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Posted on 10/06/2025 1:53:39 AM PDT by CIB-173RDABN
Human history is shaped by the tension between constant biological drives and changing social environments. Across centuries, people have sought the same essentials — food, clothing, shelter, and security — yet the mechanisms to achieve them have evolved dramatically. Civilizations rise and fall not because human nature changes, but because the systems that organize labor, energy, and capital shift in response to crisis, innovation, and opportunity.
This essay traces three transformative forces that have repeatedly restructured societies and economies: war, which expanded wealth through conquest; plague, which redistributed labor and power; and technology, which now replaces labor through automation. By examining these layers together, we can see the underlying DNA of human action: a constant drive for survival and prosperity, expressed in forms shaped by the resources, knowledge, and crises of the time.
In mapping this progression — from medieval feudalism, through Renaissance renewal, to industrial energy and digital automation — we gain insight into the patterns that have governed Western civilization and may govern the global order for generations to come.
Across all ages, humanity has pursued the same essentials — food, clothing, shelter, and the security that protects them. What changes is how these needs are met: the organization of labor, the sources of energy, and the systems of power that direct them. Each great turning point in history begins when the old way of meeting these needs collapses — and a new one takes its place.
In the pre-industrial world, the road to wealth ran through war. Productivity was limited by muscle and nature; there was no way to make more without taking more. Kings, empires, and tribes expanded by seizing land and enslaving or taxing those who worked it. Victory proved not only military strength but organizational sophistication — the ability to mobilize men, food, and resources over distance.
War was thus both a moral and economic system. It created the first great concentrations of wealth and power, but only through continuous violence and expansion. In this world, peace was stagnation — a pause between campaigns.
Then came catastrophe. Between 1347 and 1353, the Black Death swept through Europe, killing perhaps half the population. It was the most devastating demographic event in history — but it also rewired the machinery of society.
With so many dead, labor became scarce and valuable. Feudal lords could no longer command endless peasant toil; workers demanded wages and freedom of movement. Governments tried to freeze wages and restrict travel, but failed — the economy had shifted beneath them. Out of death came a new balance of power between those who worked and those who ruled.
The plague also cracked the intellectual order of Christendom. The Church, unable to explain or stop the disaster, lost moral authority. People turned toward reason, observation, and individual experience — the seeds of the Renaissance and Scientific Revolution.
Thus, a biological disaster triggered a social and philosophical rebirth. Europe emerged fewer in number but richer in spirit and capacity — ready for the age of trade and exploration to follow.
The 18th and 19th centuries transformed scarcity itself. Coal, oil, and steam engines multiplied human labor a thousandfold. Wealth was no longer measured by acres or armies but by energy density and mechanical power.
Where conquest once captured slaves, now machines performed their work. The industrial nations grew rich not by war (though they still fought them), but by productivity — by making more from less. Cheap energy became the modern equivalent of fertile land, and innovation replaced plunder as the means of advancement.
Around 1980, another transformation began — quieter but no less profound. Computers shrank, software spread, and machines began to take over cognitive labor. At first, they helped us work faster. Then they began to replace us.
Word processors eliminated typists, spreadsheets reduced accounting departments, and automation hollowed out factories. Now AI encroaches on design, writing, law, and management. The result is a strange inversion of the medieval plague:
The Black Death made people scarce and labor valuable. The Digital Revolution made people abundant and labor cheap.
Yet governments, clinging to the industrial mindset, made hiring ever more expensive — taxes, mandates, and benefits — driving employers toward automation even faster. The natural balance between worker and employer, forged after centuries of struggle, began to collapse.
For the first time since the 14th century, entire classes of workers face permanent redundancy — not from disease, but from obsolescence. Productivity rises; wages stagnate. Wealth flows to owners of capital and code, not to those who labor. A global labor surplus coexists with unfillable jobs — a mismatch of skills, cost, and technology.
This creates the new social crisis of our time:
The middle class — the stabilizer of industrial civilization — is shrinking, just as the peasantry did before the Renaissance. History suggests that such imbalances end not in reform, but in revolution or reformation.
Each age of wealth follows a recurring sequence:
What changes is the environment; what remains constant is the human drive to survive, adapt, and control the forces that threaten survival. The tools evolve — sword, plow, steam, silicon — but the motive stays the same: to secure food, clothing, shelter, and status in an uncertain world.
We stand again at an inflection point. Technology, like the plague, has broken the balance between people and production. But unlike the 14th century, there is no shortage to empower the survivors — only abundance that displaces them.
Will humanity adapt again — redefining work, value, and purpose — or will this “Black Death in reverse” consume the very system it sustains? The answer will decide whether the next age is one of renewal or decline.
I want to be clear that this essay is an overview, not a deep dive. Each stage of the relationship between labor and prosperity — from the age of conquest, through the Black Death, to industrialization and the digital revolution — could fill entire volumes. What I present here is a broad outline of events and patterns, meant to illuminate the general arc, not exhaust every detail or explanation.
Readers seeking comprehensive analysis of any single era will find entire books dedicated to that purpose. My goal is simply to trace the sequence and logic of major shifts, showing how human needs interact with systems of power and technology across time. This is intended as a framework for understanding, not a full historical account.
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So you’re anti-technology.
How do you build incentives for corporations to include humans in their operations? How do we incentivize savings and increase prosperity for the middle class?
So you’re anti-technology.
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No. I am only pointing out the situation as I see it.
Great topic. What do we do to occupy people who could have computers and robots do their work?
Weasley answer.
You’re pushing a Malthusian anti-people and population decrease agenda.
Lika all the Marxists who think there needs to be less people.
You’re pushing a Malthusian anti-people and population decrease agenda.
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An observation is not pushing anything.
Reader Note:
This essay/commentary is a descriptive analysis of historical and modern patterns, focusing on how humans adapt to change in labor, technology, and society. It is not an endorsement or critique of any ideology, political system, or technology. The observations are meant to explore trends and possible consequences, not to prescribe policy or assign blame. Readers are encouraged to evaluate the ideas presented, not infer motives or labels.
More weasel words.
And you’re essays suck. They’re empty blather.
They sound good for a precocious sophomore.
Great thread. Ignore the trolls.
Although, there is an unlimited amount of work that could be done, the age of AI perfected will always ensure that a machine will be doing the work.
Any ideology pushed to limit will always result in a bad situation. For technology, replacing human beungs completely at all levels makes humans superfluous.
” What do we do to occupy people who could have computers and robots do their work? “
As a person who works in AI. I don’t see computers and robots replacing all work. I do see it REDUCES people - probably making it 10% of what was there earlier.
This would be kind of like farming in 1770 to farming in 2020 —> 250 years the number of workers needed was probably reduced by 99%. and it was due to automation and better tools and techniques.
btw, we still need “human in the loop” as AI hallucinates and can be useful for the basic grunt work, but cannot think up the best option. At best it can poll for the best option. Even if you use the random forest algo, the question is how many decision trees? And how can you interpret it vs the machine hallucinating? Finally, it is based on the datasets and is prone to overfitting
The reduction in birth rates has been happening ever since the early 1800s,
This reduction happened well before computers.
I think short term this will cause problems especially as this shift to automate is very rapid
Think of this as similar to the weavers in the 1700s who suddenly lost their jobs to steam powered looms. That led to the Luddite movement
We will get a rapid shift now. I see this as happening over the next 5 years where white collar jobs get reduced by about 30%, but then bouncing back.
Why am I more optimistic? because I look at the code and look at the petabytes of data and how this all just confuses the models. AI is not "intelligence" but collation and categorization and while more data does improve the information, at a point it degrades the predictive and prescriptive results.
Oh crap! He isn't pushing an agenda. He is making an observation and then asking where the situation will lead. He poses an important problem. Our civilization is collapsing; and, what he observes may be a multiplier. Evaluating the problems we face is the beginning of an effort to postpone collapse.
Same thing probably heard prior to the collapse of historical civilizations. You aught to open your mind. You are not the winner of this thread.
You wrote this?
This is eye-opening stuff. Good ideas.
Well written.
Most stuff in big name magazines is shallow and less insightful nor as original as this.
You did a very good job!
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