Any discussion of capitalism and its intractable terminal infertility inevitably leads to the question of overpopulation, and whether we are, as a species, in such a state.
Two book recommendations - Technofeudalism by Yanis Varoufakis and How Civilizations Die by David P. Goldman. Both are pretty relevant to topics you're interested in. Former is about tech companies mutating what we think of as capitalism; latter is about collapsing birth rates' implications for geopolitics (looks like an age of war ahead).
"Feudal societies, to make it possible for men to be subordinate to other men without making them universally repulsive, used religion. God had simply planted humans in different places, like seeds in separate rows, and designed roles for people to fulfill. Copulation across classes surely happened, but was disavowed—jus primae noctis, the so-called law of the first night, was a practice of which medieval polities accused their enemies, but seems to have been nowhere observed. A male peasant, therefore, was not a subordinate worker, but a farmer who answered mainly to God… who also happened to pay taxes to the lord."
This is really great! One general complaint I have about historical movies/fiction/even some non-fiction is their insistence on viewing the past through our eyes, when the past was, in truth, utterly foreign. So it's almost like we're consuming propaganda more than history a lot of the time.
Two book recommendations - Technofeudalism by Yanis Varoufakis and How Civilizations Die by David P. Goldman. Both are pretty relevant to topics you're interested in. Former is about tech companies mutating what we think of as capitalism; latter is about collapsing birth rates' implications for geopolitics (looks like an age of war ahead).
https://www.goodreads.com/notes/196421819-technofeudalism/71655209-daniel-moore
https://www.goodreads.com/notes/13171500-how-civilizations-die/71655209-daniel-moore
"Feudal societies, to make it possible for men to be subordinate to other men without making them universally repulsive, used religion. God had simply planted humans in different places, like seeds in separate rows, and designed roles for people to fulfill. Copulation across classes surely happened, but was disavowed—jus primae noctis, the so-called law of the first night, was a practice of which medieval polities accused their enemies, but seems to have been nowhere observed. A male peasant, therefore, was not a subordinate worker, but a farmer who answered mainly to God… who also happened to pay taxes to the lord."
This is really great! One general complaint I have about historical movies/fiction/even some non-fiction is their insistence on viewing the past through our eyes, when the past was, in truth, utterly foreign. So it's almost like we're consuming propaganda more than history a lot of the time.