Unproductive Orlanthi

From: David Weihe <weihe_at_eagle.danetinc.com>
Date: Tue, 18 Nov 1997 21:10:15 EST


Pam Carlson:
> Are we talking about an agrarian society here? Do Orlanthi
> really have the luxury to allow their teenagers to lounge about aimlessly
> with weapons?

Unless the Orlanthi are particularly stupid, staying on land that makes RW Somalia look hospitable, yes, they do. If you read Hesiod's "The Work and the Days" you will see that even in ~750BC Greece (bad soil, and well before any improvements from scientific farming) most of the year there was not a lot that had to be done at any given time, except for the brief periods of plowing in the spring and harvest in the fall, during which the farmers were, granted, occupied full time.

At other times, farmers have lots of time to spend on "lounging about aimlessly", as nothing can be done to make crops grow much faster, save occasional weeding; this is why some Icelandic Vikings (again, not on very rich and productive land) could spend an entire summer raiding without worrying about their families starving; this is why farmers have not all moved to cities and got industrial jobs without first losing their farms to bad business decisions (green tracters, blue silos, or divorce, as my Illinois cousin put it) (in those cases, their problem is that more time spent on farm work does not produce much of a payback, either).

For a RW example, settlers in Indiana during the 1800-1820 period, when they were still clearing virgin land, according to diaries spent most afternoons visiting neighbors. Granted, that had the payoff of improved relations, which would be useful come barn-raising time, or if one of the adults became ill, but clearly there is no desparate need for *everybody* to spend *all* their time at work.

Agrarian societies may not make their members rich, but neither do they require 16 hour days, 7 days a week (again, except for plowing and harvest times, when it is more like 20 hour days, but for only three or four days twice each year).


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