
How the Black Death made the rich richer - clouddrover
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200701-how-the-black-death-make-the-rich-richer
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dumbfoundded
The wikipedia page points to the exact opposite conclusion:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequences_of_the_Black_Deat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequences_of_the_Black_Death#Social,_environmental,_and_economic_effects)

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anonytrary
Noteworthy considering that both BBC and Wikipedia are treated as relatively
reliable sources of information. If even they can't agree, then it is a
measurement of either our own ignorance, or those source being less reliable
than we thought. For example, I wouldn't recommend going to Wikipedia for
everything (applied) math related. A lot of pages on the advanced stuff are
sparse and obscure, and there are also plenty of cases where equations or
explanations have been wrong.

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hogFeast
I studied economic history. I am not an expert on medieval economic history
but the take in the article is definitely bad (unf, this is becoming more and
more common).

I am not going to speculate as to why but as an example:

The article talks about government funding...this makes no sense, literally
none...it is generally accepted that nation states didn't exist until about 3
or 4 centuries after the period in question, and govt finance as it exists
today came half a century after that.

The article talks about companies...again, companies didn't exist for another
4 centuries.

These are basic elements of economic history in the period. If you study
history, day one of a research course would be...don't read the present into
history. This is one of the worst examples I have ever seen (and part of the
research course I did was literally looking at the worst examples...this is
worse...no historical article should include comments supporting a current
political proposal, as this article does...it is just totally inappropriate).

And yes, the Wikipedia article linked is correct (in the sense that this is
the generally accepted account). The dynamics of this are well understood:
famines, plagues, wars, etc. triggered huge prosperity (and the poorest
generally benefit most as always) because the main limit on growth was the
number of people growing beyond what productivity/resources could support
(this happened again in the 17th century and is why America was populated...so
these periods are significant). When lots of people died, there was room for
growth.

No, the BBC is not a reliable source of information and hasn't been for a
number of years. The article is (unfortunately) quite typical: people have a
preconceived notion about what is true, and then gather information that
confirms that conclusion. At best, this is an example of an editor who has
hijacked the original article...at best (the university attended by one of the
authors is, however, not surprising to me). It is important not to confuse
information that you want to believe is true with actual reality. I don't
think it is particularly controversial to point out that 95% of the population
(journalists closer to 99%) have gone off the deep end when it comes to this.

(It is maybe worth adding, the narrative in the article is one of those
subjects where some news organisations will just pump endless stories about
how the rich are exploiting X or Y. These articles do very well on social
media but the fact that they draw the same conclusion about every single event
should lead you to ask whether they don't have an "angle". Eliciting jealousy
and rage is money in the pocket for journalists, jealousy is a very
predictable and bankable emotion.)

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Ericson2314
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stora_Enso](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stora_Enso)
so it's looks like perhaps there _technically_ were some proto-joint-stock
companies by the bubonic plague, but yes the article is quite bad, rather
shockingly given the authors' academic credentials.

I dunno what corner of academy they are from, but in every one I'm aware of,
using historically-specific terminology like this in a different period is a
major faux-pas.

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GuB-42
This article is all over the place. The author tried to fit the current
COVID-19 pandemic to the Black Death, even though they have very little in
common.

Obviously, a pandemic is a major event, many changes happen after major
events, and out of many changes, by chance alone, you are bound to find
similarities with other events. Making some (not all) rich people richer is
also bound to happen. When wealth is shuffled around, there are winners and
losers, and among the winners, some are rich to begin with, and therefore,
some rich get richer.

In order to make parallels like the article did, you can't escape statistical
analysis, like proper scientific papers. Here, it just looks like cherry
picking a few bits to draw a picture that is not even consistent.

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cerealbad
Demography of England:

    
    
      1348 4,810,000 +16.7%
    
      1351 2,600,000 −45.9%
    
      1650 5,310,000 +29.2%
    

300 years to recover

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vnchr
It’s interesting to consider how many corporations will weather this pandemic
and how many small businesses will not.

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pmiller2
I agree. I think we're going to see a lot more wealth concentration because of
all the business shutdowns. And, soon, landlords may be going bankrupt because
tenants aren't able to pay and some (how many?) states have eviction
moratoriums. Even if they could evict non-paying tenants, the rental market is
softening to an extent that could certainly take down some smaller or
overleveraged players.

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dd36
The $600 week is preventing mass defaults by tenants.

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pmiller2
Then why were 30% of Americans not able to pay their rent on time last month,
along with a similar percentage in April and May?

[https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/16/30percent-of-americans-
misse...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/16/30percent-of-americans-missed-their-
housing-payments-in-june.html)

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silicaroach
it didn't. In fact it gave rise to the middle class, caused the coming in to
being of inheritance and real estate laws, and empowered workers. Why? A
wealthy land owner was only as rich as what the owned land produced. With all
the deaths the workers who remained became valued. Similarly, who inherited
what became very important as literally whole families died. And with the laws
came fairer treatment for everyone.

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dylan604
In pretty much any major negative event, the rich will get richer. As the
negative event starts to impact non-rich people financially to the point they
have to sell off things of value (stocks, property, etc) it is the wealthy
that can buy it from them.

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dumbfoundded
Not if the event is fundamentally disruptive enough for existing business.
War, disease and famine tend to redistribute wealth.

