re: #240 Hecuba’s daughter

Some ALL experts believe that the Black Death led to economic growth. But, of course, this pandemic, while very disruptive to the economy, was nowhere near as lethal as that disease. The Spanish flu (which did target the young and healthy unlike COVID) did lead to the Roaring Twenties — maybe we are witnessing that, hopefully not followed by a Great Depression.

The Black Death killed about 40% of Europe’s population.

Meaning

1) agriculture no longer needed labor-intensive farming methods to eke what they could out of marginal land, the good land (with a much smaller labor force) made enough to feed everyone; and

2) people who made wagons and barrels and beer and cloth and saddles and swords and horseshoes and whatever else the 14th/15th centuries were producing adopted a guild system of specialized labor, a precursor to assembly lines, which was hella more efficient than having one craftsman do 14 steps for each product.

This also left enough leftover labor to do precision stonework and build cathedrals and good roads, to let some people paint and sculpt and hey! here comes Michelangelo and DaVinci and the rest of the Renaissance, to let clever people make up new things and look, there’s Gutenberg and movable type, etc etc etc