, I can’t eliminate presentism entirely, but I try to play fair.

So in general, when I wrote the various economic development plans, I tried to avoid blatant presentism – i.e, no inventing the steam engine and turning the North into an industrial powerhouse complete with trouble t’mill, just because the North has a lot of sheep and that’s how the North of England economically developed in the 18th and 19th centuries. 

So in general, I rely on economic development methods that were used in the early-modern period – canal-building, changing agricultural methods, the formation of state-backed joint-stock companies as a means of encouraging international commerce, innovations in banking and finance, investing in manufacturing (especially textiles), and so forth. To my mind, this creates a certain plausibility whereby you could imagine a particularly curious, ambitious, well-traveled, -educated, and -advised ruler of one of the Seven Kingdoms paying attention to what’s going on in the Free Cities and among the merchant and artisan classes of Westeros and pursuing these kind of policies. 

There is a certain inescapable element of presentism in that I’m selecting methods of the early-modern period that were successful in their time, which somewhat assumes that economic development will follow a similar path on Planetos. (Although the Free Cities suggests that it’s not far off). 

Both Ben Grimm and Steve Rogers grew up in the Lower East Side in the comics, but this was changed to Brooklyn for both of their movies. Is this just a funny coincidence, or is there some reason why Brooklyn is better for movies?

opinions-about-tiaras:

hedrigal:

racefortheironthrone:

I think it has to do with the way that the passage of time shapes our mental maps of New York City (although the same process happens with all cities). 

Jack Kirby was born at 147 Essex Street – which is just south of Houston, and two blocks away from where the modern Tenement Museum stands – which was at the time a Jewish immigrant neighborhood, and he used his childhood experience to create a background for both Ben Grimm and Steve Rogers. (One can see this most clearly in the case of Ben Grimm and the Yancy Street Gang, where Yancy Street stands in for Delancey Street, which is about a block and a half south of Kirby’s boyhood address.)

image

However, over time Kirby’s childhood neighborhood changed dramatically: from the 40s to the 60s, Jewish and Eastern European immigrants and their kids moved out and African Americans and Puerto Ricans moved in; then from the 1980s to the early 2000s, gentrification spread from the East Village down to the Lower East Side, as students, artists, and yuppies who were finding the East Village now a bit too expensive went looking for cheaper rents, and brought trendy restaurants and art galleries with them, and by the mid 2000s, development started to shift to luxury condos. The point of this is that in the minds of younger writers, the Lower East Side isn’t a working-class immigrant neighorhood, because working-class people can’t afford to live there any more.

However, Brooklyn still has something of a more working-class cachet to it, especially in the minds of the broader movie-going public, if only for the moment. And thus writers looking for a backstory for characters who are the children of

working-class

immigrants (Jewish and Irish, respectively) shift their origins from the Lower East Side to Brooklyn. 

I wonder when spider man and the thing will be from queens or Staten Island.

Ultimate Spidey was from Queens! And he was created almost twenty years ago and had his own book for a decade.

I believe Miles Morales is from Queens as well. I could be wrong tho.

Peter Parker has always been from Forest Hills, Queens. In fact, he was even given a real address –  20 Ingram Street – and got a lot of mail delivered to its then-current occupants, who I shit you not, were actually the Parkers. 

Both Ben Grimm and Steve Rogers grew up in the Lower East Side in the comics, but this was changed to Brooklyn for both of their movies. Is this just a funny coincidence, or is there some reason why Brooklyn is better for movies?

I think it has to do with the way that the passage of time shapes our mental maps of New York City (although the same process happens with all cities). 

Jack Kirby was born at 147 Essex Street – which is just south of Houston, and two blocks away from where the modern Tenement Museum stands – which was at the time a Jewish immigrant neighborhood, and he used his childhood experience to create a background for both Ben Grimm and Steve Rogers. (One can see this most clearly in the case of Ben Grimm and the Yancy Street Gang, where Yancy Street stands in for Delancey Street, which is about a block and a half south of Kirby’s boyhood address.)

image

However, over time Kirby’s childhood neighborhood changed dramatically: from the 40s to the 60s, Jewish and Eastern European immigrants and their kids moved out and African Americans and Puerto Ricans moved in; then from the 1980s to the early 2000s, gentrification spread from the East Village down to the Lower East Side, as students, artists, and yuppies who were finding the East Village now a bit too expensive went looking for cheaper rents, and brought trendy restaurants and art galleries with them, and by the mid 2000s, development started to shift to luxury condos. The point of this is that in the minds of younger writers, the Lower East Side isn’t a working-class immigrant neighorhood, because working-class people can’t afford to live there any more.

However, Brooklyn still has something of a more working-class cachet to it, especially in the minds of the broader movie-going public, if only for the moment. And thus writers looking for a backstory for characters who are the children of

working-class

immigrants (Jewish and Irish, respectively) shift their origins from the Lower East Side to Brooklyn. 

How rich and powerful were Italian medieval and Renaissance banking and merchant families? How do they compare to contemporaries in other parts of Western Europe? Did the Muslim world have equivalents in the middle East and North Africa?

Extremely rich and powerful, since they became the ruling families of more than a few Italian states. Certainly other banking families in the Lowlands and Germany became equally rich, but I don’t know of any that became as politically powerful other than the Fuggers. 

There certainly were wealthy merchants in the Muslim world, although banking was complicated by religious prohibitions. I don’t know of any who gained the same political power as the Medici did, however. 

Would it have been smarter or easier for Egg to push pro small folk reforms via economic means rather than legalistic ones? City charters, better roads, all those canals etc.

My issue with the social progress through economic development strategy is that it really depends what the issues were that the smallfolk were dealing with: if the major issue of the day was famines and high prices, large numbers of landless younger sons, etc. than pushing economic development is a good idea. But if the issue is the nobility rampaging over the peasantry, pursuing a strategy of “let’s wait a few generations for the merchant classes to rise before doing anything about it” doesn’t seem great.