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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Athaway. The virus situation

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Speaker 1: in the US is extremely bad right now, but I

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Speaker 1: feel hopeful that this we're on the last wave, that

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Speaker 1: thanks to the vaccine, that the light there is some

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Speaker 1: light at the end of the tunnel. Yeah. So we're

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Speaker 1: recording this in mid December, and I think the US

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Speaker 1: caseload keeps going up. It keeps going up in other

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Speaker 1: places as well, So I think Europe Germany just posted

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Speaker 1: its highest caseload on record. Um in Hong Kong, we

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Speaker 1: have a fourth wave as well. I guess with winter

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Speaker 1: setting in in many parts of the world, temperature obviously

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Speaker 1: has an impact, and we're seeing cases and also sat

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Speaker 1: DUTs go up as well. Can I say something, though

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Speaker 1: you might here, I have I have something to say,

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Speaker 1: which is I read all these stories about like Hong

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Speaker 1: Kong is under a new wave or Hong Kong is

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Speaker 1: under lockdown, but I gotta say like it does not

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Speaker 1: seem anything like the same scale here and when I

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Speaker 1: look at say your Instagram photos, not that you're out partying,

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Speaker 1: but it does not seem as bad by strategy even close,

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Speaker 1: Like it seems like your definition of a wave is

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Speaker 1: not our definition of a wave. Yeah, our definition of

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Speaker 1: a wave, and this is our biggest ever wave. It's

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Speaker 1: about a hundred new cases per day, so really a

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Speaker 1: fraction of what you're seeing in other countries. And our

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Speaker 1: lockdowns are kind of weird and different because, for instance, um,

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Speaker 1: you're allowed to eat in a restaurant, but they all

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Speaker 1: close at six pm and it's only two people per table,

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Speaker 1: so you can go out, and of course you can.

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Speaker 1: You can still. This is what I quite like about

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Speaker 1: Hong Kong. You can still get drinks and just dreat

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Speaker 1: them outside after six pm, and because weather is quite

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Speaker 1: mild here, it's fairly enjoyable to do that. But you're

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Speaker 1: still supposed to do it in groups of a maximum

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Speaker 1: of people. There's literally nothing like our waves. And people

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Speaker 1: are still doing boat parties right well, they cracked down

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Speaker 1: on those, so it's set up a hot line. They

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Speaker 1: set up a hotline so that people could report if

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Speaker 1: they spotted someone holding a they're called jump parties here.

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Speaker 1: If if people decide to hold a jump party because

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Speaker 1: they can't hold a party in a restaurant or a bar,

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Speaker 1: they hire a boat, they go out to sea, and

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Speaker 1: everyone drinks and swims and sunbathes. Now there's a hotline

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Speaker 1: so you can report that behavior. You're not supposed to

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Speaker 1: do it, all right, anyway, This is a big digression,

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Speaker 1: but I just wanted to get this off my chest

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Speaker 1: that what you like Hong Kong, isn't it it's worst

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Speaker 1: wave yet, that it's like it's they look, it's all relative. Yeah, exactly,

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Speaker 1: that's my point. It's relative to us. It's it's not

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Speaker 1: like anyway. So that of course raises questions. At the

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Speaker 1: end of the coronavirus crisis, COVID is inside. That of

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Speaker 1: course raises questions about what the post crisis world, the

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Speaker 1: post COVID world looks like, right, And I think this

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Speaker 1: is something that we've touched on in a few episodes now.

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Speaker 1: But one of the big questions is exactly what it

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Speaker 1: means for the labor market, whether we start to see

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Speaker 1: maybe wages pick up again, maybe we start to see

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Speaker 1: workers demand other benefits like work from home, because they've

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Speaker 1: all been so used to it over the past twelve

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Speaker 1: months or so. Big discussion point, right, So, there have

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Speaker 1: been some articles that I've seen from time to time

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Speaker 1: talking about a past pandemic in which that was it

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Speaker 1: was much worse than this one. And uh, there these are.

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Speaker 1: There was like at the end of the Black Death

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Speaker 1: in the mid Dreds, there was actually a pretty big

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Speaker 1: spike in wages because there was a labor shortage. This

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Speaker 1: is not anywhere near on uh as sort of deadly.

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Speaker 1: It's extremely bad, but it's not Black Death pandemic levels,

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Speaker 1: so we're probably not going to get some massive labor shortage.

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Speaker 1: But I but but even still, like, I'm sorry curious

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Speaker 1: about this time because none of these things I've read

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Speaker 1: totally satisfying. Because on the one hand, yes, I understand

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Speaker 1: there's there's a labor shortage, but on the other hand,

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Speaker 1: you think there would be this sort of like big

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Speaker 1: broad impairment to the economy. So it's not totally clear

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Speaker 1: to me why wages went up. So even though I

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Speaker 1: doubt it's that applicable to now, I am still very

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Speaker 1: curious to understand what really happened when that, for your

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Speaker 1: pandemic came to an end. It's a really interesting question

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Speaker 1: because the economic impact of the Black Death is sort

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Speaker 1: of famous for leading to the end of feudalism, so

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Speaker 1: supposedly there was such a big supply shock to labor.

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Speaker 1: I mean, England lost half its population, and that wages

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Speaker 1: started to go up, and surfs who used to be

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Speaker 1: completely at the will, working at the will of a lord,

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Speaker 1: started to demand rights, and eventually you have the sort

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Speaker 1: of end of the feudal system. I think a lot

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Speaker 1: of your confusion probably comes from a misunderstanding of that

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Speaker 1: particular economy, or you're thinking about it like the modern economy.

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Speaker 1: I have to say I've been reading Pillars of the

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Speaker 1: Earth recently, so I feel I am now an expert

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Speaker 1: on medieval economies. I am very excited about this particular episode.

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Speaker 1: I think it's going to be a fun one. And

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Speaker 1: even if the analogy between the plague of the Middle

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Speaker 1: Ages and the pandemic now is a little bit off,

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Speaker 1: it's still a really interesting point in time, and I

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Speaker 1: think it's worth talking about very big tonal shift in

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Speaker 1: this interview from US joking about junk boat parties to

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Speaker 1: half the population of England dying in a plague. Nonetheless,

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Speaker 1: here we are, it was long ago. It was long ago.

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Speaker 1: So anyway, I'm very excited about our guests. Maybe I'll

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Speaker 1: just listen to you and our guest talk. I'm very

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Speaker 1: excited about our guest. We're gonna be speaking with Patrick Wyman.

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Speaker 1: He's a historian. He's also a podcaster, the host of

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Speaker 1: the Tides of History podcast and also an author. He

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Speaker 1: has a book coming out about credit and finance and

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Speaker 1: the fire. So basically the perfect odd lots guest for

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Speaker 1: this topic for this time. Patrick, thank you so much

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Speaker 1: for joining us. Hey, thank you so much for having me,

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Speaker 1: you know, first time caller, a longtime listener. Awesome, love

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Speaker 1: to hear it. So where dona get started? How would

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Speaker 1: you characterize the pre Black Death economy in Europe? Tracy

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Speaker 1: talked about the feudal system, but I kind of have

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Speaker 1: some vague idea of what that means. But how did

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Speaker 1: the economy work pre crisis? Okay, So there are a

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Speaker 1: couple of aspects to bear in mind when thinking about

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Speaker 1: the pre plague economy, and one is kind of the

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Speaker 1: broad context. Where is thinking about feudalism whatever exactly that's

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Speaker 1: supposed to mean. That's something specialists debate in this field.

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Speaker 1: Not that there's anything specialists don't debate, but basically, a

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Speaker 1: system in which, uh, the a property owning class has

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Speaker 1: tenant farmers working their land for them, who are not

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Speaker 1: free to come and go as they please, and who

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Speaker 1: owe the landlord labor services. So not just that they

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Speaker 1: pay the landlord rent um, they also owe the landlord

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Speaker 1: service on the land that the the landholder does not

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Speaker 1: lease out, the called the domain land on in a

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Speaker 1: state that the that these poor that these poor serfs

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Speaker 1: who again not free to go come and go as

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Speaker 1: they please, their semi free at best, um that they

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Speaker 1: have to work the lord's land. They have to clear

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Speaker 1: out ditches, they have to plant crops, they have to

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Speaker 1: harvest crops. You have to do stuff like that. The idea,

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Speaker 1: the basic narrative of the Black Death is that it

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Speaker 1: makes that system less tenable because uh, these formerly in served,

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Speaker 1: formerly semi free people now do not have to do

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Speaker 1: that labor service. They can just run off, They can

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Speaker 1: go they and go somewhere else. They can go to

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Speaker 1: a town, they can get a job working in a

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Speaker 1: trade something like that. Um. So that's the kind of

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Speaker 1: the broad long term shift that people talk about with

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Speaker 1: the Black Death and its impact on the European economy.

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Speaker 1: The Black Death comes at the end of what we

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Speaker 1: call the commercial revolution. So the couple of century period

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Speaker 1: leading up to the Black Death sees an enormous expansion

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Speaker 1: of the European economy. It's the period in which most

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Speaker 1: of the tools that were familiar with that kind of

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Speaker 1: define a an advanced economy, things like widespread access to credit, um,

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Speaker 1: high levels of international trade, resident merchants who are capable

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Speaker 1: of doing business over long distances, the kind. That's the

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Speaker 1: time when these things all across Europe are coming into play. Now.

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Speaker 1: The reason for that is fundamentally demographic, that this is

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Speaker 1: a period when the climate is really good. Um, crop

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Speaker 1: yields are good, so there's a population boom, there's new

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Speaker 1: land clear new land comes under cultivation. These lords are

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Speaker 1: able to extract lots of labor, dues and rents from

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Speaker 1: their tenants because there are a lot of tenants and

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Speaker 1: there's not that much land. So if you control the land,

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Speaker 1: you could you can get a lot from it. Now,

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Speaker 1: by the time the Black Death rolls around in the

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Speaker 1: middle of the fourteenth century, that expansion is over. The

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Speaker 1: economy has peaked. It's already in a little bit of

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Speaker 1: decline by the time the plague hits. So the largest

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Speaker 1: firms in Europe prior to the Black Death. What are

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Speaker 1: called the super companies, These which are mostly based on

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Speaker 1: Florence Um and are involved in a whole host of

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Speaker 1: activities all over the continent. The super companies have already

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Speaker 1: gone bankrupt by the time the Black Death hits, So

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Speaker 1: the economy is already in trouble when the Black Death hits,

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Speaker 1: and then you get this enormous wave of mass death

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Speaker 1: before we get into that, could you maybe, so you've

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Speaker 1: laid out the I guess the labor side of the

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Speaker 1: economy very very well, can you talk a little bit

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Speaker 1: about like the demand side, what exactly where people producing

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Speaker 1: at that time and what was driving the economy, because

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Speaker 1: I think this is going to feed in later to

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Speaker 1: answering Joe's question. Yeah, so it's almost entirely an agricultural economy.

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Speaker 1: You we can write really interesting things about the cloth trade,

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Speaker 1: about the long distance trade, luxury goods, and it's not

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Speaker 1: that those things don't matter. They do matter for for

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Speaker 1: reasons that I think will probably end up coming back

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Speaker 1: to over the course. It's over the course of our

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Speaker 1: chat today, but it's primarily an agricultural economy, depending on

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Speaker 1: the region you're talking about. There is no region in

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Speaker 1: Western Europe specifically that has more than twenty at most

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Speaker 1: thirty percent of the population living in towns. Everybody lives

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Speaker 1: in the countryside. Almost everybody who lives in the countryside

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Speaker 1: is involved in agricultural labor in some way, shape or form.

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Speaker 1: So there is way. It's not that the economy is simple.

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Speaker 1: There is wage labor. There are local, regional, and international

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Speaker 1: trade routes. Um there is a trade in agricultural produce

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Speaker 1: that goes over long distances that uses sometimes quite sophisticated

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Speaker 1: commercial tools to do that, application of credit accounting techniques,

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Speaker 1: things like that. But it is primarily an agricultural economy,

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Speaker 1: and so the that's by the population increase and bringing

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Speaker 1: new land under cultivation matters so much. The more people

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Speaker 1: you have, the more agricultural produce you're you're putting out there.

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Speaker 1: The more the economy grows, the more surplus there is

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Speaker 1: for lords to extract, which they can then use for

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Speaker 1: things like long distance trade and luxury goods. I think

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Speaker 1: this is like a key element here. So the consumption

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Speaker 1: of all of this agricultural production was exported, and so

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Speaker 1: the lords would export it elsewhere in exchange for something

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Speaker 1: not in agriculture. Well either or or they would extract

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Speaker 1: cash rents from their tenants, and they would use the

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Speaker 1: and and they would use the combination of that. And yeah,

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Speaker 1: sure maybe if you're so, you're the lord of a

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Speaker 1: manner near London Um, you whatever surplus you grow from

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Speaker 1: your land, maybe you sell that too, and maybe you

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Speaker 1: sell that to merchants who are who are doing business

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Speaker 1: in London um. And then you have the benefit of

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Speaker 1: like all of your tenants are also paying you cash

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Speaker 1: rent for their for for being on their land. So

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Speaker 1: you've just got it's a good time to be a

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Speaker 1: lord if you're a lord before the plague and like

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Speaker 1: the thirteen thirties thirteen forties, great time to own land,

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Speaker 1: great time to be extracting rents. Just out of curiosity,

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Speaker 1: how big what kind of city was London at the time.

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Speaker 1: So London is the biggest city in England, but it's

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Speaker 1: not a big city by global standards. In fact, there

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Speaker 1: are no real big cities by global standards in the

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Speaker 1: In the fourteenth century in Europe, um Europe is kind

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Speaker 1: of a backwater. It's not as much of a backwater

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Speaker 1: as it becomes in like the mid fifteenth century. But

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Speaker 1: you know, London has fifty thousand people, sixty thousand people

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Speaker 1: at most. Paris has sixty thousand to a hundred thousand

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Speaker 1: um and those are the the big cities. The biggest

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Speaker 1: cities are places like Um still constant, not so much

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Speaker 1: Constantinople anymore after the after the Crusader conquest at the

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Speaker 1: beginning of the thirteenth century, but places like Baghdad again

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Speaker 1: probably declined a little bit after the Mongol conquest. But

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Speaker 1: cities in Central Asia, South Asia, definitely, in uh definitely

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Speaker 1: in China were dramatically larger. Also, some places in the

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Speaker 1: New World were dramatically larger than European cities at this point.

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Speaker 1: So in thirt um, I think that's when the plague

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Speaker 1: actually arrived in England. At the time, it has something

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Speaker 1: like five million people in total, fifty thousand in London,

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Speaker 1: as you just mentioned. By the end of it, I

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Speaker 1: think the population is something like half of that. Can

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Speaker 1: you describe exactly what the impact was of the Black

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Speaker 1: Death on I guess let's focus on on England at

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Speaker 1: the moment, but I'm curious about the rest of Europe

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Speaker 1: as well. Okay, so it's the death toll is regionally variable,

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Speaker 1: but high basically, so trying to do medieval demography is

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Speaker 1: hard because you're there's never just like a list of

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Speaker 1: people who live in a particular place and you can say, Ah,

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Speaker 1: this person died at this particular time, this many people

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Speaker 1: died in the plague. So you're left to reconstruct demography

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Speaker 1: on the basis of tax records, UM, records of land holding, UM,

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Speaker 1: sometimes legal records. Basically they're not giving you the stuff

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Speaker 1: you want to tell, like how many people live in

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Speaker 1: a particular place at point A and how many place

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Speaker 1: live at point B. What's the likely death rate? The

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Speaker 1: better the data is for the period around the Black Death.

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Speaker 1: I think it's notable that the higher the death rate

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Speaker 1: looks so when the data is not especially like, the

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Speaker 1: more direct the relationship between the demographic data and the

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Speaker 1: actual population, the fewer kind of proxies that you have

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Speaker 1: to work through to figure out how many people live

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Speaker 1: in a place, the higher the death toll looks. So

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Speaker 1: where our data is best, in places like savoy Um,

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Speaker 1: northern Italy, some parts of England, the death toll looks

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Speaker 1: like it's forty. In places where the data isn't as good,

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Speaker 1: it looks like it's more like thirty. But how much

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Speaker 1: of that is an artifact of the sources that we're

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Speaker 1: working with and how much of it is actually reflective

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Speaker 1: of regional variation and death toll is hard to say,

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Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean, I think it's safe to say

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Speaker 1: forty is a good kind is a good kind of

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Speaker 1: low end number and potentially much higher. But the key

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Speaker 1: point about death toll when we're talking about the Black

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Speaker 1: Death is it's not just that people die. It's not

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Speaker 1: that the plague comes once, it's that it keeps coming back.

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Speaker 1: So the fundamental shift that the plague puts into place,

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Speaker 1: and which continues throughout the rest of the fifteenth century,

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Speaker 1: is a shift to what a demographer will call a

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Speaker 1: high mortality regime. So you still have high fertility, people

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Speaker 1: are still having lots of babies, but the death rate

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Speaker 1: is just high enough that it prevents the population from rebounding.

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Speaker 1: So it's not just that you have a one time

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Speaker 1: demographic shock. It's that people die. They keep dying, and

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Speaker 1: they keep dying, so you don't get like, even in

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Speaker 1: a pre modern society where population growth rates are really

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Speaker 1: pretty low compared to what we're used to in the

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Speaker 1: twentieth century, twenty one century. Um, you would still expect

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Speaker 1: if you have a sudden abundance of land and resources

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Speaker 1: in the aftermath of a mass mortality event, for populations

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Speaker 1: to rebound fairly quickly. That doesn't happen after the plague.

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Speaker 1: And that's the key demographic fact of it. That's what

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Speaker 1: shapes the labor markets, not just in the middle of

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Speaker 1: the fourteenth century, but into theteenth century and beyond. See.

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Speaker 1: Now I've been reading Forever Amber as well, so I

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Speaker 1: feel I am also an expert on plague in the

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Speaker 1: seventeenth century in England. But yeah, you're you're absolutely right,

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Speaker 1: Like the plague keeps coming back. And just on that point,

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Speaker 1: what one of the things that you learn, I guess

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Speaker 1: from historical fiction is the plague. You know, it doesn't

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Speaker 1: just cause people to die in a sort of similar

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Speaker 1: way to what we're seeing now with pandemic lockdowns. It

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Speaker 1: causes big chunks of the economy, or it seemed like

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Speaker 1: it to kind of come to a standstill because no

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Speaker 1: one wants to go out of their house. They're not

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Speaker 1: exactly sure how the plague is actually spread. They have

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Speaker 1: family members who are dying back at home who might

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Speaker 1: be you know, locked in a room somewhere. What what

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Speaker 1: does it actually look like when plague hits a town

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Speaker 1: in the Middle Ages, what tends to happen? So you

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Speaker 1: do get quarantines. Um. So Milan quite famously mostly avoided

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Speaker 1: the first terrible wave of the plague, the one that

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Speaker 1: caused so much death and destruction cross northern Italy, because

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Speaker 1: they basically bricked up any plague cases in their houses.

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Speaker 1: They just they they're like, okay, tough luck. You're stuck

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Speaker 1: in there, You're gonna die. So Milan emerged from the

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Speaker 1: plague in pretty good shape as a as a city,

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Speaker 1: with its population still almost entirely intact in that first wave. Now,

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Speaker 1: plague does show up in Milan afterwards, so it's not

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Speaker 1: like they escaped forever. But there are things. I mean,

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Speaker 1: medieval people did not have germ theory, so they did

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Speaker 1: not understand what was causing um this stuff. But they

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Speaker 1: did understand that there was a correlation between personal contact

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Speaker 1: and the spread of disease. So they did try and

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Speaker 1: avoid contact with other people. They did try and stay isolated. Um,

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Speaker 1: they did, and they did have some sense that that's

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Speaker 1: how that the disease was being spread in that fashion.

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Speaker 1: It's not entirely clear. Even today, we still know less

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Speaker 1: about how the Black Death was transmitted than we wish

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Speaker 1: we did. There are still debates about this. Scholars still

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Speaker 1: do not agree on every aspect of it. Abou, whether

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Speaker 1: it's bubonic or pneumonic plague, what role various vectors of

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Speaker 1: transmission played, whether it's fleas on rats, whether it's human fleas,

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Speaker 1: whether it's primarily airborne. Um, there are lots of debates

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Speaker 1: about this. But anyway, Um, yeah, so so lots of

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Speaker 1: economic activity does grind to a hall and there you

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Speaker 1: read primary source accounts where it's like crops are left

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Speaker 1: to whether and die in fields. Um, cattle are running

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Speaker 1: around starving because nobody's feeding them. People are people are

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Speaker 1: dying in their houses. The I mean, it's funny you

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Speaker 1: mentioned that the junk parties. I couldn't help but think

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Speaker 1: of Boccaccio's Decameron. So one of the great literary works

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Speaker 1: of the Middle Ages is this, dude, Boccaccio and the

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Speaker 1: Cameron is this series of stories that are all like

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Speaker 1: the kind of the central premise of it is that

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Speaker 1: they're all hanging out at a country house outside Florence

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Speaker 1: while the plague is happening, and they're just amusing each

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Speaker 1: other by telling each other stories. So they too had

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Speaker 1: junk parties, just you know, at a nice villa and

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Speaker 1: a nice Tuscan villa instead of out on a junk

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Speaker 1: I guess I'm actually it's still curious just about the

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Speaker 1: functioning of society. You mentioned like okay, crops were left

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Speaker 1: to row. There were stories of animals that were starving.

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Speaker 1: From the perspective of these feudal lords, how did their

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Speaker 1: lives change? How did they try to get by and operate?

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Speaker 1: I mean, uh, what did they do? So lords, as

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Speaker 1: best we can tell, the higher up you were in society,

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Speaker 1: the better off you were when it came to actually

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Speaker 1: dying of the plague. But in the sounds familiar. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's not. Some thing's never change. Um. After the plague,

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Speaker 1: landlords suddenly see their leverage over their tenants dramatically decreased.

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Speaker 1: So it's both a supply shock to the labor market,

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Speaker 1: but it's also it's also a demand shock. The thing is,

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Speaker 1: the demand shock is nowhere near as severe as the

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Speaker 1: supply shock is. Because I mentioned that population growth a

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Speaker 1: little while ago, I mentioned that there are all of

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Speaker 1: these kind of landless tenant farmers. Now all of the sudden,

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Speaker 1: lots of people have died. There are nearly as many

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Speaker 1: people who need to eat agricultural produce as there were

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Speaker 1: a couple of years beforehand. Um, So suddenly there's there's

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Speaker 1: a lot more land available you don't need. The price

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Speaker 1: of land drops dramatically, the price of rents falls dramatically,

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Speaker 1: and the price of labor goes way way up. So

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Speaker 1: if you're a landlord who wants to get your peasants

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Speaker 1: out there to come to come clear out a ditch

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Speaker 1: for you, they're not gonna do it. They're gonna go

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Speaker 1: and they're they're going to find their own little patch

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Speaker 1: of land. They're going to go to a town to

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Speaker 1: work for wages. There. There are all sorts of things.

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Speaker 1: This is when we see some of the first laws

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Speaker 1: trying to restrict the price of labor. We see these

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Speaker 1: in England in the thirteen fifties. Um that they were

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Speaker 1: just couldn't enforce them because you know, the labor what

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Speaker 1: the labor markets we're going to do is what the

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Speaker 1: labor markets were gonna do. When you have a shortage

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Speaker 1: of labor and still exceptionally high amounts of demand because

385
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Speaker 1: people still have to eat. You still need to pay

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Speaker 1: for agricultural labor, to harvest crops, to care for livestock,

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Speaker 1: to do all that stuff. It's just that they're not

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Speaker 1: going to do it for what they would have done

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Speaker 1: it when there were twice as many people. Right. So

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Speaker 1: I saw the text of at least one of these laws,

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Speaker 1: and it was something like you can't pay a laborer

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Speaker 1: or a farmer more than you would have done like

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Speaker 1: last year or in like an average over the past

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Speaker 1: five years or something like that. So it was pretty

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Speaker 1: like pretty explicit what they were trying to do here.

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Speaker 1: I just wanted to press you on one point. So

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Speaker 1: we talked about how the economy is mostly agricultural at

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Speaker 1: this point, there's all this land available. How did that

399
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Speaker 1: feed into productivity at the time, because I imagine when

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Speaker 1: you had a higher population earlier on, everyone was trying

401
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Speaker 1: to get as much as they could out of the land.

402
00:21:31,400 --> 00:21:35,959
Speaker 1: They were probably farming land that wasn't entirely ideal. And

403
00:21:36,000 --> 00:21:38,600
Speaker 1: now you can kind of pick and choose, right, and

404
00:21:38,640 --> 00:21:42,159
Speaker 1: maybe productivity goes up. Yeah, So it's it's that's a

405
00:21:42,160 --> 00:21:45,159
Speaker 1: really interesting and a really good point. And so what

406
00:21:45,280 --> 00:21:49,680
Speaker 1: happens is the marginal land that had been like like

407
00:21:49,720 --> 00:21:53,399
Speaker 1: a drained swamp or kind of rocky hillsides. All of

408
00:21:53,400 --> 00:21:55,480
Speaker 1: that land had been in used to grow cereal crops,

409
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Speaker 1: because that's when to give you that's what's going to

410
00:21:57,040 --> 00:21:59,360
Speaker 1: give you the most calories per acre um. If you've

411
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Speaker 1: got to feed a lot people, what you gotta do

412
00:22:01,160 --> 00:22:04,240
Speaker 1: is you gotta grow wheat. So diets before the plague

413
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Speaker 1: were exceptionally dependent on on wheat um as you can expect,

414
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Speaker 1: like that's not a great diet for people to have.

415
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Speaker 1: And I think there's probably some correlation between death rates

416
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Speaker 1: in the plague and the fact that they were eating

417
00:22:15,800 --> 00:22:19,040
Speaker 1: a diet that was almost certainly not optimal for for

418
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Speaker 1: strengthening your immune system. There. So there's that aspect to it.

419
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Speaker 1: As the plague roars through, as people die, you can

420
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Speaker 1: let this marginal land go out of wheat cultivation. You

421
00:22:28,160 --> 00:22:30,040
Speaker 1: don't need to suddenly, you don't need to use this

422
00:22:30,119 --> 00:22:31,840
Speaker 1: rocky land or this Martian land for that. You can

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Speaker 1: use it for other things. And what they end up

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Speaker 1: using a lot of this formerly marginal land for is

425
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Speaker 1: stock raising, is for pasture land for sheep, for cattle

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Speaker 1: um diets get better as after the plague, because you

427
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Speaker 1: have more land that you can be grazing the You

428
00:22:45,840 --> 00:22:47,800
Speaker 1: can be grazing these animals on you can keep the

429
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Speaker 1: meat on the hoof. Um, you can you see any

430
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Speaker 1: kind of Definitely in England, you see an expansion of

431
00:22:53,320 --> 00:22:56,240
Speaker 1: the of the wool economy even beyond what it had

432
00:22:56,280 --> 00:22:59,439
Speaker 1: been before. English wool had already been in high demand.

433
00:22:59,480 --> 00:23:02,280
Speaker 1: That was one of the main sources of of financing

434
00:23:02,320 --> 00:23:05,399
Speaker 1: for the English government prior to the plague was was

435
00:23:05,520 --> 00:23:10,800
Speaker 1: the wolf staple. But after the plague, Uh, it becomes

436
00:23:10,800 --> 00:23:14,080
Speaker 1: even more important. You get UH. In some regions of Europe,

437
00:23:14,119 --> 00:23:17,720
Speaker 1: you get production moving out into the countryside because suddenly

438
00:23:17,760 --> 00:23:20,479
Speaker 1: not every single peasant has to be working in the fields.

439
00:23:20,520 --> 00:23:23,400
Speaker 1: You can have more specialization of labor. Uh, you can

440
00:23:23,440 --> 00:23:25,959
Speaker 1: have a more craft production. You can see this. There

441
00:23:26,000 --> 00:23:28,920
Speaker 1: are some regional studies that point to the specific way

442
00:23:28,960 --> 00:23:31,399
Speaker 1: in which economies change after the plague, and basically it's

443
00:23:31,400 --> 00:23:36,000
Speaker 1: almost always um in the direction of peasants have Peasants

444
00:23:36,000 --> 00:23:38,159
Speaker 1: can do more things. Um. They don't just have to

445
00:23:38,160 --> 00:23:41,920
Speaker 1: grow wheat, they can raise stock, they can do crafts. Uh.

446
00:23:42,080 --> 00:23:45,080
Speaker 1: They basically they have a lot more economic opportunity, and

447
00:23:45,119 --> 00:23:47,080
Speaker 1: they're much more likely to be able to own their

448
00:23:47,080 --> 00:23:49,640
Speaker 1: own land or at the very least least their own

449
00:23:49,720 --> 00:23:52,239
Speaker 1: land instead of working is um, instead of working as

450
00:23:52,280 --> 00:23:57,480
Speaker 1: low paid tenant laborers. Let me let me ask you, so,

451
00:23:57,840 --> 00:24:01,160
Speaker 1: you know, like when when this virus eventually is gone,

452
00:24:01,320 --> 00:24:03,960
Speaker 1: Like I have in my head, like I'm gonna fly

453
00:24:04,040 --> 00:24:06,639
Speaker 1: to El Paso and rent a car and drive to

454
00:24:06,800 --> 00:24:09,800
Speaker 1: Vegas and go to a casino for a couple of days.

455
00:24:09,840 --> 00:24:11,480
Speaker 1: And you know, I have this whole fantasy. I'll probably

456
00:24:11,520 --> 00:24:13,199
Speaker 1: never get around to it because I have kids, so

457
00:24:13,240 --> 00:24:15,800
Speaker 1: it's probably never gonna happen, but like I like, you know,

458
00:24:15,880 --> 00:24:19,200
Speaker 1: like I imagine it will. Did you know the Black

459
00:24:19,240 --> 00:24:23,520
Speaker 1: Death was like far longer, far worse, uh, in terms

460
00:24:23,600 --> 00:24:26,840
Speaker 1: of just the sheer, like you know, the seeing half

461
00:24:26,880 --> 00:24:30,240
Speaker 1: the people you know die? Did people have a party

462
00:24:30,240 --> 00:24:32,640
Speaker 1: at the end? Was there like signs of like sort

463
00:24:32,680 --> 00:24:37,280
Speaker 1: of like jubilation and new behaviors and people doing fun

464
00:24:37,359 --> 00:24:39,920
Speaker 1: things because this awful period had come to an end.

465
00:24:40,440 --> 00:24:44,200
Speaker 1: This is the pent up demand theory versus are people

466
00:24:44,280 --> 00:24:48,639
Speaker 1: going to be saving forever because they're worried there's pandemic? Yeah? No,

467
00:24:48,720 --> 00:24:51,040
Speaker 1: there was. There was a huge kind of burst of

468
00:24:51,119 --> 00:24:53,960
Speaker 1: consumption after the Black Death, an enormous burst of it.

469
00:24:54,040 --> 00:24:56,840
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of anxiety, especially among churchmen in

470
00:24:56,880 --> 00:24:59,119
Speaker 1: the second half of the fourteenth century, about all the

471
00:24:59,119 --> 00:25:01,840
Speaker 1: conspicuous consum action that people are doing. So part of

472
00:25:01,840 --> 00:25:03,800
Speaker 1: it is pent up demand, but part of it is

473
00:25:03,840 --> 00:25:06,679
Speaker 1: also lots of people die. There are lots of inheritances,

474
00:25:06,760 --> 00:25:10,240
Speaker 1: so there's lots of money coming to people who may

475
00:25:10,280 --> 00:25:12,680
Speaker 1: not have had as much money to spend before, who

476
00:25:12,720 --> 00:25:15,360
Speaker 1: are suddenly like, if I could die in the plague

477
00:25:15,359 --> 00:25:18,000
Speaker 1: next week, You're you're damn right, I'm gonna I'm gonna

478
00:25:18,040 --> 00:25:20,159
Speaker 1: pay for this and this amazing piece of art. Like

479
00:25:20,200 --> 00:25:22,679
Speaker 1: there's good reason to think that kind of the flourishing

480
00:25:22,720 --> 00:25:25,840
Speaker 1: of early Renaissance art um. The demand for that came

481
00:25:25,880 --> 00:25:28,439
Speaker 1: from Penta came from people who were like, Okay, we

482
00:25:28,520 --> 00:25:30,840
Speaker 1: have all these resources, let's spend them on something. The

483
00:25:30,840 --> 00:25:32,520
Speaker 1: way to do that is now we're going to compete

484
00:25:32,560 --> 00:25:36,399
Speaker 1: with our fellow, you know, rich Florentine merchants by paying

485
00:25:36,440 --> 00:25:38,880
Speaker 1: for art um. So there's a kind of a material

486
00:25:38,920 --> 00:25:41,720
Speaker 1: context to that specific aspect that I would imagine people

487
00:25:41,720 --> 00:25:43,919
Speaker 1: are probably fairly familiar with that comes out of the

488
00:25:44,080 --> 00:25:45,919
Speaker 1: that comes out of the plague. And one of the

489
00:25:46,000 --> 00:25:48,919
Speaker 1: interesting things about this to to to get into the

490
00:25:49,440 --> 00:25:52,480
Speaker 1: to get into the monetary aspects of it, is around

491
00:25:52,520 --> 00:25:54,600
Speaker 1: the time of the plague, you don't have that much

492
00:25:54,680 --> 00:25:58,000
Speaker 1: actual money and circulation, and you're getting to the point

493
00:25:58,040 --> 00:26:00,600
Speaker 1: where there's almost a shortage of of coin for people

494
00:26:00,640 --> 00:26:04,320
Speaker 1: to use to carry out transactions. The plague kind of

495
00:26:04,400 --> 00:26:08,600
Speaker 1: buys Europe about sixty five or seventy years before that

496
00:26:08,640 --> 00:26:11,480
Speaker 1: becomes a problem again because suddenly the amount of coin

497
00:26:11,520 --> 00:26:15,440
Speaker 1: in circulation per person is dramatically higher. Um. If half

498
00:26:15,440 --> 00:26:17,760
Speaker 1: the population is dead, you don't have nearly as much

499
00:26:17,760 --> 00:26:19,639
Speaker 1: of a shortage. The bully and famine comes again, and

500
00:26:19,680 --> 00:26:21,920
Speaker 1: that's another really important thing for kind of shaping the

501
00:26:21,960 --> 00:26:25,720
Speaker 1: post the post plague world in the early modern economy afterward. Um,

502
00:26:25,800 --> 00:26:29,360
Speaker 1: but at least at that point, suddenly the European economy

503
00:26:29,440 --> 00:26:34,399
Speaker 1: is no longer cash poor. It's actually almost flushed with cash. Actually,

504
00:26:34,400 --> 00:26:36,640
Speaker 1: that reminds me we haven't really spoken about this yet,

505
00:26:36,640 --> 00:26:39,760
Speaker 1: but what did inflation look like in the aftermath of

506
00:26:39,800 --> 00:26:44,399
Speaker 1: the plague. That's a really good question. Um, I'm not

507
00:26:44,440 --> 00:26:46,320
Speaker 1: sure I have a really good answer to it. Off

508
00:26:46,359 --> 00:26:48,720
Speaker 1: the top of my head. Um, all of those things

509
00:26:48,720 --> 00:26:51,040
Speaker 1: that I mentioned are factors that play into it. There's

510
00:26:51,080 --> 00:26:54,840
Speaker 1: still there is not as much of a trade deficit

511
00:26:55,080 --> 00:26:58,600
Speaker 1: between Europe and the East as there had been fifty

512
00:26:58,680 --> 00:27:01,040
Speaker 1: or sixty years before. There's not as my bully in leaving.

513
00:27:01,760 --> 00:27:03,679
Speaker 1: There is just the fact that there isn't nearly as

514
00:27:03,720 --> 00:27:05,840
Speaker 1: much of a shortage of coin kind of reduced the

515
00:27:05,880 --> 00:27:09,040
Speaker 1: need for non coin tools to pay for money to

516
00:27:09,160 --> 00:27:11,680
Speaker 1: pay for things there was just but in the long

517
00:27:11,760 --> 00:27:13,640
Speaker 1: term you end up with the development of a lot

518
00:27:13,680 --> 00:27:17,879
Speaker 1: of tools, um like book transfers, things like that allow

519
00:27:17,960 --> 00:27:21,240
Speaker 1: you to function without as much money. The the effect

520
00:27:21,240 --> 00:27:23,880
Speaker 1: that has on the money supply, it's it's a question

521
00:27:23,920 --> 00:27:27,440
Speaker 1: I'm not super familiar with. Well, we real quickly, what's

522
00:27:27,520 --> 00:27:32,240
Speaker 1: book transfers? Okay, So book transfers are when you both

523
00:27:32,440 --> 00:27:34,520
Speaker 1: when when you and the person you're doing business with

524
00:27:34,600 --> 00:27:38,200
Speaker 1: both have an account with the same with the same

525
00:27:38,200 --> 00:27:41,119
Speaker 1: bank of or even um what they didn't what they

526
00:27:41,119 --> 00:27:43,520
Speaker 1: didn't in like Bruges, which was kind of the center

527
00:27:43,560 --> 00:27:46,000
Speaker 1: of trade in Northern Europe at this point, Um, it

528
00:27:46,080 --> 00:27:49,720
Speaker 1: was a hostile owners who kept these who basically kept

529
00:27:49,760 --> 00:27:53,240
Speaker 1: accounts and everybody had credit with the with the hosteler,

530
00:27:53,440 --> 00:27:55,760
Speaker 1: which you could do um in venice. You go to

531
00:27:55,800 --> 00:27:58,840
Speaker 1: the rialto um you and the you and the person

532
00:27:58,920 --> 00:28:01,440
Speaker 1: that you're in a businessmen sure with both have accounts

533
00:28:01,440 --> 00:28:03,119
Speaker 1: with the same banker. You just move the money from

534
00:28:03,200 --> 00:28:05,320
Speaker 1: his account to your account, or from your account to

535
00:28:05,359 --> 00:28:08,119
Speaker 1: his account, so no actual cash has changed hands, but

536
00:28:08,200 --> 00:28:10,520
Speaker 1: you've got a transaction. It's one of the things that

537
00:28:11,160 --> 00:28:13,040
Speaker 1: it's one of the innovations that allows you to speed

538
00:28:13,080 --> 00:28:16,119
Speaker 1: up the velocity of money in later medieval Europe without

539
00:28:16,160 --> 00:28:18,360
Speaker 1: any sort of increase in the actual amount of coin

540
00:28:18,359 --> 00:28:20,080
Speaker 1: in circulation, or even a decrease in the amount of

541
00:28:20,080 --> 00:28:24,840
Speaker 1: coin in circulation. So we started out this conversation talking

542
00:28:24,880 --> 00:28:29,440
Speaker 1: about how pandemic experiences tend to be quite relative, and

543
00:28:29,680 --> 00:28:32,199
Speaker 1: you know, one place might have a very different experience

544
00:28:32,240 --> 00:28:36,360
Speaker 1: to the other. I'm curious when it comes to medieval Europe.

545
00:28:36,640 --> 00:28:42,080
Speaker 1: My understanding is after the Black Death, England sort of

546
00:28:42,120 --> 00:28:46,560
Speaker 1: set set on this this road of eliminating serfdom and

547
00:28:46,600 --> 00:28:49,600
Speaker 1: moving towards something that looks a little bit more like

548
00:28:49,680 --> 00:28:53,600
Speaker 1: a modern capitalist system where laborers were sort of free

549
00:28:53,680 --> 00:28:56,240
Speaker 1: to go from one thing to the other that didn't

550
00:28:56,280 --> 00:28:59,600
Speaker 1: necessarily happen in other parts of Europe, even though they

551
00:28:59,640 --> 00:29:03,120
Speaker 1: went through the Black Death as well. Why do we

552
00:29:03,200 --> 00:29:07,360
Speaker 1: think that happened. Why did England seem to have this

553
00:29:07,440 --> 00:29:11,360
Speaker 1: economic trend accelerated in a way that maybe other places didn't.

554
00:29:12,320 --> 00:29:15,360
Speaker 1: So this is the This is a thing that economic

555
00:29:15,440 --> 00:29:18,479
Speaker 1: historians have argued about a very great deal. Um, if

556
00:29:18,480 --> 00:29:21,760
Speaker 1: anybody knows Pseudo Erasmus on Twitter, he's the king of

557
00:29:21,760 --> 00:29:24,720
Speaker 1: talking about the late medieval economy and the and the

558
00:29:24,800 --> 00:29:27,640
Speaker 1: rise of capitalism there, it's a whole thing. Um, it's

559
00:29:27,680 --> 00:29:30,360
Speaker 1: a it's a whole series of debates. So what what

560
00:29:30,440 --> 00:29:34,000
Speaker 1: I would say is that prior to the sixteenth century,

561
00:29:34,040 --> 00:29:37,560
Speaker 1: it's very hard to talk about capitalism as a system

562
00:29:37,640 --> 00:29:41,480
Speaker 1: anywhere other than maybe the biggest cities of the Low countries,

563
00:29:41,640 --> 00:29:46,240
Speaker 1: the merchants of London, northern Italy, you know, merchants in Barcelona,

564
00:29:46,320 --> 00:29:50,719
Speaker 1: places like that, um, southern Germany to the Hansa. So

565
00:29:50,760 --> 00:29:53,880
Speaker 1: basically you could you have there are capitalists, There are

566
00:29:53,880 --> 00:29:56,280
Speaker 1: definitely people who are trying to use their money in

567
00:29:56,320 --> 00:29:59,640
Speaker 1: productive ways. But the some of the baseline concepts that

568
00:29:59,680 --> 00:30:04,320
Speaker 1: we asociate with capitalism, basically that everything is that that

569
00:30:04,400 --> 00:30:08,600
Speaker 1: everything is a has a monetary value. Um that land

570
00:30:08,840 --> 00:30:11,400
Speaker 1: is a commodity that can be that has a monetary

571
00:30:11,440 --> 00:30:13,560
Speaker 1: value and can be transferred from person to person. They

572
00:30:13,560 --> 00:30:16,520
Speaker 1: weren't necessarily working with these same kind of baseline assumptions,

573
00:30:16,560 --> 00:30:20,320
Speaker 1: so I'm a little uncomfortable with applying that term to it.

574
00:30:20,680 --> 00:30:23,440
Speaker 1: But with that set, with that caveat out of the way,

575
00:30:23,440 --> 00:30:25,320
Speaker 1: I gotta do that. I gotta do the specialist historian

576
00:30:25,320 --> 00:30:28,960
Speaker 1: thing real quick. Um, with that caveat out of the way,

577
00:30:29,200 --> 00:30:33,280
Speaker 1: I think that England was especially well suited to take

578
00:30:33,320 --> 00:30:39,400
Speaker 1: advantage of more intense interregional distribution in the later Middle Ages.

579
00:30:39,560 --> 00:30:42,640
Speaker 1: So you different regions after the Middle Ages because you

580
00:30:42,640 --> 00:30:45,360
Speaker 1: have or after the Black Death, because you have this

581
00:30:45,480 --> 00:30:48,520
Speaker 1: enormous drop in population. And again, not everybody needs to

582
00:30:48,560 --> 00:30:52,160
Speaker 1: be uh not everybody needs to be farming wheat anymore.

583
00:30:52,360 --> 00:30:55,320
Speaker 1: You can, you can have more specialization. England is really

584
00:30:55,360 --> 00:30:59,200
Speaker 1: well suited to expand its wool production. UM. The cloth

585
00:30:59,240 --> 00:31:01,800
Speaker 1: market is the cloth markets in the low countries where

586
00:31:01,840 --> 00:31:05,280
Speaker 1: where they're mostly are turning um wooll into finished cloth

587
00:31:05,360 --> 00:31:08,880
Speaker 1: for export. Some will also goes to uh Some will

588
00:31:08,920 --> 00:31:10,920
Speaker 1: also goes directly to Italy to be woven there and

589
00:31:10,960 --> 00:31:14,000
Speaker 1: then exported England is really well suited to take advantage

590
00:31:14,000 --> 00:31:16,719
Speaker 1: of this, and because everything is in close proximity to London,

591
00:31:17,160 --> 00:31:19,440
Speaker 1: which is a financial center. It's right on the North Sea.

592
00:31:19,680 --> 00:31:22,200
Speaker 1: London is very tightly connected to the commercial centers of

593
00:31:22,240 --> 00:31:24,120
Speaker 1: the Low Countries, which are some of the most commercially

594
00:31:24,120 --> 00:31:27,400
Speaker 1: advanced places in Europe. There's a geographic aspect to it

595
00:31:27,440 --> 00:31:29,800
Speaker 1: where London where England is just really well suited to

596
00:31:29,800 --> 00:31:33,400
Speaker 1: take advantage of these things, and it has a legal

597
00:31:33,440 --> 00:31:36,440
Speaker 1: system that protects property rights, which is helpful. There's some

598
00:31:36,480 --> 00:31:39,760
Speaker 1: demographic things going on, one of them being that UH

599
00:31:40,120 --> 00:31:44,360
Speaker 1: women in in England tend to have much later ages

600
00:31:44,440 --> 00:31:48,280
Speaker 1: at first marriage, so there so there are more UH

601
00:31:48,520 --> 00:31:51,840
Speaker 1: female wage earners in the economy um which is which

602
00:31:51,880 --> 00:31:55,120
Speaker 1: is a sign of its dynamism. Even before marrying and

603
00:31:55,120 --> 00:31:58,480
Speaker 1: starting a household. Women in England, the Low Countries, to

604
00:31:58,520 --> 00:32:01,920
Speaker 1: some extent northern Germany are are much more likely to

605
00:32:01,960 --> 00:32:05,080
Speaker 1: be participants in a wage based market economy than they

606
00:32:05,080 --> 00:32:07,880
Speaker 1: were elsewhere in Europe, so that that aspect plays into it.

607
00:32:08,200 --> 00:32:10,040
Speaker 1: There's a lot of things happening. It's hard, it's really

608
00:32:10,080 --> 00:32:12,240
Speaker 1: hard to separate out any individual thing. But if I

609
00:32:12,280 --> 00:32:14,000
Speaker 1: had to point to one. I think it would be

610
00:32:14,400 --> 00:32:19,120
Speaker 1: some combination of lots of wage earners a a monetized economy.

611
00:32:19,200 --> 00:32:21,280
Speaker 1: Much more fully than in other places in Europe. People

612
00:32:21,320 --> 00:32:24,600
Speaker 1: were thinking in England in terms of the monetary value,

613
00:32:25,120 --> 00:32:28,520
Speaker 1: of the abstract monetary value of things. Um, they weren't

614
00:32:28,520 --> 00:32:31,120
Speaker 1: necessarily using the most advanced accounting practices, but kind of

615
00:32:31,160 --> 00:32:33,680
Speaker 1: the mental tools were there. If that makes any sort

616
00:32:33,720 --> 00:32:36,160
Speaker 1: of sense. That so even even a peasant is thinking

617
00:32:36,160 --> 00:32:38,200
Speaker 1: in terms of how much is how much is my

618
00:32:38,320 --> 00:32:41,440
Speaker 1: labor worth? How much is if even if I'm trading

619
00:32:41,480 --> 00:32:44,360
Speaker 1: one commodity for another, where you were doing so with

620
00:32:44,400 --> 00:32:47,160
Speaker 1: a monetary standard in mind. So we're converting this thing's

621
00:32:47,240 --> 00:32:49,800
Speaker 1: value to a to a monetary standard as we make

622
00:32:49,840 --> 00:32:52,760
Speaker 1: this barter transaction. But I think that's really important is

623
00:32:52,800 --> 00:32:54,840
Speaker 1: just like even at the village level, there was lots

624
00:32:54,840 --> 00:32:58,600
Speaker 1: of credit available in England. Um, that's true all over Europe,

625
00:32:58,600 --> 00:33:01,360
Speaker 1: that they're kind of informal systems for providing credit to people,

626
00:33:01,800 --> 00:33:04,240
Speaker 1: but that was especially true in England. We have lots

627
00:33:04,280 --> 00:33:06,800
Speaker 1: of really good evidence for it that you could take

628
00:33:06,840 --> 00:33:08,760
Speaker 1: out a loan on your land and you could use

629
00:33:08,800 --> 00:33:11,600
Speaker 1: that money for productive investment. That's a thing that existed

630
00:33:11,800 --> 00:33:15,960
Speaker 1: in England not necessarily as common elsewhere. UM. So I'm

631
00:33:16,240 --> 00:33:19,680
Speaker 1: kind of I'm loth to point to a single factor,

632
00:33:19,760 --> 00:33:22,040
Speaker 1: but I think all of those things put together, UM

633
00:33:22,240 --> 00:33:25,040
Speaker 1: mattered a great deal. The distribution networks get much more

634
00:33:25,040 --> 00:33:27,760
Speaker 1: intense in the later Middle Ages, with more regional specialization

635
00:33:28,040 --> 00:33:30,920
Speaker 1: you have, even if the actual volumes of goods moving

636
00:33:31,000 --> 00:33:34,320
Speaker 1: are not as UM are not as high as they

637
00:33:34,320 --> 00:33:36,800
Speaker 1: were prior to the plague, I think more people were

638
00:33:36,800 --> 00:33:40,640
Speaker 1: participating in those kinds of UM regional and long distance

639
00:33:41,120 --> 00:33:43,280
Speaker 1: exchange networks. I think that matters a lot. I think

640
00:33:43,320 --> 00:33:47,720
Speaker 1: more people were more closely tied into kind of broader,

641
00:33:47,840 --> 00:33:50,800
Speaker 1: broader systems of exchange. UM. I'm not sure if that's

642
00:33:50,800 --> 00:33:53,480
Speaker 1: a good answer, but it I think it's a little

643
00:33:53,520 --> 00:33:55,200
Speaker 1: bit of everything. I think all of those things matter

644
00:33:55,240 --> 00:34:15,480
Speaker 1: to some degree. So you describe all of these sort

645
00:34:15,520 --> 00:34:19,960
Speaker 1: of things that came about in the post plague world,

646
00:34:19,960 --> 00:34:24,040
Speaker 1: post plague economy, many of them pretty good, uh, Greater

647
00:34:24,120 --> 00:34:30,000
Speaker 1: sophistication of money, more productivity, so forth. I don't draw

648
00:34:30,080 --> 00:34:33,240
Speaker 1: like too many like comparisons are too hard lines between

649
00:34:33,280 --> 00:34:35,360
Speaker 1: then and now. But one of the things that I

650
00:34:35,400 --> 00:34:39,759
Speaker 1: feel about COVID and this crisis, is that a lot

651
00:34:39,840 --> 00:34:45,680
Speaker 1: of pre crisis trends just got like supercharged and accelerated,

652
00:34:45,719 --> 00:34:49,640
Speaker 1: like we're compressing five or ten years of history into

653
00:34:49,719 --> 00:34:51,960
Speaker 1: six months. And you see it with the rise of

654
00:34:52,000 --> 00:34:56,520
Speaker 1: tele teleworking and telehealth and e commerce and other just

655
00:34:56,800 --> 00:34:59,759
Speaker 1: all things, and asset values flying to the moon, and

656
00:34:59,800 --> 00:35:03,680
Speaker 1: in just rates plunging and interstate tax competition that was

657
00:35:03,719 --> 00:35:06,520
Speaker 1: already a thing pre crisis really accelerating with all the

658
00:35:06,560 --> 00:35:10,520
Speaker 1: people leaving California supposedly to go to Texas. And so

659
00:35:10,760 --> 00:35:14,520
Speaker 1: I'm curious, like to what extent can we say that

660
00:35:15,040 --> 00:35:20,040
Speaker 1: with the Black Death, that that had an accelerant effect

661
00:35:20,160 --> 00:35:22,839
Speaker 1: of things that would have happened eventually or maybe things

662
00:35:22,840 --> 00:35:26,400
Speaker 1: that were trending in that direction. And did that also

663
00:35:26,440 --> 00:35:30,160
Speaker 1: of the effect of I guess, uh, rapidly pulling forth,

664
00:35:30,360 --> 00:35:34,160
Speaker 1: pulling forward history that was inevitably on its path to

665
00:35:34,400 --> 00:35:39,120
Speaker 1: unfolding at a slower pace. Yeah, I would not say inevitably,

666
00:35:39,200 --> 00:35:41,600
Speaker 1: but those trend lines were definitely in place. So I

667
00:35:41,680 --> 00:35:45,200
Speaker 1: mentioned that like the Florentines super companies had already gone

668
00:35:45,239 --> 00:35:48,320
Speaker 1: bust by the time. By the time the Black Death happened,

669
00:35:48,320 --> 00:35:51,480
Speaker 1: the economy was already trending downward that the peak of

670
00:35:51,520 --> 00:35:56,120
Speaker 1: population had probably already been passed already. Um, the the

671
00:35:56,200 --> 00:35:59,480
Speaker 1: landlord's ability to demand things from their tenants was already

672
00:35:59,520 --> 00:36:02,120
Speaker 1: lower than it had been. There were more peasants rebellions

673
00:36:02,160 --> 00:36:05,120
Speaker 1: already even before the Black Death than there had been before.

674
00:36:05,520 --> 00:36:09,320
Speaker 1: So there's there's more unrest. Um that whether that system

675
00:36:09,360 --> 00:36:12,279
Speaker 1: could have survived in the same way without the Black Death,

676
00:36:13,800 --> 00:36:16,120
Speaker 1: I still think I still think peasants would have been

677
00:36:16,120 --> 00:36:19,720
Speaker 1: better off in the long run even without that particular shock.

678
00:36:19,760 --> 00:36:22,400
Speaker 1: And I mean I think you can see some of

679
00:36:22,440 --> 00:36:25,000
Speaker 1: the same dynamics operating now. It's like when something like

680
00:36:25,080 --> 00:36:27,759
Speaker 1: this happens, there's no going back. People are not going

681
00:36:27,800 --> 00:36:30,920
Speaker 1: to forget the thing that happened. Like workers who have

682
00:36:31,000 --> 00:36:33,520
Speaker 1: spent the last um, you know, nine months working from

683
00:36:33,560 --> 00:36:35,360
Speaker 1: home and like doing it, are not going to forget

684
00:36:35,400 --> 00:36:37,680
Speaker 1: that they like working from home. Um. People who have

685
00:36:37,719 --> 00:36:40,240
Speaker 1: been able able to demand a small rise in wages

686
00:36:40,239 --> 00:36:42,040
Speaker 1: are not going to forget that their that their wages

687
00:36:42,040 --> 00:36:44,920
Speaker 1: went up. People who like me, moved states and uh

688
00:36:45,160 --> 00:36:48,640
Speaker 1: and are not going to forget that they liked moving states. UM.

689
00:36:48,640 --> 00:36:52,200
Speaker 1: Things like that. There's you know, the and the Black

690
00:36:52,200 --> 00:36:54,040
Speaker 1: Death is is much the same that like if you

691
00:36:54,200 --> 00:36:57,440
Speaker 1: come out of that as a laborer knowing that, like

692
00:36:57,600 --> 00:36:59,600
Speaker 1: you can tell your landlord that you're not going to

693
00:36:59,680 --> 00:37:01,640
Speaker 1: work for him, and what's he gonna do? Sick the

694
00:37:01,640 --> 00:37:04,200
Speaker 1: bailiff on you. Well, you can punch the bailiff if

695
00:37:04,239 --> 00:37:06,319
Speaker 1: he comes to get you. Like, you don't forget that

696
00:37:06,320 --> 00:37:08,040
Speaker 1: that's happened. And I think that's the big thing, is

697
00:37:08,080 --> 00:37:11,120
Speaker 1: that like once this once this stuff happens, it's then

698
00:37:11,239 --> 00:37:15,160
Speaker 1: part of your collective experience. It's part of your expectations

699
00:37:15,320 --> 00:37:18,239
Speaker 1: of how economic life is supposed to work in a

700
00:37:18,280 --> 00:37:21,360
Speaker 1: way that it hadn't been before. And so that's the parallel,

701
00:37:21,400 --> 00:37:23,759
Speaker 1: even if the inflection point itself is much different, is

702
00:37:23,800 --> 00:37:25,720
Speaker 1: that there is no going back. You can't force people

703
00:37:25,760 --> 00:37:28,520
Speaker 1: back into the box they were in beforehand, back into

704
00:37:28,560 --> 00:37:30,560
Speaker 1: their ways of thinking beforehand. I think you're gonna see that,

705
00:37:30,640 --> 00:37:34,640
Speaker 1: especially with state financing, fiscal stimulus. Uh, there's just there's

706
00:37:34,640 --> 00:37:37,319
Speaker 1: no going back on those fronts, like as something a

707
00:37:37,400 --> 00:37:39,879
Speaker 1: switch has flipped. Well, any other like sort of like

708
00:37:40,400 --> 00:37:44,880
Speaker 1: last key thoughts, Patrick of like um points that you

709
00:37:44,920 --> 00:37:49,560
Speaker 1: think people should really understand. I think there's no underestimating

710
00:37:49,560 --> 00:37:53,319
Speaker 1: how important the Black Death is to to the later

711
00:37:53,360 --> 00:37:56,320
Speaker 1: development of the European economy. Like, I think the labor

712
00:37:56,360 --> 00:37:59,279
Speaker 1: shortage is the labor shortage that comes out of that

713
00:37:59,320 --> 00:38:01,640
Speaker 1: the kind of addition of freedom that laborers have. It

714
00:38:01,719 --> 00:38:06,520
Speaker 1: spurs things like an um increased emphasis on labor saving technologies.

715
00:38:06,800 --> 00:38:08,560
Speaker 1: So I don't think that there's a world in which

716
00:38:08,560 --> 00:38:11,080
Speaker 1: you have the printing press without the Black Death, because

717
00:38:11,160 --> 00:38:14,000
Speaker 1: that's a labor saving technology, not just in the sense

718
00:38:14,080 --> 00:38:17,440
Speaker 1: that um, that you have the the attempt to save

719
00:38:17,520 --> 00:38:20,160
Speaker 1: labor on that, but also the financial mechanisms that make

720
00:38:20,160 --> 00:38:23,520
Speaker 1: it possible for you to fund the development of a

721
00:38:23,560 --> 00:38:26,480
Speaker 1: printing press. Like it's a super capital intensive process. It

722
00:38:26,520 --> 00:38:29,600
Speaker 1: involves multiple layers of transactions, a whole lot of kind

723
00:38:29,600 --> 00:38:34,399
Speaker 1: of delayed return expectations. UM. I don't think that that

724
00:38:34,480 --> 00:38:37,000
Speaker 1: whole process, not even the desire to have the thing

725
00:38:37,000 --> 00:38:39,600
Speaker 1: in the first place, would have existed without the Black Death,

726
00:38:39,640 --> 00:38:42,560
Speaker 1: without this increase in kind of ways of thinking creatively

727
00:38:42,600 --> 00:38:45,920
Speaker 1: about investment, UM, ways of moving money around, even in

728
00:38:45,920 --> 00:38:48,759
Speaker 1: the absence of coinage. UM, I don't think that any

729
00:38:48,800 --> 00:38:51,200
Speaker 1: of that stuff would have happened without it. So it's

730
00:38:51,239 --> 00:38:54,800
Speaker 1: really the foundational event that gives you the early modern

731
00:38:54,800 --> 00:38:58,279
Speaker 1: economy so even though in the in the short term

732
00:38:58,320 --> 00:39:01,080
Speaker 1: there is a there is a net draw down in

733
00:39:01,080 --> 00:39:03,799
Speaker 1: the European economy. The European economy is smaller after the

734
00:39:03,800 --> 00:39:06,520
Speaker 1: Black Death. UM. Europe is more of a backwater in

735
00:39:06,520 --> 00:39:08,520
Speaker 1: the fifteenth century than it is in the fourteenth that's

736
00:39:08,560 --> 00:39:10,919
Speaker 1: like it's the end of eur Asia. Like nobody wants

737
00:39:10,960 --> 00:39:13,080
Speaker 1: to go there. There's no they don't export anything that's

738
00:39:13,080 --> 00:39:16,800
Speaker 1: worth anything. That's why it's you know, European ships um

739
00:39:16,800 --> 00:39:19,520
Speaker 1: traveling elsewhere at the end of the fifteenth century, and

740
00:39:19,560 --> 00:39:21,440
Speaker 1: not vice versa. It's because they're the ones who need

741
00:39:21,480 --> 00:39:24,919
Speaker 1: to go find things of value. But what happens during

742
00:39:24,920 --> 00:39:27,359
Speaker 1: this really rough period and also somebody didn't talk about

743
00:39:27,360 --> 00:39:29,480
Speaker 1: the climate got worse, it got colder and more variable.

744
00:39:29,600 --> 00:39:33,080
Speaker 1: Crop yields went down. Um, there's just incessant war in

745
00:39:33,120 --> 00:39:36,359
Speaker 1: the later in the later fourteenth and into the fifteen centuries. UM,

746
00:39:36,400 --> 00:39:38,480
Speaker 1: the Hundred Years War just being the best known of them.

747
00:39:38,719 --> 00:39:42,759
Speaker 1: Like it's not a good time. But the tools that

748
00:39:42,800 --> 00:39:47,280
Speaker 1: developed during this period, especially fiscal tools, UM. The things

749
00:39:47,320 --> 00:39:50,080
Speaker 1: that states learned to do in large part in order

750
00:39:50,120 --> 00:39:53,680
Speaker 1: to make war for longer and more efficiently. Um, there's

751
00:39:53,719 --> 00:39:55,719
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of stuff that happens in this period

752
00:39:55,760 --> 00:39:59,360
Speaker 1: that's almost like a product of scarcity um and having

753
00:39:59,400 --> 00:40:02,759
Speaker 1: to think outside the previous economic box. That gives you

754
00:40:02,800 --> 00:40:05,839
Speaker 1: a lot of the developments that we see around fire

755
00:40:05,920 --> 00:40:08,080
Speaker 1: and afterwards, the things when we see, you know, quote

756
00:40:08,120 --> 00:40:10,200
Speaker 1: unquote the rise of Europe, the emergence of a of

757
00:40:10,239 --> 00:40:13,920
Speaker 1: a capitalist system um and eventually gives us the Industrial Revolution.

758
00:40:15,880 --> 00:40:21,560
Speaker 1: So the Black Death was good. I think if you

759
00:40:21,760 --> 00:40:23,839
Speaker 1: made it through the Black Death and you could deal

760
00:40:23,880 --> 00:40:26,400
Speaker 1: with the emotional fallout of half the people you know dying,

761
00:40:26,600 --> 00:40:28,680
Speaker 1: you were you were likely to be better off in

762
00:40:28,719 --> 00:40:32,120
Speaker 1: material terms than you were beforehand. It's bitch cool. It's

763
00:40:32,160 --> 00:40:34,799
Speaker 1: almost seven years has passed instead, so we can. We can.

764
00:40:36,480 --> 00:40:40,520
Speaker 1: It's not enough, it's not It's not too soon. Patrick,

765
00:40:40,719 --> 00:40:43,480
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on. This is a

766
00:40:43,520 --> 00:40:47,160
Speaker 1: real treat and I just really appreciate you joining us. Hey,

767
00:40:47,200 --> 00:40:49,200
Speaker 1: thank you so much for having me as an absolute pleasure.

768
00:40:49,200 --> 00:40:50,840
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of your show. I've learned so

769
00:40:50,920 --> 00:40:53,640
Speaker 1: much about finance and the economy from listening to you guys.

770
00:40:53,719 --> 00:40:56,560
Speaker 1: Thank you awesome. Well, we'll have to have you back

771
00:40:56,600 --> 00:41:00,080
Speaker 1: after your book. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

772
00:41:00,160 --> 00:41:18,920
Speaker 1: Thank you. That was great. I I really did have

773
00:41:19,000 --> 00:41:21,920
Speaker 1: a lot of like I was confused prior to this,

774
00:41:22,040 --> 00:41:26,880
Speaker 1: Like I genuinely didn't understand exactly. But the explanation of

775
00:41:27,000 --> 00:41:33,279
Speaker 1: this sort of uh supply side changes, the labor shortage,

776
00:41:33,360 --> 00:41:39,560
Speaker 1: the productivity shock, the new demand from previous peasants who

777
00:41:39,560 --> 00:41:42,960
Speaker 1: weren't having all of their all of their consumption I

778
00:41:42,960 --> 00:41:46,640
Speaker 1: guess exploited or surplus exploited. I finally feel like he

779
00:41:47,200 --> 00:41:50,920
Speaker 1: did such a great job putting it all together. Yeah,

780
00:41:50,960 --> 00:41:53,760
Speaker 1: he really did. And I thought the point he made

781
00:41:53,920 --> 00:41:58,080
Speaker 1: towards the end about how a lot of this was well,

782
00:41:58,400 --> 00:42:01,399
Speaker 1: you know, some of these trends or sort of on

783
00:42:01,440 --> 00:42:05,600
Speaker 1: the way, but the idea that the experience, the unusual

784
00:42:05,640 --> 00:42:08,279
Speaker 1: experience of the black death is sort of stuck in

785
00:42:08,400 --> 00:42:11,920
Speaker 1: people's minds and made them realize what was possible. This

786
00:42:12,000 --> 00:42:14,839
Speaker 1: idea of what you can ask for more money, or

787
00:42:15,160 --> 00:42:18,560
Speaker 1: you can leave your lord and go work somewhere or

788
00:42:18,560 --> 00:42:22,359
Speaker 1: else if you go far enough like that definitely has

789
00:42:22,480 --> 00:42:27,200
Speaker 1: resonance in the COVID period, you know what I mean? Yes, absolutely,

790
00:42:27,239 --> 00:42:28,799
Speaker 1: And I was just gonna say it made me think

791
00:42:28,840 --> 00:42:32,800
Speaker 1: like we might be underestimating the change. That's going to

792
00:42:32,960 --> 00:42:36,160
Speaker 1: come out of COVID. I mean, like, you know, I

793
00:42:36,160 --> 00:42:38,640
Speaker 1: think in many respects our lives will go back to

794
00:42:38,719 --> 00:42:44,319
Speaker 1: something resembling normal. But it also seems like, you know,

795
00:42:44,480 --> 00:42:47,160
Speaker 1: this has just been It's obviously this period has not

796
00:42:47,320 --> 00:42:51,520
Speaker 1: been as deadly as the Black Death was by any stretch,

797
00:42:51,920 --> 00:42:57,520
Speaker 1: but it's been a global disruption to virtually everyone's lives

798
00:42:57,560 --> 00:43:00,960
Speaker 1: on the entire planet and somewhere another. For what's turning

799
00:43:00,960 --> 00:43:05,480
Speaker 1: into a pretty extended period of time, it seems plausible

800
00:43:05,600 --> 00:43:09,960
Speaker 1: that we aren't even like really can't even really grasp

801
00:43:10,239 --> 00:43:13,200
Speaker 1: the sort of ripple effects that an episode like this

802
00:43:13,239 --> 00:43:17,319
Speaker 1: will have. I think that's fair, although I do think

803
00:43:17,360 --> 00:43:20,359
Speaker 1: you see some inklings of it. Your life. Your life

804
00:43:20,360 --> 00:43:23,360
Speaker 1: hasn't changed, I know, because you guys don't really have it.

805
00:43:23,480 --> 00:43:26,919
Speaker 1: But but for much of the world from outside Wait

806
00:43:26,920 --> 00:43:29,799
Speaker 1: a second, Okay, I'm going to dispute that, but I'm

807
00:43:29,800 --> 00:43:33,680
Speaker 1: going to dispute it offline, away from the Volens listeners.

808
00:43:33,719 --> 00:43:36,680
Speaker 1: But I would say, you are seeing We've discussed this right,

809
00:43:37,000 --> 00:43:41,200
Speaker 1: you are seeing inklings of some changes, especially in the US,

810
00:43:41,400 --> 00:43:44,359
Speaker 1: where there isn't necessarily as strong as social safety net

811
00:43:44,440 --> 00:43:46,800
Speaker 1: as in places like Europe. You don't have free medical

812
00:43:46,840 --> 00:43:50,440
Speaker 1: care things like that. I think is the year where

813
00:43:50,920 --> 00:43:54,359
Speaker 1: quite a few people are starting to call for additional

814
00:43:54,400 --> 00:43:58,560
Speaker 1: government involvement in those sorts of things, in providing extra

815
00:43:59,360 --> 00:44:03,440
Speaker 1: unemployment kind of fits, physical stimulus um, some sort of

816
00:44:03,520 --> 00:44:08,560
Speaker 1: national healthcare whatever like you are seeing that in the US. Yeah, Now,

817
00:44:08,680 --> 00:44:12,080
Speaker 1: I I feel like life is going to change. At

818
00:44:12,120 --> 00:44:17,200
Speaker 1: least that's my feeling right now, December sixty three pm

819
00:44:17,280 --> 00:44:20,239
Speaker 1: Eastern Time. If they're talking to Patrick Wyman, the life

820
00:44:20,280 --> 00:44:24,120
Speaker 1: is get Okay, all right, we'll come back to the

821
00:44:24,200 --> 00:44:30,240
Speaker 1: question and we'll have Patrick on again when he's great. Yeah, okay,

822
00:44:30,320 --> 00:44:32,920
Speaker 1: shall we leave it there? Yep, let's say it there.

823
00:44:34,239 --> 00:44:37,160
Speaker 1: This has been another episode of the All Thoughts podcast.

824
00:44:37,239 --> 00:44:39,920
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on Twitter at

825
00:44:39,960 --> 00:44:43,279
Speaker 1: Tracy Alloway and I'm Joe Why Isn't All? You can

826
00:44:43,360 --> 00:44:46,640
Speaker 1: follow me on Twitter at The Stalwart. Follow our guests

827
00:44:46,840 --> 00:44:50,400
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Patrick Underscore Wyman, and check out his

828
00:44:50,520 --> 00:44:54,759
Speaker 1: podcast The Tides of History. Follow our producer Laura Carlson

829
00:44:55,000 --> 00:44:58,280
Speaker 1: at Laura M. Carlson. Follow the Bloomberg head of podcast,

830
00:44:58,360 --> 00:45:01,799
Speaker 1: Francesca Levie at franch Us, Get Today, and check out

831
00:45:01,840 --> 00:45:05,719
Speaker 1: all of our podcasts at Bloomberg under the handle at podcasts.

832
00:45:06,040 --> 00:45:06,840
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.