Medieval Economics - Courtesy of NPR's Planet Money
Podcast from May 6th, 2011.
Preview states
"Knights are extortionists. Guilds knock down your house if you don't play by their rules. And you have to wait until the black death kills a third of Europe before anything changes.
Tough times."
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/05/06/136060506/the-friday-podcast-medieval-economics
Preview states
"Knights are extortionists. Guilds knock down your house if you don't play by their rules. And you have to wait until the black death kills a third of Europe before anything changes.
Tough times."
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/05/06/136060506/the-friday-podcast-medieval-economics
Original Post from 2009.
Preview States.
"Drag out those leggings and chain mail armor, folks. We're going medieval, specifically the 12th and 13th centuries.
Before governments had regulators with suits and briefcases, says William and Mary history professor Philip Daileader, they had knights. The Lancelots of real life went around the kingdom forcing people to pay whatever the knights decided they owed. It was a brutal economic approach.
If you think the knights were tough, be thankful you never faced the guild system. It existed to eliminate competition and benefit producers at the expense of consumers. Craftspeople fought each other for control and tried to limit access to the market — at their own expense, it turned out.
Bonus: After the jump, a sign that they're not hiring."
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2009/07/hear_bloody_miserable_medieval.html
Preview States.
"Drag out those leggings and chain mail armor, folks. We're going medieval, specifically the 12th and 13th centuries.
Before governments had regulators with suits and briefcases, says William and Mary history professor Philip Daileader, they had knights. The Lancelots of real life went around the kingdom forcing people to pay whatever the knights decided they owed. It was a brutal economic approach.
If you think the knights were tough, be thankful you never faced the guild system. It existed to eliminate competition and benefit producers at the expense of consumers. Craftspeople fought each other for control and tried to limit access to the market — at their own expense, it turned out.
Bonus: After the jump, a sign that they're not hiring."
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2009/07/hear_bloody_miserable_medieval.html
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