So, historically... a couple of points.
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Pharaohs would regularly begin the commission and construction of their tombs long before they died.
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The deification of the Pharaohs was an extension of the civil legal system and theocratic underpinning of Egyptian leadership, so surviving Priests and future Pharaohs have a vested interest in maintaining the symbols of authority constructed by prior generations
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The construction of the pyramids was at once a public works project, a social credit system, and an artisanal patronage system. Egyptian taxation and expenditure during rich years afforded the government opportunities to build up surplus to distribute during leaner years. Large scale construction projects were a kind of emergent jobs system and a means of cultivating an artisanal class which had knock-on effects that benefited Egyptians outside the vanity projects of the national leaders.
None of that is to say Egyptians could not have leveraged the bureaucracy of the Pharaohs for a purpose more socially beneficial than the construction of giant tombstones. But to claim these constructions occurred purely at the stated whims of dead people is a huge mistake.
I think he is making a point about today, and not the actual production of the pyramids.
I think there are parallels between the Pharaoh's pyramids and the modern luxury economy or military economy.
Hell, you could compare it to the modern commercial real estate economy. Why do we insist on building out new Mega-Malls and steel-glass skyscrappers in an era when that mode of development is past the point of profitability? Only because we still have large and well-connected coalitions of investors, managers, and workers who benefit from construction as well as a base of supporters that continue to believe these symbols of prosperity are desirable even when the attendant long-term social benefits aren't forthcoming.
Case in point, Austin is building multiple 100+ story towers in an era when the city physically can't move people into and out of the downtown area in any kind of efficient manner. Why are we building these behemoths when "nobody" wants them?
Yea I think that’s the punch lines point. That pro-capital economists are religious rather than analytical.
We might be more analytical, we might have more wit, but my god we can’t meme.
I think the joke is that neoliberals are grossly incompetent even compared to a theocracy.
ancient egypt lasted thousands of years neoliberalism has been around for less than an century and is starting to fall apart
tbf, "Ancient Egypt" is not a monolith, no matter how many obelisks it built.
King Tutankhamen famously made people forget about his father’s scandal by starting a war with a neighboring country
Pharaohs would regularly begin the commission and construction of their tombs long before they died.
You mean to say the pyramid is already in progress? :walter-breakdown:
I can see the old Enron building from my window. Ramses II can eat his fucking heart out.
But to claim these constructions occurred purely at the stated whims of dead people is a huge mistake.
I think your point 2 is somewhat implied by the comic itself, as it's a corporate leader demanding the labor and not, you know, a farmer who is a useful idiot and leading the other farmers. But it's much more accurate to say that the rhetorical justification for the construction project was the will of the previous pharaoh and their status as a deity.
it’s a corporate leader demanding the labor and not, you know, a farmer
Its Kropotkin and a guy with an Ivy League MBA arguing over the pyramids actually being built, so I get the sense that this is more in retrospect than real time.
But it’s much more accurate to say that the rhetorical justification for the construction project was the will of the previous pharaoh and their status as a deity.
Like a lot of EC work, its a very naive and superficial take on a philosophical conversation. The relative success of Egypt as an early empire came in no small part from the economic cycles that these large construction projects produced. Egyptians could buffer against agricultural sector downturn by hording farm produce in the bulk periods and paying it out again in the lean periods. The Pharaohs became a cult of personality used to justify why they had control over the surplus and the benefits of surplus labor. But the system of pyramid building was useful in so far as it established economic incentives to do a kind of proto-Keynesian economics while other nation-states were at the whim of feast and famine.
The system endured for multiple millennia as a result. And it feels a bit shortsighted to wave that off as MBA bullshit by using a naive Kropotkin on one side and a smug anonymous MBA on the other. FFS, they could at least have used Milton Friedman or Gary Becker as the stand in.
EC isn't infallible, far from it, but I really think you're taking the comic too literally. The pyramid here is a stand-in for "Bullshit Jobs" in the sense of labor that ultimately isn't oriented towards an end that helps society (because it's a giant gravestone). It's more about the wasted labor in corporate spaces towards accomplishing something the workers give zero shits about intrinsically.
It's like, uh, that play Rhinoceros where the phenomenon of people turning into Rhinoceroses is a stand in for the growth of fascism, or Waiting for Godot where the titular Godot is a metaphor for . . . uh . . . well, something like "a silver bullet for existential problems" that the cast have pinned their hopes on but need to learn to navigate without.
I really think you’re taking the comic too literally.
I mean... probably. The ahistorical nature of the take rubs me the wromg way, even if it is purely metaphorical.
It’s like, uh, that play Rhinoceros where the phenomenon of people turning into Rhinoceroses
I saw that play and I was not impressed.
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Did anyone listen to the podcast episode he links at the bottom? Is it a simplistic but convincing introduction to socialist thought or am I just easily taken in because I already agree with the premise?
Going backwards through these and some of them are just so damn good, like I love https://existentialcomics.com/comic/490
