Why did nothing similar to the industrialization in 19th century britannia or 17th century Netherlands happen in Rome as a result of the hordes of free men rendered unemployed by slave run estates?
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>a result of the hordes of free men rendered unemployed by slave run estates?
No? That was never a problem outside of Etruria in the Late Republic
Mass slavery basically rendered industry related innovation unnecesary in rome. Nobody really cared about automation and mass production of anything when you just had a million dudes who would do it for free. Mass industry of the 19th century onwoards and slavery in roman sense are basically two opposite sides of the industral spectrum
Romans lacked several critical components. They didn't have the financial techniques, the population density, and the technological knowhow to really fuel a 19th-century style industrial takeoff. The last two are really the kicker - Roman-era agriculture, with its limited crops and two-field rotation, was somewhere around 1/10th as productive as British agriculture in 1800, while the difference in technological knowhow between 1 AD and 1800 AD cannot be overstated, especially as regards to metallurgy
Furthermore, while they did meddle around with methods of centralising and organising production for certain goods (garum in particular, but also flour and weapons/armor in late empire), which created a few manufactories similar to those which presaged factories in the west, there was very little incentive to invest in labour-saving machinery thanks to the relative cheapness and high availability of slaves.
What "financial techniques" they didn't have?
I think that Rome simply didn't last long enough. It we take Caesar and the discovery of the Americas as starting point, Rome would only have less than three centuries of progress, which really wouldn't be enough, and it makes the progress seem actually kind of comparable.
nta but one of the major components was the lack of a corporate investment structure to ensure that you could fund a business venture to a varying degrees of risk. Rome used the client-patron model of investing, where the investing party was shackled to the outcome of the project, and thus high risk ventures were heavily discouraged. It is really suprising how the Anglo-Dutch financial system created in the 17th century is really the exact same as the financial system used by billions of people today, as it allows for variable risk and variable return investing.
>nta
Sure
That only allowed for exploitative ventures, such as the east india companies. The inventions were too simple to need too many people.
This, basically. Another important aspect was that it was far easier to draw on credit from multiple investors at once. Reliable insurance was also a major innovation which made international long-distance trade far less risky for investors
So you are determined to keep posting this, and ignore any counterarguments?
How was it needed when inventions were often made single handedly into the 20th century, when they ceased to happen at all.
>high risk ventures were heavily discouraged.
Can you make a good argument for why it should not be so?
We can only distinguish between "good" risk and "bad" risk thanks to hundreds of years of development, so now everything seems obvious in hindsight, but back then it wasn't. Many ideas ended up as complete flops, but many more increased the human productive capacity by orders of magnitude and thanks to the willingness of a few to take on risk we enjoy a standard of living that would've been unthinkable to people living even 80 years ago. If we thought the way you did, where risk is something to be avoided at all costs then frankly we would still be living in huts, blissfully unaware about how good life can be. If you have a good passive income from whatever that can keep you afloat, then you have no reason NOT to spend any excess income on a high risk venture, as on the offchance that it is the right path, then you've massively increase not just your own wealth, but the collective wealth of civilization.
You are repeating in different words that it's good, but why? And what makes you think it's necessary for progress?
Sometimes there are things that have never been tried before (cars, computers, a new way of making cloth) amd either an individual or group of investors will have to take a risk toake something that may later be seen as obvious
You don't think that inventions are made by trial and error, do you? If things were done by trial and error, Juicero would have been a breathtaking, once in a lifetime breakthrough.
The Romans lacked a lot of the sophisticated mathematics needed to do bigbrain finance but what they really lacked was a union of finance and corporate personhood. The Romans had the idea of corporate personhood (COLLEGIVM), but they didn't have a good way of wedding it to financial interest. Here's an example: suppose that you are a ship captain and you want to move a load of tin from Britain to Sicily. However, you need a boat and a crew.
Under the Roman model, you're go to a bunch of Roman lenders (there are no banks at this time, it's all personal) and get money from them in return for a cut of the profits later. Each INDIVIDUAL GUY would then have an interest in the venture and YOU PERSONALLY would owe EACH INDIVIDUAL GUY money. The problem with this is two fold. Firstly, if the boat sinks, they are FRICKED as far as getting returns back. Secondly, if the boat sinks, you are FRICKED as far as getting them their returns back. Thirdly, if some other guy takes what little he can from you (like selling you to slavery) then the others are FRICKED as far as getting ANYTHING back from this venture. So, to compensate for the risk, they would engage in heavy amounts of control. Think "Mob boss with his favorite restaurant" kind of stuff, lots of micromanagement. This was directly wedded to slavery, businessmen would sell themselves into slavery to elites as a way of giving that elite financial control over the venture ("my slave made the profits so I get a cut"). And worst of all, what if the venture succeeded? Who gets how much of the profit?
This is in contrast to the idea of jointly held corporate persons, wherein Ventures Inc. is created, and each member owns a cut of it, and thus gets X% of whatever is left when it goes breasts up, but also gets X% of the profit when things go right. This gives the owners a (theoretical) claim on everything, but it also allows for a segregation of resources to protect people. In Rome, you'd get a loan from ANTONIVS SVPERICVS, between the two of personally. If your garum factory burns down, he'll come and take your fricking house. But, if you start a corporation, and the corporation gets a loan from him, all he can take is what the corporation owns. While there might be less stuff to take, this is actually better for him as it means that he doesn't have to specialize in shit like "taking and selling random bits of furntiure". Because what the corporation owns is plainly visible, he can more easily calculate his risk.
Also, in regards to agriculture, a big innovation was credit. In short, the bank gives you microloans with very small interest payments under the idea that you'll pay them back when the harvest comes. This is how farmers today survive, they take out a bunch of small loans and then pay the bank back. Before that, a farm had to be a microstate so as to be constantly producing agricultural products to get money to pay debts AND buy stuff. This lead to the latifundia system as the bigger farms not only made more but were more flexible and less prone to collapsing because of a single crop failure or a bad harvest.
I'd argue it probably shouldn't happen, and it's a wholly bad idea, as whoever owns the ship now has a much better chance of bringing the tin without sinking, than some rando who happened to kiss enough wealthy asses to get a load of money.
>the difference in technological knowhow between 1 AD and 1800 AD cannot be overstated, especially as regards to metallurgy
People keep thinking "ancient rome advanced, medieval europe backwards" and don't realize that's not at all the case for metallurgy, or tons of other fields for that matter.
There is a very cool conspiracy theory that says the Romans could have industralized but decided not to, in order to slow down the progression of history. They even had scientists assassinated to make sure technology wouldnt progress beyond their current era.
there is a supposed historical antedote of one of the ceasars putting a man to death because he showed the ceasar his new invention of an unbreakable glass. It would have disrupted the social order too much
What the frick are you talking about? You don't think the post was meant ironically?
>he doesn't know
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexible_glass
>It's true, because it happened in Ancient Roman gay novel.
None reads all the way to "dutch"?
People are going to say the same about our civilization in 500 years.
>why didn't they do this or that.
It simply wasn't obvious for them, it wasn't even an idea.