August 31, 2025 • 56 mins
King Edward III made it illegal to not be poor in 1300s England. At least, illegal if you were already poor. Negotiating for higher wages? Straight to jail. Wearing clothes that made you look wealthy? Straight to jail. Trying to get a better job? Jail. All because the upper classes were annoyed with having to negotiate wages with workers after the Black Death created a labor shortage and the working class gained the upper hand.
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Rob Fox
https://www.instagram.com/robfoxthree/
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Dan Regester
https://www.instagram.com/danregester/
https://twitter.com/dan_regester
Subscribe to the Softcore History Patreon for hundreds of hours of extra history content including episodes like this, listener voicemails, movie watch-alongs, and weekly bonus episodes.
Get 25% off your subscription or try the app FREE for seven days at Fitbod.me/SOFTCORE
Rob Fox
https://www.instagram.com/robfoxthree/
https://twitter.com/RobFoxThree
https://www.tiktok.com/@robfoxthree
Dan Regester
https://www.instagram.com/danregester/
https://twitter.com/dan_regester
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
You.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I'm now listening to soft core History.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
What is up? Welcome back to soft core History. I
am your host for the week, Rob Fox, joined as
always by Dan Regester.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Always a pleasure to host you in my apartment.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
It's good to be in your home. It feels like
a second home now. I was thinking like, if we
ever did this full time, do we just like hang
out here all day?
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Home is where the heart is. Yeah, yeah, I would
probably expand. I'd probably get a bigger spot, second bedroom.
If we did a full time office, I would probably
make a studio, not an office.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Yeah, that'll make more sense rather than do it from
our couch.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
I mean no, we would still do that. We would
need a couch.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
We'd have a couch.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
We have a couch.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
But you know, the room would be the studio. It
wouldn't just be your living room, public.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Area, your open concept living room. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
I can look into your kitchen. Yeah, yeah, it's nice.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
This is a classic. You have that mid twenty tens
industrial apartment. All white, Yeah, all white, open floor plan,
you know the deal. Welcome back to softcore History. Before
we get started, I do want to say we have
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And it's a vital importance because this is now my
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So are you doing forty on it?
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Probably? I don't know, between setting everything up.
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Yeah, yeah, so support Dan, support Dan Chester, join the Patreon,
Patreon dot com slash soft core History. How are you
doing today?
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Fantastic. We're recording early. This is going out in the holiday.
This would be out on Labor Day.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Yeah, we're on a Friday today, which I love. Like
I'm just done with work by noon.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Today, I'm going on a vacation that I already planned
and by that. I mean, I'm just driving a big
Bend by yourself with Chase. Oh yeah, my friend Shay.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Yeah, we're watching college football as you watching college football
as I drive doing a little vision quest.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
God damn it.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Psychedelics you fucking do in the desert ayahuasca?
Speaker 3 (02:42):
I will quit this show.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
No, it's mushrooms.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Why the fuck would I do ayahuasca? I don't know,
because because also where would I obtain ayahuasca this ship?
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Again, I don't know where.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
I would need a shaman?
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Yeah you were that.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
I would do it off a finger bone.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Yeah, we're in Austin. I feel like there's a lot
of Ayahwaska connections here.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Again, I'm going to Big Bend.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Yeah, but you can.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
I'm doing mushrooms. It feels like a big eyawasc spot too,
to be not really, No, it feels like a lot
of people maybe an I begain spot.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Oh Jesus even worse. If you did either of this, you're.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Gonna kill the ego. Do some mushrooms in the desert,
figure out what I want to do.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Have some fun.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yeah, I just have fun.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
That's fine.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Chase's last trip probably.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Yeah, lost my job, my dogs on his way out.
My shoulder toast can't lift for like three months.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Just tragedy after tragedy.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Things are on the way up. Look it up, this
is rock bottom.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
All we need is some mushrooms in the desert.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Figure it out.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
I have faith in you, And especially since you're doing
normal psychedelics and not assholes psychedelics.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
You're only saying that because you just did mushrooms like
this year.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
I would say that even if I hadn't done them,
because that mushrooms don't make you a fucking douchebag.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
No, they can. They can certainly make you unbearable.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
It's fair. Today we have a fun topic. Something I
was kind of like I didn't know anything about, and
it was really really interesting to me. I found this
on I'm gonna give a shout out to the substack
because it is actually like they did. They weren't really
in depth on this, so shout out age of invention
by Anton Howes on Substack for finding all this stuff.
(04:26):
I'm kind of summarizing what he found, so shout out
to him. This is it's a brilliant article. You should
read the whole thing. It's really long. But when people.
It caught my eye because you know, when people think
about like terrible economics and the state running economics terribly obviously,
the first thing that comes to mind always is, and
(04:48):
not wrongfully so communism. You know China USSR that type
of shit, right, horrible state planned economies that just fucking
and suck and literally kill people. Obviously, capitalism not without
Sydney there. We love to talk about the Gilded Age
and factory gears greased by the wheels of orphans or
(05:11):
greased by the blood of orphans.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Or your great great grandfather being in a steel beam.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yeah, part of his bones just being melted into He's part.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Of New York City.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Now, your grandfather literally helped build great great grandfather literally
helped build New York City by dying in the construction
accident and then just being smelted into it.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Really it was a molten steel.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
I like to think when they were building the first
version of the New York Skyline or any city skyline, Well.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Jet fuel can't melt steel beams, but it can melt
your grandfather's body.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Your human bones. Yeah. I just like to think, like
back then, once a week there was a work side
accident that was the equivalent of Arnold Swarzenegger's stepping into
the molten steel and terminator.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Two.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Yeah, that was like a common work side accident. I
think for for the time. Tell my Irish widow that
I love our type of situation.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
The floor manager's just pissed at his incompetence. What a
piece of shit, what a dumb ass? Why?
Speaker 3 (06:09):
I feel like the floor manager will be sent us back,
be angry. But at least it doesn't feel like a
time where he has to do a lot of paperwork
about it.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
No, but you maybe have to stop production for about
ten minutes.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Everything gets slowed down just a little bit.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
We're behind schedule now, God damn Anderson.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Stay in an extra hour for Anderson falling into the lava.
Let this. Let this be a lesson. Alia, don't fall
in the lava or everyone else works like you hurt
the whole team when you fall into the lava.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Selfish. Yeah, absolutely selfish, moved by Anderson, completely fucking selfish.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
But I think and reading this kind of confronts it
to me. I think, when what people really underrate, really underrate,
is how shitty any I guess autocrat is for an economy,
How shitty. It is for one guy to decide as
much shit as possible. Obviously, any one of these people
(07:08):
have you know, advisors and stuff like that, but there's
still one guy that includes kings. And I think the
reason we underrate kings being shitty with the economy is
that we kind of only we kind of only hear
about good kings, right, We kind of only hear about
the Kings that did a good job. And I think
that's because my personal theory on it is because for
(07:30):
a long time, I.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Just don't think that's accurate what hear about awful kings
All the time.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
We hear about the very worst, and we hear about
the very best. But people forget that most of them
were deeply mid. And when you have a deeply mid
leader who gets to run everything.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Yeah, we don't have that's time to cover all these people.
What we don't have that much time to cover all
those people? You know, most of the US presidents, the
general population does not because they just were very average.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Yeah that's fair. Nobody even knows most of the good ones.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Oh, like Polk Polk. The goaded people don't give enough love.
Uh either way, in one term, if you don't agree
with the theory.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
It doesn't matter because today I have an example of
a king doing basically all of the worst shit you
can imagine to an economy to try to fix the economy.
It predates any modern version of the economy of our
economics by like five hundred years.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Did he put all of his money into bitcoin or tulips?
Speaker 3 (08:31):
No or tulips no, no, no, much worse than that.
I can at least respect a gambler, you know what
I mean. Yeah, a guy taking a big swing the
bookles of the world. Yeah, I can respect a guy
just being you know what, we're going all in on this.
It's fine. Now, this guy just basically micro managed the
economy in a way that was specifically designed to fuck
(08:54):
ninety nine percent of the people. So it's thirteen hundreds England.
Edward the Third is the king.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
I've heard of Edward the Third, like a lot of
people have.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
What do you know about Edward the Third?
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Edward the Third is kind of what sets up the
whole story to the War of the Roses.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
Yeah, and he's currently he's fighting in France and stuff
like that, like every English king, I guess at the time.
So Edward the Third has a bit of a crisis
on his hands. The Black Death, so fair enough, the
bobotic plague literally kills half of England's population. This creates
(09:37):
insane inflation because even though half the population died, all
of their money sticks around. So even for poor people
there's a little bit of inheritance, there's the same amount
of money. Now there's half the amount of people to
spend it. Everyone has more money. Prices go crazy. Because
(09:58):
prices go crazy, start demanding higher wages. And since half
the people are dead, there's way less workers, and they
have a shit ton of leverage to demand higher wages.
Where you're gonna find anyone else, everyone's fucking dead. Pay
me more.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
So you're saying plague is actually good for the workforce.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Plag is good for the workers. Yeah, if he kills enough.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
People, you know, everything keeps going up in price. Right now,
what if you know, I'm throwing this out there. We
have another pandemic, a bigger one, a worse one.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
Just to get the economy back on us, just to
get my wages. Uh yeah, nothing's better for the working classes.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
I just don't know if that even happened during COVID,
which is definitely went down.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
It doesn't feel like wages.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
They're stagnant. Yeah yeah, I don't know if anything happened with.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
That didn't kill enough people's problem. No, goddamn Operation War
Speed killing the economy by not killing people the Kung flu.
Yeah yeah, so the richrapist. The working class has all
of the leverage. There's a worker shortage, and they can
basically demand a shit ton of money to do a
job that costs half as much before everyone died. So
(11:15):
in thirteen forty nine, Edward tries to fight inflation by
making it illegal to charge more for goods than before,
and he makes it illegal for workers to demand higher
wages than before. The bubonic plague killed half of the
(11:37):
people in England.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Checkmate, what's up, dude? Sorry, would give you a raise,
but it's illegal.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
Oh so yeah, I can't do it. It can't fucking
do it. He also demanded because workers a lot of
times would be like, all right, you're not gonna pay me.
Fuck it, I'm not gonna work. So he may pass
the law saying every man and woman in England, able bodied,
able bodied, you're working. If you are idle, you're gonna
you're going to jail. Like if you're sitting out, if
(12:06):
you're not actively seeking work or working, you're going to
fucking jail. And anyone lock me up, daddy, Yeah, yeah,
anyone who gives money to beggars, straight to jail, right
to jail. However, there were still there was still a
worker shortage, so the lot it self didn't do much
because employers were like, I'm not gonna make any money
(12:28):
if I don't hire somebody, so bidding wars over peasants,
bidding wars over the lowest class are rampant, and the
working class is making out great. They're making a ton
of money. And not only that, like a worker will
will get a cow and don't get a contract. A
worker will agree to a wage and work for a
(12:50):
couple of days, and then another employer on a farm
or wherever will be like, what are you making? I'll
give you like two shillings more or whatever the fuck
the money was back then, and they're gone three days later.
It's like pure free agency, pure fucking chaos. They can't
keep anyone unless they raised the ways.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
The nil era.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
It is the.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Nil era, yeah, of it is transfer portal nil in
medieval England, and that's what created the middle class.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
It should have, it should have.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
But then the plague just kind of went away, did
it did?
Speaker 3 (13:22):
Eventually loaded the wages. Well, the wages went away before
the plague because the England kept being like, we cannot,
under any circumstances tolerate this shit. So in thirteen fifty
one Parliament, which at this point was run by nobles,
there was a House of Commons, but the nobles were
(13:43):
the bigger, better house, the House of Lords. I think
they made it illegal for workers to leave their own
town and village to find better paid work in other
towns and villages, especially during harvest.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Yeah. Also, Edward the Third, I believe was so Georgie R.
Martin often references the war Roses for Game of Thrones
because that's what's so lousely based off of believe Edward
the Third respected warrior, kind of the Taiwan lanister of
the family. Okay, like the you know headed hancho that
(14:17):
kind of sets everything up for his family. Okay, So yeah,
I think a lot of people know who Edward the Third.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Is fair enough. However, based on everything in here, not
a great king probably got good pr because he could fight, yeah,
and he was fighting the French and all this shit,
but economically fucked his whole country.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Taiwan Lanister, you know, he wasn't the best ruler either.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
He was not. Actually, I think it was like a
theme I was watching or reading something about Game of Thrones,
so they're like, like, I think George Ormart was like
Taiwin Lanister is not like he's ruthless or he's like
sure of himself, but he's like way less competent than
people think he is.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Yeah, he always saves a day, like in battle, but
when he had when he's idle, he's.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
When he's running shit, shit keeps getting fucked up it. Yeah,
so you couldn't shop for jobs anymore, and you had
to lock into contracts. They made it illegal to uh
go day by day or week by week. You had
to lock into like ideally year long contracts, but certainly
like a month at least. And they made it illegal
(15:28):
to hire in private anymore. If you wanted to hire workers,
you had to go to the marketplace so everyone could
hear you offer the wages.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Yeah, because you're really gonna fuck every other business owner
if you're just shelling out too much.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Right, So someone would be there and be like, oh,
hood lord edgetdn't giving four shilling.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
And then they go to court. You can get sued
for this. You can get in prison for this. Also,
all the workers had to show up to the local
constable office every six month and swear an oath that
they wouldn't make too much money.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
That's tough living right there, you're getting capped.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
I do solemnly swear that we will remain poor forever.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
That I will know my place and I shall not
want more.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
I have a dirty, dirty boy and a dirty boy
I shall remain.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
I was born into this and this is what I deserve.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
I promise I would just eat food and make the
bad men of money, no matter how hungry I am
around any sick children, I have God very good.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Get on.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
It's fine. I will intermit the past.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
I would not eat if I do not have food.
Just fucked. It's just fucked like and it keeps getting
more and more. Fuck this whole thing. By the way,
I'll just say now, this last like sixty years. It
outlives Edward the third Yeah, duh like it. They do
not take these laws away.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
So once you established something, it's really hard to remove.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
Yeah, especially because the employers are like.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
See the Patriot Act, the free market.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
I hate the free market. I hate every goddamn day
having to outbid the asshole on the farm next door.
Fuck this.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Yeah, I don't want to hear anything from England ever again.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
So even though they did pass a law being like
you can't bidding, wars are over all this stuff, there's
a loophole and they found it real quick that really
only applied to wages, bonuses to cash. It applied to cash.
So employers found ways around this, especially the nobles who
(17:48):
were both landowners and business owners who needed to hire people,
but also by din of being a noble, ran the courts. Yeah,
so those guys were basically not abiding by it, or
if they did, they would.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Get these guys off, they would they get the peasants off.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Yeah. They would find ways to do this essentially to
get around it. And one of the main ways was
giving them other.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Shit instead of money. Yeah, here's a ruby the crown jewels.
So this fucked over.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
The poorer farmers, like the middle class farmers fucked.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
By this and just pay people and food, really.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Right, and that's what they did. So the reason they
had to do this was because when the law first passed,
they realized that the workers who are now locked into
dogshit wages weren't working very hard. They were getting about
a third of the work done that they would normally
get because they were like, what, dude, fuck this, I'm
(18:54):
locked into this wage.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Yeah, if you have no incentive.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
But literally zero incentive to do anything, and there's still
a worker shortage, so the guy's not gonna come out
and fire you.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
The biggest problem with any type of communist or socialist
society is just, yeah, you there's a straight up ceiling
on what you can achieve, and humans are just not
meant for that.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
No, wouldn't you're saying that even about like Sweden.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Yeah, even like a socialist society like Sweden is just
there's really no motivation to do anything.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
But they're all comfy.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
But humanity, Yeah, they're comfy, but like humanity is meant
to just kind of constantly be moving, Like we're sharks man.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
We're ants, little ants. We gotta keep picking shit up.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Ant's marching, Yeah, we gotta.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Just it's in our it's in our DNA.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Dude, I had no idea. Dave Matthew's from South Africa.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah, it's weird.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
I guess I've never heard him talk.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
He sounds like a lunatic.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
And I kind of missed out on the Dave Matthews
a little after your time. Yeah, the whole.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Generation that was my high school era, like the late nineties,
early two thousands, that was Dave.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
People will just tail get the concerts, get fucked up.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
Concerts were fun. I told you, the meanest thing that
ever happened to me was that a Dave Matthew's concert.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
There you go, what rehas you here?
Speaker 3 (20:20):
But it was just like the most egregiously unnecessary small
like not someone can punched me in the face or anything.
But I was just like, why would you say that,
I don't know you is the Dave Matthews concert.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
We can throw on some Dave Matthews right now. I'll
punch you in the face. So then it's only the
second worst thing that's ever happened.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
While Dave Matthews was playing in the background. I'll just
say this, don't wear your Geography B T shirt to
a Dave Matthew's concert or a college kid'll be mean
to you.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
You were a Geography be T shirt.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
It's just a National Geographic on it wasn't like way
I love geography.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Yeah. Uh. I got dunked on my freshman year of
college going to a bar. I went to scoop at
UCF in a dunder Mifflin T shirt.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
And the dick about that.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
The bouncer immediately just went, you're a faggot, Like, what
the fuck? Man, I'm eighteen. I thought the office was cool.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
That's literally what happened to me at the day Matthews
got the same thing. I was just walking and somebody
saw the shirt said that to me. I was like,
what the fuck?
Speaker 1 (21:27):
It's like, that's where you're gonna come into the bar
with a dunder Mifflin T shirt? What the fuck?
Speaker 3 (21:32):
Like it was almost through my night.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
I was just like that, why why ever? Since then,
I just can't watch the Office.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
You go right back to that moment, come straight as hell.
The workers were lazy as fuck, and the nobles had
to find another way to pay them to make them
less lazy, because they were like, fuck all this right,
So the main loophole was giving them food and drink
and stuff like that. What they when they used to
just give them slop and shitty bread made out of
(22:04):
mostly sawdust, I assume. Now they had to provide workers
with high quality wheat bread, freshly cooked meat hot out
of the pot, all right, no more cold salted jerky
or whatever the fuck they were getting, and some delicious ales.
No more, no more dirty brown water. You had to
(22:26):
give them some some beer. Contemporaries people from the time,
like employers and nobles and shit, were like, I fucking
hate these people. They are literally better fed than I am.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
So they're getting a little jealous of the peasant.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
They are getting better fucking food than me. Workers also,
who like went to go work on a farm or whatever,
we're now like, because again there's a huge shortage. They're
now like, hey, you know that like piece of wood
and sack filled with straw you call a fucking pillow
in the boarding house I have to live in. Yeah, no,
(23:04):
I'm gonna need a mattress and a real pillow.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
Now it's almost like seeing your phone carrier offering up
all these sweet deals for new people to sign up,
and you're like, I've been with you for like fifteen years.
They got none of this.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
Yeah, where is my shit? I'm a loyal customers.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Why can I get a free phone?
Speaker 3 (23:21):
You're in the bag, dickhead.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
You sounds abitious.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Yeah, so now they need time to blow up a
cell tower. Now they need nicer beds and pillows too.
They like feather beds and all this shit. But this
is what pisses the rich people off the most by far.
And this is the funniest part. They were also paid
because they the wages were capped in nicer clothing and materials.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Oh no, they had swagged out. They all look dope
as hell, fly as hell.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
They It was described at the time that any like
peasant labor or whatever, they basically all wore.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Gray clothes, just gray shitty. No, they got a pop
color potato sack clothes.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
Now they were giving given nicer clothes, I guess, more
colorful clothes, furs with like shirts with fur trim on.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
It, technic color jackets.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
Servants and laborers became so well dressed that one historian
from the time worried, quote, one person cannot be discerned
from another in splendor of dress or belongings.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
How can we tell who the poores are and keep
them out of our parties? They couldn't tell. They were
getting angry because they couldn't tell who was poor anymore?
They're still I mean, I guess everyone's dirty back then
because they're not really bathing, because it's kind of gay
to bathe back then.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
Yeah. I mean also you assume they opened their mouths
and they're like, oh I've got and you're like, oh, okay,
poor Yeah, yeah, whatever the Cockney was back then. It
was when Cockney probably, but they literally the poor people
were walking around in two nights of clothes and they
were like, I don't know who's poor anymore. This is
a nightmare. It's like a British Larry David, like, I
(25:04):
just want to know who's poor. I don't want to
talk to a poor person. No, I can't tell these
people to tell waste my time with poor people now.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Identity crisis left and right. It's unfortunate for the nobles
of the time.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
And they were also annoyed. Yeah, they're also annoyed that
the people were making money or like looking nicer and
they could then, I guess, resell these things if they
wanted to, so getting more money that way, and it
was making them very uppity.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Yeah, you start to feel yourself look good, feel good,
play good.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
Didn't know their place and the employers were like, and
we can't fucking say anything to them because they'll leave.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
I'll go to a better spot for more pay.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
I just have to eat shit on this and don't
goddamn sick of it.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
What it's time to be alive. I mean, you have
to overcome the Black Death. You have to build up
the immunity to that. But you survive and it's greener pastures.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
Yeah, you're you're If you survive the Black Death, you're
crushing it deservingly.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
So, I mean, what was the kill rate on the
half half?
Speaker 3 (26:09):
It took out half the English population.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
There's a sense of just like I'm immortal.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
Honestly, It's not the worst instinct to have. It's it's
an understandable instinct to have if you survived the Black Death.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
To be like, am I am I God?
Speaker 3 (26:26):
Am I my? The fucking shit like am I? Just
like unkillable.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
They didn't even have to go on a vision quest
and do ayahuasca.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
No, they just had to look around sober and be like, no,
I think I'm God.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Outlived all their siblings as their dead bodies being carted off, Like,
guess I'm not that weak now, Jerry, am I.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
Who's the bitch. No, So obviously all of this just
leads to more and more enforcement, and all of this
enforcement keeps fucking everyone and it has horrible incentives. One
of my favorite ones is that there was they would
(27:14):
sue people, right, people would get tried and stuff like that. However,
juries and there were juries wouldn't necessarily want to convict
because juries were made up of people from the town
and stuff like that. Juries wouldn't necessarily want to convict
they're the boys.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Yeah, but this is also the direct opposite of a
debtor's prison. Yeah, this is we paid you too much prison, Yeah, exactly,
and so over abundance prison.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
So a lot of times if a worker was seen
as collecting too much wages, they could be taken to court.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Right, This is like when I got paid too much
money by unemployment and they're trying to get their money back.
That's on you, Like, I didn't deposit it into my account.
That's your problem. You are a shitty bookkeeper. That is
not my issue.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
That's how I feel it should be. If a bank
puts too much money into your cut like that, dude,
that's on.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
I'm sorry, Yeah, that's mine.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
Now you're getting your wages going, this is my shit
stuck by dick, Like, I'm not giving this back. You
can't just let me open my app and see that
and then take it away.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Just because I immediately went to the ATM and withdrew
all of it.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
What would you do? It's like again to go back
to Sweden. I think it's like not illegal to try
to escape from prison in Sweden because they're just like
it's normal.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
The dude that shot up and killed like seventy people
in Norway, yeah in twenty eleven. Yeah, Norway, I believe
has a max sentence of a little over twenty years.
So he's coming up. Boy, he's gonna get out of prison.
They're like twenty thirty two.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
There is not a lot of like strong evidence that
the death penalty is a deterrent.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Don't think he's remorseful for Yeah, I'll tell you what.
All those murders.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
And that only being twenty years is like an open
door to do it. Yeah. Yeah, So Jerrys wouldn't want
to indict their friends or indict other workers, so the
government had to give them a little little juice to
get them to roll over on their fellow workers, on
(29:17):
their boys. And that juice was if you were convicted
of getting excess wages, all of your excess wages were
taken and putting into the town coffers and whatever that
went into that cut the taxes for everyone else.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Oh, they're gonna be like they had a fifty to
fifty raffle. Everyone bought tickets, you could go home with half.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
I mean they got to keep money because of it.
So now if you convict enough people, you don't have
to pay taxes for the year.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
I wonder where the fifty to fifty raffles started? Was
it the Chicago Cubs game? We don't know.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
No, I appreciate that because during the like Gilded Age
and the late eighteen hundreds or no even in the
remember we talked about it in the Economy episode about
or just like how shitty it was to live in
the seventeen hundreds, they would raise a lot of money
for like public projects and also like churches and stuff
with fifty to fifty raffles, and like the late sixteen hundreds,
early seventeen hundred.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
When did bingo games start?
Speaker 3 (30:20):
Bingo was nineteen forty one to help fund the war effort,
of course. Yeah, so now jurys were like, hell, fuck,
let's convict the fuck out of these people. Like sorry, dude, sorry, Brandon,
you're going in like you're guilty again.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
You're incentivizing them with more money. So it seems like
the issue all along is cap and people.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
Yeah, capping the wages fucked everything.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
And in order to solve capin the issues that came
with cap'n wages is to then incentivize people with more money,
as if that could have just solved the problem to
begin with, right.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
A bit of a roundabout way. In thirteen fifty two alone,
seven five hundred workers in one area of England, which
was approximately fifteen percent of the entire adult population, were
indicted by juries and forced to hand over their excess wages,
which cut that county's tax bill in over half. So
(31:23):
everyone got their tax bill sliced by like sixty percent.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Damn over taxes back then.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
I don't know, but they had to pay sixty percent
less because they just fucking convicted everyone that got sent
in front of them.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Still less than it is now. Probably, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
I don't know, I don't know what the I have
no idea. I don't even know if the records are
that good for it. Parliament also was like, man, this
isn't this really isn't working, so they made the breaking
the labor laws more harsh, like the punishment or whatever.
Instead of fines and wages being garnished, excess wages being guarne,
(32:00):
you now got fifteen days in the stalks for taking excess.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Wages getting tomatoes thrown in your face.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
Yeah, actually so the stocks. I didn't realize this the
thing with your head, and that's called the pillory, and
the stalks are on your legs. So you just had
to sit in public for fifteen days with a huge
piece of wood on your legs, not being able to move.
People could still throw tomatoes and stuff at you. I
guess you're not gonna be able to chase them down.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
I'm definitely tossing some vegetables.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
Do you want to go something with a splat or
something with like something hard?
Speaker 1 (32:30):
I think splat is more enjoyable. Throwing like a hard
onion at him or a potato not great.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
Yeah, I actually don't even think they have tomatoes or
potatoes available to them yet they don't.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
But that's not the point, rob.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
Let's just pretend it's actually the seventeen hundreds and you
are you are Patrick mahomesing a pineapple at their face.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
What's the worst fruit or vegetable you could throw out somebody?
Is it a melon?
Speaker 3 (32:58):
I don't know that, I'm on the top. Pineapple? Watermelon
would be pretty mean.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Watermelon might give somebody at least a concussion. Yeah, could
kill someone. You have to throw it fast enough.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
You have to throw it soccer style though, like over
over your head.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Well how else are you gonna throw it under.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
Arm a side hurt like a rugby ball?
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Yeah yeah, just kind of smashing it directly over their head.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
Yeah. I do think to be fair you should have
to drag the foot. Nah.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
No rules when it comes to throwing fruit or vegetables.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
People at the stocks.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Yeah, what would you rather be hit with?
Speaker 3 (33:40):
Would I rather be hit?
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Which?
Speaker 3 (33:42):
Like a tomato? It's not gonna do anything.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
Tomato's fine, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
I just piss you off. Yeah, it would be low
key shitty as an orange, because I don't think that
thing's really splattering, and you can really whip a fucking.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Orange, especially if it has a skin on yeah yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
Or skin on orange is gonna fuck you, low key
fuck you up. One of my favorite things on Jackass ever,
was when they took.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
I would in for the balls. Of course it was
a man.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
For taking his excess wages, right, trying to make money.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
I guess, let's be time correct. Then what what are
we throwing at them? Because it's not oranges? Yeah, I
don't know. It just it's not tomatoes. It's not potatoes.
I guess.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
I think this is probably gonna be the main one, cabbage, radish,
and then they have squashes and cauliflower.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Okay, had a calliflower.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
Would be fun because I would explode.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
It's good visual.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
It is a good visual. Yeah, you don't get a
fun noise, I think, but it is a good it'll
it'll pop.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Onion sucks the most. I think of all those onions.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
Just throwing a baseball, it's one.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
You hit them right in the temple. It might be
night over, it might be lights out.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
You're just Nolan ryaning someone with a fucking onion. Parliament
was also pissed off because people were still traveling to
work and they were like, this has got the this
has got to goddamn stop. So an employer could have
their run away, their run away free laborer arrested and
(35:14):
returned to them.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
So slave, Yes, so slave.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
And see if this sounds slavy or not. The runaway worker,
when returned, was to be quote burnt in the forehead
with an iron made and formed of the letter F.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
So brand Yeah, they had to be branded on the
forehead with the letter F oh F in the chat?
Is that where that's from? You get branded with an
F F failure? Yeah, okay, it was for falsity.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
You're a liar if you had an F on your forehead.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Everybody leave an F in the chat for falsity.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
Eventually, Parliament also got wind of all the meal and
clothes stuff and they outlawed the fuck out of that.
They said that no laborers have to eat shitty food
they're poor, feed them like they're poor.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
They got to know their place, yep.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
And they made laws against people who weren't rich wearing
nice clothes. They literally legislated what type of garments laborers
were allowed to wear. They were to wear no manner
of cloth but blanket and russet wool worth under a shilling.
(36:26):
They couldn't wear any girdles. I get so, they couldn't
wear underwear. Oh, they couldn't wear underwear of anything better
than linen.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Why man, what are we doing?
Speaker 3 (36:37):
They were also outlawed from having silks, having buttons on
their clothes.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
God forbid they have a button.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
They couldn't wear rings, garters, ribbons, just sacks.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Yeah, but you said potatoes weren't around, so not a
potato sack.
Speaker 3 (36:54):
It's a cabbage sack.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
It's a cabbage sack. Cabbage sack. Kids.
Speaker 3 (37:01):
Uh, this is going to cut deep with you and
every blue collar Philly worker. No chains?
Speaker 1 (37:06):
What how do you exist? How do you live? How
do you go out in public without a chain? Absolutely?
Zero chains?
Speaker 3 (37:14):
And you couldn't have anything embroidered either.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
That doesn't affect me at all.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
You're wearing something embroidered right now. That Phillies jersey is
literally I'm sorry, that Eagles jersey is literally embroidered.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
Doesn't effect me.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
This caused, among other things, a violent uprising in the
thirteen eighties, but that got put down.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Whatever kept doubling and tripling just uplin down.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
Constantly making it I don't know, like putting band aids
on bullet every bullet wound they caused.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
They would just put another bullet wound where the bullet
wound was just shoot them again, Yeah, until they learned
their lesson.
Speaker 3 (37:55):
Another thing that the employers and the landowners especially found
to be problematic was that, believe it or not, these
poor people wanted upward mobility for their family.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Don't care for the poorest, thinking they can just earn
their way up.
Speaker 3 (38:16):
Right, imagine seeing some poor mud person.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
You have to be born into this, okay, right, this
is not for everybody, not for you. It's not earned,
it's divine, it's given. It's thanks to the heavens God
above is determined, He makes no mistakes.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
One's no one's giving it to you. Essentially, a lot
of like landowners would look at, you know, some shitty
mud family whose dad was working the farm and be like,
oh sweet, he had eight kids and five of them lived.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
Your father was a mud person. His father was a
mud person. With just a bunch of mud people. You
can't get out of it. You're always gonna be a
mud person, Danny.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
That's what you always ah. And there was no there
was no speech giving Like best part of my day
was waiting hoping you don't come out that door. I'll
fucking kill you if you stick around here.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
Get the fuck it.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Was actually the landowners. They're like, I'll fucking kill you
if you don't stick around you. So they see mud
family with five kids, and they're like, dude, all right,
population's coming back. I'm gonna five more mud five people
work in my fucking farm. But the Mud people on
other plans, and they were like, oh, I'm gonna get
some of my sons or whatever internships apprenticeships with like
(39:38):
a blacksmith or a carpenter or whatever. You know, there'll
be a tradesman. They'll be middle class, and then we
can keep moving up, so on and so forth. The
nobles were like, whoa.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
Whoa, what do you think you're doing their palace? That's
my farm boy, get back to the fields.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
No, no, no, no, no, yeah, come on, man, what
I was counting on him?
Speaker 1 (39:59):
You're doing mess with iron.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
It's not what he does. But the blacksmith's kid do that.
So they made it illegal. They made it if you
were born to a you know, farm laborer or whatever,
that's your fucking job.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
Asshole family business.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
Yeah no, no apprenticeships for you.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
Simpler time, a better time. I'd be a waterman right now.
I never I wouldn't have to worry about my future.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
Yeah, you would just be I would be a.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Water treatment operator in Philadelphia.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
Happily changing anything. So anyone who had practiced farming below
the age of twelve, you're locked in. You are completely
locked in. And to continue to make sure that, say,
I don't know, you didn't try to get around it
by sending your kid into London or another town or whatever.
The English government created an internal passport.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
System so they controlled where you could go.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
Yep, sweet and town, I don't know what you call it,
constables or whatever. It was a huge part of their
job to walk around the town. Again. You know, these
people they all know each other, and shit if they
see someone to essentially be like, who do you know here?
Speaker 1 (41:09):
See something? Say something?
Speaker 3 (41:10):
Who do you know here?
Speaker 1 (41:11):
Bro? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (41:12):
It was illegal to be a stranger. Sweet, You had
to have someone lifting, you had to have someone get
in another town vouch for you. It was illegal to
stay with them for more than one night unless you
were sick. And if you didn't have a passport, straight
to jail four indefinitely for as long as they want
(41:33):
until they just figure out what the fuck to do
with you. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
So, and they just killed you.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
They just let you rot basically real quick. Before we
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So they did everything in their power except let the
free market buck when the Black Death happened.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
But capitalism is the problem.
Speaker 3 (43:51):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, so this shit continued for decades,
even after the plague subsided, all the way into fourteen
forty five, Parliament still not happy because England's population, largely
(44:13):
because of this, doesn't recover. It remains stagnant. People can't
afford to have kids, so the worker shortages continue and
they have to keep fighting to make sure that there's
people on the farms and.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Shit, and no, no, a civil war popped up. Yeah,
we gotta lose half these people to battle more. People
keep dying from the civil wars and shit like that.
Also they're fighting France. Agincourt happens during this time period
and stuff like that. Agincourt they rolled, they did rocket
at his court. So our boy Henry the fifth, he's
part of this too. It goes past Edward the third.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
So Timothy Shallomey holds it didn't solve the problem. He
did not solve this problem. He was sweet in Agincourt.
He could fuck some people up, but he was not
great for the economy. So it keeps getting worse even
with all these laws. So Parliament then is just like, okay,
(45:09):
every justice to the peace in every town. You are
now judge dread. We don't even need a jury anymore.
Speaker 1 (45:15):
No, may quick, We got it. Just there's too much.
There's just too much paperwork.
Speaker 3 (45:20):
Just if you see someone, it's all on you can
you can convict them on the spot and just throw
them in jail, take their money. Let's just make this straightforward.
Speaker 1 (45:31):
How did England persevere after this? I don't I don't
get it. How did they become? You know this in
taught this huge empire that takes over the sun never sets.
Speaker 3 (45:44):
Oh, it set them back over one hundred. They had
a hundred year long depression from like the mid thirteen
hundreds to the mid fourteen hundreds. It it fucks the
population for another like hundred years. After that, they only
get back to pre Black death levels at like fifteen hundred,
whereas France and the rest of Europe way past it.
They recover Italy even they recovered quickly, Even Scotland bounced
(46:06):
back faster than England. The population stayed completely low and
the economy was fucked for one hundred and fifty years
because they wouldn't let poor people make the market rate
for their labor or wear nice clothes.
Speaker 1 (46:25):
And the tutors probably didn't help with this. I can't
imagine they seemed to be cut from the cloth of
keep the poor poor.
Speaker 3 (46:33):
Yeah, yeah, the tutor's not super helpful with it. I
think eventually it just like their economy does go off
in the fifteen hundreds, and I think eventually it just
shakes itself out. Because England was a good like economic
engine of an island at the time. They just depressed
themselves for a one hundred and fifty years because the
(46:54):
nobles were like, I'm too lazy to negotiate pay rates.
Speaker 1 (47:00):
These pores just can't be this happy. They're happier than
I am. Now, yeah, there, we can't stand for that.
Speaker 3 (47:06):
I most of my happiness came.
Speaker 1 (47:09):
From looking at how miserable the pores were.
Speaker 3 (47:11):
Like it could always be like the grass is not
greener on the other side for me, ever, and that's awesome.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
And I think we can relate with that. Honestly, a
lot of modern day society really gets off at the
struggle of those around them.
Speaker 3 (47:29):
I mean, medieval England ran do a Schadenfreud economy. Essentially.
It was just like, well, I smell like shit, and
even half of my family died from the Black Death.
But at least I eat hot meat.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
Like my life not going so great but still doing
better than Johnny from high school.
Speaker 3 (47:47):
Yeah, look at this asshole still.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
Trying to become a SoundCloud wrapper.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
We should make SoundCloud illegal. He might pop off. His
beats were actually pretty pretty good.
Speaker 1 (47:58):
Listening to his last track, it was actually catchy as hell.
Don't love that.
Speaker 3 (48:03):
I'm gonna go to Parliament and let.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
We need to assassinate chance to the rapper, so SoundCloud
goes under.
Speaker 3 (48:08):
Yeah, we cannot fucking have that at all. But yeah,
that is the story of how Edward the third and
then like the next fucking four leaders of England just
made sure that no one made money and at some
point they're basically trying to keep like fourteen twenty wages
(48:30):
at thirteen fifty levels. Yeah, state planned economy.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
And then my boy Henry five for kno getting the
soft I.
Speaker 3 (48:39):
Know, one man run economies absolute dogshit, but it predates
our modern ideas of economics by quite a bit. And
this one just tickled me in particular because of how
petty it was, like you look too rich, you look
too nice. I need you to smell more like shit.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
Where did the church come into play for this? Oh?
Speaker 3 (49:05):
They got fucked to priests basically were under the same
economic laws.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
Damn.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
So priests had their wages capped, Priests were not allowed
to travel unless without a passport or whatever it was.
Speaker 1 (49:19):
Ever, what was hitting the collection basket?
Speaker 3 (49:22):
What was in the collection basket?
Speaker 1 (49:24):
Just like a trial date?
Speaker 3 (49:28):
Yeah, I know the clergy. Nothing really like interesting happened
with the clergy, Like there was a whole part on that,
but it was basically just like the same shit happened
to them.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
Interesting. Well, I know what I learned to day, Rob,
what'd you learn today? Capitalism is the best system out there.
Speaker 3 (49:43):
I mean this was literally the term didn't exist, but
this was all free market oppression.
Speaker 1 (49:47):
I already knew it though. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's
not perfect, we get it, a lot of drawbacks. Capitalism
still the best, still, the best thing that ever come along.
There ain't a better.
Speaker 3 (50:00):
If you want to try to make a better one,
do it. But let's not do throwbacks.
Speaker 1 (50:05):
Yeah, it's never truly been tried.
Speaker 3 (50:12):
My favorite fact today was that, like just the the
fourteenth century equivalent of a waterman wasn't allowed as gold chain.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
You can't suppress the blue collar worker from putting on
his best Italian silver chain and going out and hitting
the bars.
Speaker 3 (50:38):
It's unnatural.
Speaker 1 (50:40):
You can't do it.
Speaker 3 (50:41):
He just wants one little chain.
Speaker 1 (50:43):
He just wants the peacock.
Speaker 3 (50:44):
I mean the nobles have like the slightest bit. The
nobles have like wrapper chains. Yeah, he just wants a
little baby thin just to wear it, and maybe one
ring to show off how cool he is. He doesn't
want your whole thing. I'm not a gaudy man.
Speaker 1 (51:01):
No, it's simplistic, it's easy.
Speaker 3 (51:06):
But yeah, they shut all down. I also liked that
they very successfully convinced juries to fuck their neighbors.
Speaker 1 (51:13):
You're taken from his pockets, but it's going into yours.
Speaker 3 (51:16):
Yeah. And I think also obviously the like Constables and
Justice of the Piece whatever it was, had some sort
of like traffic ticket quota.
Speaker 1 (51:26):
What's that experiment where they gave people the power at
Stanford prison experiment you had to harm others? Yeah, yeah,
we did that already. Yeah, a lot of times in England.
Speaker 3 (51:36):
A lot of a lot of times. It is like
they rolled over on each other con so they're not
innocent of this, by the way at all either. They
were happy to fuck each other over if it meant
more money in their own pockets.
Speaker 1 (51:49):
We have not really had community this whole time, have we.
Speaker 3 (51:55):
It just goes back to your point. People need people
want to get stuff, you.
Speaker 1 (52:00):
Know what I mean, collect your token.
Speaker 3 (52:02):
People need motivation.
Speaker 1 (52:04):
And if the only motivation on the table is uh
taking Steve's money, so be it.
Speaker 3 (52:10):
Yeah, that's what you gotta do. Who's today's hitler?
Speaker 1 (52:14):
I'm always gonna when I can have the opportunity to
blame Henry six, I will, So I'll just say it
was Henry six and six, Okay, because he gave back
so much of England to the French.
Speaker 3 (52:28):
I kind of yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was another
thing too. One of the motivators of keeping these economic
laws was that they were, ay, there were wars going
on the whole time that they need to pay for.
And B even though higher wages might have been higher
taxes fucking morons B or higher tax revenue I should
say B. Once they started losing the wars, they started
(52:50):
losing even more money and they were like, well, we can't.
We need to keep the money in our pockets.
Speaker 1 (52:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (52:58):
So none of this helped at all.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
Very fitting that you picked this for Labor Day. It
was an accident too, actually happy accident. Yeah, this did start.
I didn't get into it because again, there wasn't like
a ton of super interesting stuff about it. But this
did kick off a lot of unionization amongst the middle class,
like skilled workers like carpenters, blacksmiths, so on and so forth.
So I have a problem with the unions. Blame the English.
Speaker 3 (53:22):
Yeah, weavers, all that stuff. They unionized a lot, and
they would get around the laws by doing stuff, but
it just wasn't interesting. I kind of think my Hitler today,
I kind of think I'm just even gonna go back
to the people who asked Edward the third to do this,
all the assholes who were too lazy or too cheap,
(53:43):
too cheap to play the free market. Not grind, no grind.
Speaker 1 (53:48):
Hm hmm, I want to be handed everything.
Speaker 3 (53:52):
Yeah, all you had to do was pay. And actually,
what's funny is if you increase your wages enough and
took workers from everyone else, now you're even richer because
no one else can even put out any product.
Speaker 1 (54:04):
Yeah, well then.
Speaker 3 (54:06):
You buy their shit, their farms because they got no
one work at them.
Speaker 1 (54:11):
Just poor businessmen all around, bad business all around.
Speaker 3 (54:15):
But yeah, that's all I got for today. That was
how England shot their own economy in the dick after
the Black Death.
Speaker 1 (54:22):
Man, So not the worst thing that happened around that time.
Speaker 3 (54:25):
Second worst thing, Yeah, at least.
Speaker 1 (54:28):
The Black Death being number two.
Speaker 3 (54:29):
Yeah, black death is two.
Speaker 1 (54:32):
Rolling over on your neighbors number one, and.
Speaker 3 (54:34):
Not allowing you know, people to wear gold chains after
their blue collar job.
Speaker 1 (54:40):
Your skill set doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (54:42):
Yeah, you're a farmer forever.
Speaker 1 (54:44):
Fuck you.
Speaker 3 (54:46):
Internal passport would piss me off endlessly.
Speaker 1 (54:50):
I'm just stuck in this like zone.
Speaker 3 (54:52):
Yeah sweet, yeah, fucking awesome, dude. But yeah, that's all
I got for today. Again, we have a Patreon with
a lot more episodes like this and a whole bunch
of other cool stuff.
Speaker 1 (55:01):
Everyone was in hot like house arrest.
Speaker 3 (55:02):
It was just yeah, actually, let me not move. There's
a great line from the start of this article again,
Age of Invention by Anton Howe's uh, there's an old
proverb about I'm quoting it here. There's an old proverb
about England current in the sixteenth century, that it was
hell for horses, a paradise for women, and a purgatory
or prison for servants.
Speaker 1 (55:24):
What did women have it so?
Speaker 3 (55:25):
Well? Yeah, I don't know. It doesn't doesn't sound like
they did, but.
Speaker 1 (55:30):
It's like prossed. Two wadges remained up the roof.
Speaker 3 (55:34):
Yeah, I guess if you're a contractor like that, but
maybe you have to cap your prices.
Speaker 1 (55:41):
Oh dude, like sorry, sorry, mamm, you cannot charge three
shillings for that snatch that.
Speaker 3 (55:49):
Is that is too much. I made half a shilling today.
Speaker 1 (55:52):
Two and a half at most.
Speaker 3 (55:56):
I'll skip the hell and slager voice.
Speaker 1 (55:58):
Yeah, yeah, but yeah. Patreon dot com soa software history,
just did an episode on the Mongols on Friday. Good
Eppy did a voicemail episode. We got plenty of content
on there, you know, three years of evergreen content. At
this point, five dollars get you two episodes a week,
and then we have a twenty dollars tier because we
(56:21):
need money and people have just willingly upped their membership
to twenty bucks, so we felt like we needed to
provide some more stuff.
Speaker 3 (56:30):
We are nothing if not riddled with Catholic guilt. Yeah,
and so we.
Speaker 1 (56:34):
Don't want to be a charity. We're gonna contribute a
bunch of stuff onto the twenty dollars tier as well.
Included a sports show every week.
Speaker 3 (56:41):
So sports show every week and a lot of other
really cool content. We are not taking anything away from
the five dollar tier.
Speaker 1 (56:47):
It's just an additional stuff. It's all additional, so check
it out. Yeah, check it out. But that's all we
got for today. For dan Or Jester, I'm Rob Fox.
You just got saucer.
You.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I'm now listening to soft core History.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
What is up? Welcome back to soft core History. I
am your host for the week, Rob Fox, joined as
always by Dan Regester.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Always a pleasure to host you in my apartment.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
It's good to be in your home. It feels like
a second home now. I was thinking like, if we
ever did this full time, do we just like hang
out here all day?
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Home is where the heart is. Yeah, yeah, I would
probably expand. I'd probably get a bigger spot, second bedroom.
If we did a full time office, I would probably
make a studio, not an office.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Yeah, that'll make more sense rather than do it from
our couch.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
I mean no, we would still do that. We would
need a couch.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
We'd have a couch.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
We have a couch.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
But you know, the room would be the studio. It
wouldn't just be your living room, public.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Area, your open concept living room. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
I can look into your kitchen. Yeah, yeah, it's nice.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
This is a classic. You have that mid twenty tens
industrial apartment. All white, Yeah, all white, open floor plan,
you know the deal. Welcome back to softcore History. Before
we get started, I do want to say we have
a Patreon where you can get a ton of extra
cool stuff Patreon dot com slash softcore History two extra
episodes a week. And then if you're that's five dollars
(01:25):
a month. If you're in the twenty dollars tier, you
get even more content. There's a discord for everyone. The
content ranges from before.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
The Patreon subscribers.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Yes, yeah, yeah, for everyone on the Patreon uh. And
then yeah, you know, you get a bunch of extra
content shows like this, gambling picks from dance sketches, all
kinds of fun stuff patreons, switet check it out. Really
good community there in the discord and in the comments
and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
And it's a vital importance because this is now my
full time job.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
So are you doing forty on it?
Speaker 1 (01:55):
Probably? I don't know, between setting everything up.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Yeah, yeah, so support Dan, support Dan Chester, join the Patreon,
Patreon dot com slash soft core History. How are you
doing today?
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Fantastic. We're recording early. This is going out in the holiday.
This would be out on Labor Day.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Yeah, we're on a Friday today, which I love. Like
I'm just done with work by noon.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Today, I'm going on a vacation that I already planned
and by that. I mean, I'm just driving a big
Bend by yourself with Chase. Oh yeah, my friend Shay.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Yeah, we're watching college football as you watching college football
as I drive doing a little vision quest.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
God damn it.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Psychedelics you fucking do in the desert ayahuasca?
Speaker 3 (02:42):
I will quit this show.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
No, it's mushrooms.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Why the fuck would I do ayahuasca? I don't know,
because because also where would I obtain ayahuasca this ship?
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Again, I don't know where.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
I would need a shaman?
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Yeah you were that.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
I would do it off a finger bone.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Yeah, we're in Austin. I feel like there's a lot
of Ayahwaska connections here.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Again, I'm going to Big Bend.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Yeah, but you can.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
I'm doing mushrooms. It feels like a big eyawasc spot too,
to be not really, No, it feels like a lot
of people maybe an I begain spot.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Oh Jesus even worse. If you did either of this, you're.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Gonna kill the ego. Do some mushrooms in the desert,
figure out what I want to do.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
Have some fun.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yeah, I just have fun.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
That's fine.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Chase's last trip probably.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Yeah, lost my job, my dogs on his way out.
My shoulder toast can't lift for like three months.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Just tragedy after tragedy.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Things are on the way up. Look it up, this
is rock bottom.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
All we need is some mushrooms in the desert.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Figure it out.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
I have faith in you, And especially since you're doing
normal psychedelics and not assholes psychedelics.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
You're only saying that because you just did mushrooms like
this year.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
I would say that even if I hadn't done them,
because that mushrooms don't make you a fucking douchebag.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
No, they can. They can certainly make you unbearable.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
It's fair. Today we have a fun topic. Something I
was kind of like I didn't know anything about, and
it was really really interesting to me. I found this
on I'm gonna give a shout out to the substack
because it is actually like they did. They weren't really
in depth on this, so shout out age of invention
by Anton Howes on Substack for finding all this stuff.
(04:26):
I'm kind of summarizing what he found, so shout out
to him. This is it's a brilliant article. You should
read the whole thing. It's really long. But when people.
It caught my eye because you know, when people think
about like terrible economics and the state running economics terribly obviously,
the first thing that comes to mind always is, and
(04:48):
not wrongfully so communism. You know China USSR that type
of shit, right, horrible state planned economies that just fucking
and suck and literally kill people. Obviously, capitalism not without
Sydney there. We love to talk about the Gilded Age
and factory gears greased by the wheels of orphans or
(05:11):
greased by the blood of orphans.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Or your great great grandfather being in a steel beam.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yeah, part of his bones just being melted into He's part.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Of New York City.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Now, your grandfather literally helped build great great grandfather literally
helped build New York City by dying in the construction
accident and then just being smelted into it.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Really it was a molten steel.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
I like to think when they were building the first
version of the New York Skyline or any city skyline, Well.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Jet fuel can't melt steel beams, but it can melt
your grandfather's body.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Your human bones. Yeah. I just like to think, like
back then, once a week there was a work side
accident that was the equivalent of Arnold Swarzenegger's stepping into
the molten steel and terminator.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Two.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Yeah, that was like a common work side accident. I
think for for the time. Tell my Irish widow that
I love our type of situation.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
The floor manager's just pissed at his incompetence. What a
piece of shit, what a dumb ass? Why?
Speaker 3 (06:09):
I feel like the floor manager will be sent us back,
be angry. But at least it doesn't feel like a
time where he has to do a lot of paperwork
about it.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
No, but you maybe have to stop production for about
ten minutes.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Everything gets slowed down just a little bit.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
We're behind schedule now, God damn Anderson.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Stay in an extra hour for Anderson falling into the lava.
Let this. Let this be a lesson. Alia, don't fall
in the lava or everyone else works like you hurt
the whole team when you fall into the lava.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Selfish. Yeah, absolutely selfish, moved by Anderson, completely fucking selfish.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
But I think and reading this kind of confronts it
to me. I think, when what people really underrate, really underrate,
is how shitty any I guess autocrat is for an economy,
How shitty. It is for one guy to decide as
much shit as possible. Obviously, any one of these people
(07:08):
have you know, advisors and stuff like that, but there's
still one guy that includes kings. And I think the
reason we underrate kings being shitty with the economy is
that we kind of only we kind of only hear
about good kings, right, We kind of only hear about
the Kings that did a good job. And I think
that's because my personal theory on it is because for
(07:30):
a long time, I.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Just don't think that's accurate what hear about awful kings
All the time.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
We hear about the very worst, and we hear about
the very best. But people forget that most of them
were deeply mid. And when you have a deeply mid
leader who gets to run everything.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Yeah, we don't have that's time to cover all these people.
What we don't have that much time to cover all
those people? You know, most of the US presidents, the
general population does not because they just were very average.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Yeah that's fair. Nobody even knows most of the good ones.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Oh, like Polk Polk. The goaded people don't give enough love.
Uh either way, in one term, if you don't agree
with the theory.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
It doesn't matter because today I have an example of
a king doing basically all of the worst shit you
can imagine to an economy to try to fix the economy.
It predates any modern version of the economy of our
economics by like five hundred years.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Did he put all of his money into bitcoin or tulips?
Speaker 3 (08:31):
No or tulips no, no, no, much worse than that.
I can at least respect a gambler, you know what
I mean. Yeah, a guy taking a big swing the
bookles of the world. Yeah, I can respect a guy
just being you know what, we're going all in on this.
It's fine. Now, this guy just basically micro managed the
economy in a way that was specifically designed to fuck
(08:54):
ninety nine percent of the people. So it's thirteen hundreds England.
Edward the Third is the king.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
I've heard of Edward the Third, like a lot of
people have.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
What do you know about Edward the Third?
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Edward the Third is kind of what sets up the
whole story to the War of the Roses.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
Yeah, and he's currently he's fighting in France and stuff
like that, like every English king, I guess at the time.
So Edward the Third has a bit of a crisis
on his hands. The Black Death, so fair enough, the
bobotic plague literally kills half of England's population. This creates
(09:37):
insane inflation because even though half the population died, all
of their money sticks around. So even for poor people
there's a little bit of inheritance, there's the same amount
of money. Now there's half the amount of people to
spend it. Everyone has more money. Prices go crazy. Because
(09:58):
prices go crazy, start demanding higher wages. And since half
the people are dead, there's way less workers, and they
have a shit ton of leverage to demand higher wages.
Where you're gonna find anyone else, everyone's fucking dead. Pay
me more.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
So you're saying plague is actually good for the workforce.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Plag is good for the workers. Yeah, if he kills enough.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
People, you know, everything keeps going up in price. Right now,
what if you know, I'm throwing this out there. We
have another pandemic, a bigger one, a worse one.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
Just to get the economy back on us, just to
get my wages. Uh yeah, nothing's better for the working classes.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
I just don't know if that even happened during COVID,
which is definitely went down.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
It doesn't feel like wages.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
They're stagnant. Yeah yeah, I don't know if anything happened with.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
That didn't kill enough people's problem. No, goddamn Operation War
Speed killing the economy by not killing people the Kung flu.
Yeah yeah, so the richrapist. The working class has all
of the leverage. There's a worker shortage, and they can
basically demand a shit ton of money to do a
job that costs half as much before everyone died. So
(11:15):
in thirteen forty nine, Edward tries to fight inflation by
making it illegal to charge more for goods than before,
and he makes it illegal for workers to demand higher
wages than before. The bubonic plague killed half of the
(11:37):
people in England.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Checkmate, what's up, dude? Sorry, would give you a raise,
but it's illegal.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
Oh so yeah, I can't do it. It can't fucking
do it. He also demanded because workers a lot of
times would be like, all right, you're not gonna pay me.
Fuck it, I'm not gonna work. So he may pass
the law saying every man and woman in England, able bodied,
able bodied, you're working. If you are idle, you're gonna
you're going to jail. Like if you're sitting out, if
(12:06):
you're not actively seeking work or working, you're going to
fucking jail. And anyone lock me up, daddy, Yeah, yeah,
anyone who gives money to beggars, straight to jail, right
to jail. However, there were still there was still a
worker shortage, so the lot it self didn't do much
because employers were like, I'm not gonna make any money
(12:28):
if I don't hire somebody, so bidding wars over peasants,
bidding wars over the lowest class are rampant, and the
working class is making out great. They're making a ton
of money. And not only that, like a worker will
will get a cow and don't get a contract. A
worker will agree to a wage and work for a
(12:50):
couple of days, and then another employer on a farm
or wherever will be like, what are you making? I'll
give you like two shillings more or whatever the fuck
the money was back then, and they're gone three days later.
It's like pure free agency, pure fucking chaos. They can't
keep anyone unless they raised the ways.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
The nil era.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
It is the.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Nil era, yeah, of it is transfer portal nil in
medieval England, and that's what created the middle class.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
It should have, it should have.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
But then the plague just kind of went away, did
it did?
Speaker 3 (13:22):
Eventually loaded the wages. Well, the wages went away before
the plague because the England kept being like, we cannot,
under any circumstances tolerate this shit. So in thirteen fifty
one Parliament, which at this point was run by nobles,
there was a House of Commons, but the nobles were
(13:43):
the bigger, better house, the House of Lords. I think
they made it illegal for workers to leave their own
town and village to find better paid work in other
towns and villages, especially during harvest.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Yeah. Also, Edward the Third, I believe was so Georgie R.
Martin often references the war Roses for Game of Thrones
because that's what's so lousely based off of believe Edward
the Third respected warrior, kind of the Taiwan lanister of
the family. Okay, like the you know headed hancho that
(14:17):
kind of sets everything up for his family. Okay, So yeah,
I think a lot of people know who Edward the Third.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Is fair enough. However, based on everything in here, not
a great king probably got good pr because he could fight, yeah,
and he was fighting the French and all this shit,
but economically fucked his whole country.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Taiwan Lanister, you know, he wasn't the best ruler either.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
He was not. Actually, I think it was like a
theme I was watching or reading something about Game of Thrones,
so they're like, like, I think George Ormart was like
Taiwin Lanister is not like he's ruthless or he's like
sure of himself, but he's like way less competent than
people think he is.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Yeah, he always saves a day, like in battle, but
when he had when he's idle, he's.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
When he's running shit, shit keeps getting fucked up it. Yeah,
so you couldn't shop for jobs anymore, and you had
to lock into contracts. They made it illegal to uh
go day by day or week by week. You had
to lock into like ideally year long contracts, but certainly
like a month at least. And they made it illegal
(15:28):
to hire in private anymore. If you wanted to hire workers,
you had to go to the marketplace so everyone could
hear you offer the wages.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
Yeah, because you're really gonna fuck every other business owner
if you're just shelling out too much.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Right, So someone would be there and be like, oh,
hood lord edgetdn't giving four shilling.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
And then they go to court. You can get sued
for this. You can get in prison for this. Also,
all the workers had to show up to the local
constable office every six month and swear an oath that
they wouldn't make too much money.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
That's tough living right there, you're getting capped.
Speaker 3 (16:05):
I do solemnly swear that we will remain poor forever.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
That I will know my place and I shall not
want more.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
I have a dirty, dirty boy and a dirty boy
I shall remain.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
I was born into this and this is what I deserve.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
I promise I would just eat food and make the
bad men of money, no matter how hungry I am
around any sick children, I have God very good.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Get on.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
It's fine. I will intermit the past.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
I would not eat if I do not have food.
Just fucked. It's just fucked like and it keeps getting
more and more. Fuck this whole thing. By the way,
I'll just say now, this last like sixty years. It
outlives Edward the third Yeah, duh like it. They do
not take these laws away.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
So once you established something, it's really hard to remove.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
Yeah, especially because the employers are like.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
See the Patriot Act, the free market.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
I hate the free market. I hate every goddamn day
having to outbid the asshole on the farm next door.
Fuck this.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Yeah, I don't want to hear anything from England ever again.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
So even though they did pass a law being like
you can't bidding, wars are over all this stuff, there's
a loophole and they found it real quick that really
only applied to wages, bonuses to cash. It applied to cash.
So employers found ways around this, especially the nobles who
(17:48):
were both landowners and business owners who needed to hire people,
but also by din of being a noble, ran the courts. Yeah,
so those guys were basically not abiding by it, or
if they did, they would.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Get these guys off, they would they get the peasants off.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Yeah. They would find ways to do this essentially to
get around it. And one of the main ways was
giving them other.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Shit instead of money. Yeah, here's a ruby the crown jewels.
So this fucked over.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
The poorer farmers, like the middle class farmers fucked.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
By this and just pay people and food, really.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Right, and that's what they did. So the reason they
had to do this was because when the law first passed,
they realized that the workers who are now locked into
dogshit wages weren't working very hard. They were getting about
a third of the work done that they would normally
get because they were like, what, dude, fuck this, I'm
(18:54):
locked into this wage.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Yeah, if you have no incentive.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
But literally zero incentive to do anything, and there's still
a worker shortage, so the guy's not gonna come out
and fire you.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
The biggest problem with any type of communist or socialist
society is just, yeah, you there's a straight up ceiling
on what you can achieve, and humans are just not
meant for that.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
No, wouldn't you're saying that even about like Sweden.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Yeah, even like a socialist society like Sweden is just
there's really no motivation to do anything.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
But they're all comfy.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
But humanity, Yeah, they're comfy, but like humanity is meant
to just kind of constantly be moving, Like we're sharks man.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
We're ants, little ants. We gotta keep picking shit up.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Ant's marching, Yeah, we gotta.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Just it's in our it's in our DNA.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
Dude, I had no idea. Dave Matthew's from South Africa.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah, it's weird.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
I guess I've never heard him talk.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
He sounds like a lunatic.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
And I kind of missed out on the Dave Matthews
a little after your time. Yeah, the whole.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Generation that was my high school era, like the late nineties,
early two thousands, that was Dave.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
People will just tail get the concerts, get fucked up.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
Concerts were fun. I told you, the meanest thing that
ever happened to me was that a Dave Matthew's concert.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
There you go, what rehas you here?
Speaker 3 (20:20):
But it was just like the most egregiously unnecessary small
like not someone can punched me in the face or anything.
But I was just like, why would you say that,
I don't know you is the Dave Matthews concert.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
We can throw on some Dave Matthews right now. I'll
punch you in the face. So then it's only the
second worst thing that's ever happened.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
While Dave Matthews was playing in the background. I'll just
say this, don't wear your Geography B T shirt to
a Dave Matthew's concert or a college kid'll be mean
to you.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
You were a Geography be T shirt.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
It's just a National Geographic on it wasn't like way
I love geography.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Yeah. Uh. I got dunked on my freshman year of
college going to a bar. I went to scoop at
UCF in a dunder Mifflin T shirt.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
And the dick about that.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
The bouncer immediately just went, you're a faggot, Like, what
the fuck? Man, I'm eighteen. I thought the office was cool.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
That's literally what happened to me at the day Matthews
got the same thing. I was just walking and somebody
saw the shirt said that to me. I was like,
what the fuck?
Speaker 1 (21:27):
It's like, that's where you're gonna come into the bar
with a dunder Mifflin T shirt? What the fuck?
Speaker 3 (21:32):
Like it was almost through my night.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
I was just like that, why why ever? Since then,
I just can't watch the Office.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
You go right back to that moment, come straight as hell.
The workers were lazy as fuck, and the nobles had
to find another way to pay them to make them
less lazy, because they were like, fuck all this right,
So the main loophole was giving them food and drink
and stuff like that. What they when they used to
just give them slop and shitty bread made out of
(22:04):
mostly sawdust, I assume. Now they had to provide workers
with high quality wheat bread, freshly cooked meat hot out
of the pot, all right, no more cold salted jerky
or whatever the fuck they were getting, and some delicious ales.
No more, no more dirty brown water. You had to
(22:26):
give them some some beer. Contemporaries people from the time,
like employers and nobles and shit, were like, I fucking
hate these people. They are literally better fed than I am.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
So they're getting a little jealous of the peasant.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
They are getting better fucking food than me. Workers also,
who like went to go work on a farm or whatever,
we're now like, because again there's a huge shortage. They're
now like, hey, you know that like piece of wood
and sack filled with straw you call a fucking pillow
in the boarding house I have to live in. Yeah, no,
(23:04):
I'm gonna need a mattress and a real pillow.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
Now it's almost like seeing your phone carrier offering up
all these sweet deals for new people to sign up,
and you're like, I've been with you for like fifteen years.
They got none of this.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
Yeah, where is my shit? I'm a loyal customers.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Why can I get a free phone?
Speaker 3 (23:21):
You're in the bag, dickhead.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
You sounds abitious.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Yeah, so now they need time to blow up a
cell tower. Now they need nicer beds and pillows too.
They like feather beds and all this shit. But this
is what pisses the rich people off the most by far.
And this is the funniest part. They were also paid
because they the wages were capped in nicer clothing and materials.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Oh no, they had swagged out. They all look dope
as hell, fly as hell.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
They It was described at the time that any like
peasant labor or whatever, they basically all wore.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Gray clothes, just gray shitty. No, they got a pop
color potato sack clothes.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
Now they were giving given nicer clothes, I guess, more
colorful clothes, furs with like shirts with fur trim on.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
It, technic color jackets.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
Servants and laborers became so well dressed that one historian
from the time worried, quote, one person cannot be discerned
from another in splendor of dress or belongings.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
How can we tell who the poores are and keep
them out of our parties? They couldn't tell. They were
getting angry because they couldn't tell who was poor anymore?
They're still I mean, I guess everyone's dirty back then
because they're not really bathing, because it's kind of gay
to bathe back then.
Speaker 3 (24:43):
Yeah. I mean also you assume they opened their mouths
and they're like, oh I've got and you're like, oh, okay,
poor Yeah, yeah, whatever the Cockney was back then. It
was when Cockney probably, but they literally the poor people
were walking around in two nights of clothes and they
were like, I don't know who's poor anymore. This is
a nightmare. It's like a British Larry David, like, I
(25:04):
just want to know who's poor. I don't want to
talk to a poor person. No, I can't tell these
people to tell waste my time with poor people now.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Identity crisis left and right. It's unfortunate for the nobles
of the time.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
And they were also annoyed. Yeah, they're also annoyed that
the people were making money or like looking nicer and
they could then, I guess, resell these things if they
wanted to, so getting more money that way, and it
was making them very uppity.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Yeah, you start to feel yourself look good, feel good,
play good.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
Didn't know their place and the employers were like, and
we can't fucking say anything to them because they'll leave.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
I'll go to a better spot for more pay.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
I just have to eat shit on this and don't
goddamn sick of it.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
What it's time to be alive. I mean, you have
to overcome the Black Death. You have to build up
the immunity to that. But you survive and it's greener pastures.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
Yeah, you're you're If you survive the Black Death, you're
crushing it deservingly.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
So, I mean, what was the kill rate on the
half half?
Speaker 3 (26:09):
It took out half the English population.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
There's a sense of just like I'm immortal.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
Honestly, It's not the worst instinct to have. It's it's
an understandable instinct to have if you survived the Black Death.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
To be like, am I am I God?
Speaker 3 (26:26):
Am I my? The fucking shit like am I? Just
like unkillable.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
They didn't even have to go on a vision quest
and do ayahuasca.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
No, they just had to look around sober and be like, no,
I think I'm God.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
Outlived all their siblings as their dead bodies being carted off, Like,
guess I'm not that weak now, Jerry, am I.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
Who's the bitch. No, So obviously all of this just
leads to more and more enforcement, and all of this
enforcement keeps fucking everyone and it has horrible incentives. One
of my favorite ones is that there was they would
(27:14):
sue people, right, people would get tried and stuff like that. However,
juries and there were juries wouldn't necessarily want to convict
because juries were made up of people from the town
and stuff like that. Juries wouldn't necessarily want to convict
they're the boys.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Yeah, but this is also the direct opposite of a
debtor's prison. Yeah, this is we paid you too much prison, Yeah, exactly,
and so over abundance prison.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
So a lot of times if a worker was seen
as collecting too much wages, they could be taken to court.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Right, This is like when I got paid too much
money by unemployment and they're trying to get their money back.
That's on you, Like, I didn't deposit it into my account.
That's your problem. You are a shitty bookkeeper. That is
not my issue.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
That's how I feel it should be. If a bank
puts too much money into your cut like that, dude,
that's on.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
I'm sorry, Yeah, that's mine.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
Now you're getting your wages going, this is my shit
stuck by dick, Like, I'm not giving this back. You
can't just let me open my app and see that
and then take it away.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Just because I immediately went to the ATM and withdrew
all of it.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
What would you do? It's like again to go back
to Sweden. I think it's like not illegal to try
to escape from prison in Sweden because they're just like
it's normal.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
The dude that shot up and killed like seventy people
in Norway, yeah in twenty eleven. Yeah, Norway, I believe
has a max sentence of a little over twenty years.
So he's coming up. Boy, he's gonna get out of prison.
They're like twenty thirty two.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
There is not a lot of like strong evidence that
the death penalty is a deterrent.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Don't think he's remorseful for Yeah, I'll tell you what.
All those murders.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
And that only being twenty years is like an open
door to do it. Yeah. Yeah, So Jerrys wouldn't want
to indict their friends or indict other workers, so the
government had to give them a little little juice to
get them to roll over on their fellow workers, on
(29:17):
their boys. And that juice was if you were convicted
of getting excess wages, all of your excess wages were
taken and putting into the town coffers and whatever that
went into that cut the taxes for everyone else.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Oh, they're gonna be like they had a fifty to
fifty raffle. Everyone bought tickets, you could go home with half.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
I mean they got to keep money because of it.
So now if you convict enough people, you don't have
to pay taxes for the year.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
I wonder where the fifty to fifty raffles started? Was
it the Chicago Cubs game? We don't know.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
No, I appreciate that because during the like Gilded Age
and the late eighteen hundreds or no even in the
remember we talked about it in the Economy episode about
or just like how shitty it was to live in
the seventeen hundreds, they would raise a lot of money
for like public projects and also like churches and stuff
with fifty to fifty raffles, and like the late sixteen hundreds,
early seventeen hundred.
Speaker 1 (30:18):
When did bingo games start?
Speaker 3 (30:20):
Bingo was nineteen forty one to help fund the war effort,
of course. Yeah, so now jurys were like, hell, fuck,
let's convict the fuck out of these people. Like sorry, dude, sorry, Brandon,
you're going in like you're guilty again.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
You're incentivizing them with more money. So it seems like
the issue all along is cap and people.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
Yeah, capping the wages fucked everything.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
And in order to solve capin the issues that came
with cap'n wages is to then incentivize people with more money,
as if that could have just solved the problem to
begin with, right.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
A bit of a roundabout way. In thirteen fifty two alone,
seven five hundred workers in one area of England, which
was approximately fifteen percent of the entire adult population, were
indicted by juries and forced to hand over their excess wages,
which cut that county's tax bill in over half. So
(31:23):
everyone got their tax bill sliced by like sixty percent.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Damn over taxes back then.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
I don't know, but they had to pay sixty percent
less because they just fucking convicted everyone that got sent
in front of them.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Still less than it is now. Probably, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
I don't know, I don't know what the I have
no idea. I don't even know if the records are
that good for it. Parliament also was like, man, this
isn't this really isn't working, so they made the breaking
the labor laws more harsh, like the punishment or whatever.
Instead of fines and wages being garnished, excess wages being guarne,
(32:00):
you now got fifteen days in the stalks for taking excess.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
Wages getting tomatoes thrown in your face.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
Yeah, actually so the stocks. I didn't realize this the
thing with your head, and that's called the pillory, and
the stalks are on your legs. So you just had
to sit in public for fifteen days with a huge
piece of wood on your legs, not being able to move.
People could still throw tomatoes and stuff at you. I
guess you're not gonna be able to chase them down.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
I'm definitely tossing some vegetables.
Speaker 3 (32:25):
Do you want to go something with a splat or
something with like something hard?
Speaker 1 (32:30):
I think splat is more enjoyable. Throwing like a hard
onion at him or a potato not great.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
Yeah, I actually don't even think they have tomatoes or
potatoes available to them yet they don't.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
But that's not the point, rob.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
Let's just pretend it's actually the seventeen hundreds and you
are you are Patrick mahomesing a pineapple at their face.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
What's the worst fruit or vegetable you could throw out somebody?
Is it a melon?
Speaker 3 (32:58):
I don't know that, I'm on the top. Pineapple? Watermelon
would be pretty mean.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Watermelon might give somebody at least a concussion. Yeah, could
kill someone. You have to throw it fast enough.
Speaker 3 (33:09):
You have to throw it soccer style though, like over
over your head.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Well how else are you gonna throw it under.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
Arm a side hurt like a rugby ball?
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Yeah yeah, just kind of smashing it directly over their head.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
Yeah. I do think to be fair you should have
to drag the foot. Nah.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
No rules when it comes to throwing fruit or vegetables.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
People at the stocks.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Yeah, what would you rather be hit with?
Speaker 3 (33:40):
Would I rather be hit?
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Which?
Speaker 3 (33:42):
Like a tomato? It's not gonna do anything.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
Tomato's fine, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
I just piss you off. Yeah, it would be low
key shitty as an orange, because I don't think that
thing's really splattering, and you can really whip a fucking.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Orange, especially if it has a skin on yeah yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
Or skin on orange is gonna fuck you, low key
fuck you up. One of my favorite things on Jackass ever,
was when they took.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
I would in for the balls. Of course it was
a man.
Speaker 3 (34:06):
For taking his excess wages, right, trying to make money.
Speaker 1 (34:10):
I guess, let's be time correct. Then what what are
we throwing at them? Because it's not oranges? Yeah, I
don't know. It just it's not tomatoes. It's not potatoes.
I guess.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
I think this is probably gonna be the main one, cabbage, radish,
and then they have squashes and cauliflower.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
Okay, had a calliflower.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
Would be fun because I would explode.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
It's good visual.
Speaker 3 (34:33):
It is a good visual. Yeah, you don't get a
fun noise, I think, but it is a good it'll
it'll pop.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Onion sucks the most. I think of all those onions.
Speaker 3 (34:40):
Just throwing a baseball, it's one.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
You hit them right in the temple. It might be
night over, it might be lights out.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
You're just Nolan ryaning someone with a fucking onion. Parliament
was also pissed off because people were still traveling to
work and they were like, this has got the this
has got to goddamn stop. So an employer could have
their run away, their run away free laborer arrested and
(35:14):
returned to them.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
So slave, Yes, so slave.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
And see if this sounds slavy or not. The runaway worker,
when returned, was to be quote burnt in the forehead
with an iron made and formed of the letter F.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
So brand Yeah, they had to be branded on the
forehead with the letter F oh F in the chat?
Is that where that's from? You get branded with an
F F failure? Yeah, okay, it was for falsity.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
You're a liar if you had an F on your forehead.
Speaker 1 (35:47):
Everybody leave an F in the chat for falsity.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
Eventually, Parliament also got wind of all the meal and
clothes stuff and they outlawed the fuck out of that.
They said that no laborers have to eat shitty food
they're poor, feed them like they're poor.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
They got to know their place, yep.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
And they made laws against people who weren't rich wearing
nice clothes. They literally legislated what type of garments laborers
were allowed to wear. They were to wear no manner
of cloth but blanket and russet wool worth under a shilling.
(36:26):
They couldn't wear any girdles. I get so, they couldn't
wear underwear. Oh, they couldn't wear underwear of anything better
than linen.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Why man, what are we doing?
Speaker 3 (36:37):
They were also outlawed from having silks, having buttons on
their clothes.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
God forbid they have a button.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
They couldn't wear rings, garters, ribbons, just sacks.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Yeah, but you said potatoes weren't around, so not a
potato sack.
Speaker 3 (36:54):
It's a cabbage sack.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
It's a cabbage sack. Cabbage sack. Kids.
Speaker 3 (37:01):
Uh, this is going to cut deep with you and
every blue collar Philly worker. No chains?
Speaker 1 (37:06):
What how do you exist? How do you live? How
do you go out in public without a chain? Absolutely?
Zero chains?
Speaker 3 (37:14):
And you couldn't have anything embroidered either.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
That doesn't affect me at all.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
You're wearing something embroidered right now. That Phillies jersey is
literally I'm sorry, that Eagles jersey is literally embroidered.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
Doesn't effect me.
Speaker 3 (37:28):
This caused, among other things, a violent uprising in the
thirteen eighties, but that got put down.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Whatever kept doubling and tripling just uplin down.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
Constantly making it I don't know, like putting band aids
on bullet every bullet wound they caused.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
They would just put another bullet wound where the bullet
wound was just shoot them again, Yeah, until they learned
their lesson.
Speaker 3 (37:55):
Another thing that the employers and the landowners especially found
to be problematic was that, believe it or not, these
poor people wanted upward mobility for their family.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Don't care for the poorest, thinking they can just earn
their way up.
Speaker 3 (38:16):
Right, imagine seeing some poor mud person.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
You have to be born into this, okay, right, this
is not for everybody, not for you. It's not earned,
it's divine, it's given. It's thanks to the heavens God
above is determined, He makes no mistakes.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
One's no one's giving it to you. Essentially, a lot
of like landowners would look at, you know, some shitty
mud family whose dad was working the farm and be like,
oh sweet, he had eight kids and five of them lived.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
Your father was a mud person. His father was a
mud person. With just a bunch of mud people. You
can't get out of it. You're always gonna be a
mud person, Danny.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
That's what you always ah. And there was no there
was no speech giving Like best part of my day
was waiting hoping you don't come out that door. I'll
fucking kill you if you stick around here.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
Get the fuck it.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Was actually the landowners. They're like, I'll fucking kill you
if you don't stick around you. So they see mud
family with five kids, and they're like, dude, all right,
population's coming back. I'm gonna five more mud five people
work in my fucking farm. But the Mud people on
other plans, and they were like, oh, I'm gonna get
some of my sons or whatever internships apprenticeships with like
(39:38):
a blacksmith or a carpenter or whatever. You know, there'll
be a tradesman. They'll be middle class, and then we
can keep moving up, so on and so forth. The
nobles were like, whoa.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
Whoa, what do you think you're doing their palace? That's
my farm boy, get back to the fields.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
No, no, no, no, no, yeah, come on, man, what
I was counting on him?
Speaker 1 (39:59):
You're doing mess with iron.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
It's not what he does. But the blacksmith's kid do that.
So they made it illegal. They made it if you
were born to a you know, farm laborer or whatever,
that's your fucking job.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
Asshole family business.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
Yeah no, no apprenticeships for you.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
Simpler time, a better time. I'd be a waterman right now.
I never I wouldn't have to worry about my future.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
Yeah, you would just be I would be a.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Water treatment operator in Philadelphia.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
Happily changing anything. So anyone who had practiced farming below
the age of twelve, you're locked in. You are completely
locked in. And to continue to make sure that, say,
I don't know, you didn't try to get around it
by sending your kid into London or another town or whatever.
The English government created an internal passport.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
System so they controlled where you could go.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
Yep, sweet and town, I don't know what you call it,
constables or whatever. It was a huge part of their
job to walk around the town. Again. You know, these
people they all know each other, and shit if they
see someone to essentially be like, who do you know here?
Speaker 1 (41:09):
See something? Say something?
Speaker 3 (41:10):
Who do you know here?
Speaker 1 (41:11):
Bro? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (41:12):
It was illegal to be a stranger. Sweet, You had
to have someone lifting, you had to have someone get
in another town vouch for you. It was illegal to
stay with them for more than one night unless you
were sick. And if you didn't have a passport, straight
to jail four indefinitely for as long as they want
(41:33):
until they just figure out what the fuck to do
with you. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
So, and they just killed you.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
They just let you rot basically real quick. Before we
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So they did everything in their power except let the
free market buck when the Black Death happened.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
But capitalism is the problem.
Speaker 3 (43:51):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, so this shit continued for decades,
even after the plague subsided, all the way into fourteen
forty five, Parliament still not happy because England's population, largely
(44:13):
because of this, doesn't recover. It remains stagnant. People can't
afford to have kids, so the worker shortages continue and
they have to keep fighting to make sure that there's
people on the farms and.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Shit, and no, no, a civil war popped up. Yeah,
we gotta lose half these people to battle more. People
keep dying from the civil wars and shit like that.
Also they're fighting France. Agincourt happens during this time period
and stuff like that. Agincourt they rolled, they did rocket
at his court. So our boy Henry the fifth, he's
part of this too. It goes past Edward the third.
Speaker 3 (44:48):
So Timothy Shallomey holds it didn't solve the problem. He
did not solve this problem. He was sweet in Agincourt.
He could fuck some people up, but he was not
great for the economy. So it keeps getting worse even
with all these laws. So Parliament then is just like, okay,
(45:09):
every justice to the peace in every town. You are
now judge dread. We don't even need a jury anymore.
Speaker 1 (45:15):
No, may quick, We got it. Just there's too much.
There's just too much paperwork.
Speaker 3 (45:20):
Just if you see someone, it's all on you can
you can convict them on the spot and just throw
them in jail, take their money. Let's just make this straightforward.
Speaker 1 (45:31):
How did England persevere after this? I don't I don't
get it. How did they become? You know this in
taught this huge empire that takes over the sun never sets.
Speaker 3 (45:44):
Oh, it set them back over one hundred. They had
a hundred year long depression from like the mid thirteen
hundreds to the mid fourteen hundreds. It it fucks the
population for another like hundred years. After that, they only
get back to pre Black death levels at like fifteen hundred,
whereas France and the rest of Europe way past it.
They recover Italy even they recovered quickly, Even Scotland bounced
(46:06):
back faster than England. The population stayed completely low and
the economy was fucked for one hundred and fifty years
because they wouldn't let poor people make the market rate
for their labor or wear nice clothes.
Speaker 1 (46:25):
And the tutors probably didn't help with this. I can't
imagine they seemed to be cut from the cloth of
keep the poor poor.
Speaker 3 (46:33):
Yeah, yeah, the tutor's not super helpful with it. I
think eventually it just like their economy does go off
in the fifteen hundreds, and I think eventually it just
shakes itself out. Because England was a good like economic
engine of an island at the time. They just depressed
themselves for a one hundred and fifty years because the
(46:54):
nobles were like, I'm too lazy to negotiate pay rates.
Speaker 1 (47:00):
These pores just can't be this happy. They're happier than
I am. Now, yeah, there, we can't stand for that.
Speaker 3 (47:06):
I most of my happiness came.
Speaker 1 (47:09):
From looking at how miserable the pores were.
Speaker 3 (47:11):
Like it could always be like the grass is not
greener on the other side for me, ever, and that's awesome.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
And I think we can relate with that. Honestly, a
lot of modern day society really gets off at the
struggle of those around them.
Speaker 3 (47:29):
I mean, medieval England ran do a Schadenfreud economy. Essentially.
It was just like, well, I smell like shit, and
even half of my family died from the Black Death.
But at least I eat hot meat.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
Like my life not going so great but still doing
better than Johnny from high school.
Speaker 3 (47:47):
Yeah, look at this asshole still.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
Trying to become a SoundCloud wrapper.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
We should make SoundCloud illegal. He might pop off. His
beats were actually pretty pretty good.
Speaker 1 (47:58):
Listening to his last track, it was actually catchy as hell.
Don't love that.
Speaker 3 (48:03):
I'm gonna go to Parliament and let.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
We need to assassinate chance to the rapper, so SoundCloud
goes under.
Speaker 3 (48:08):
Yeah, we cannot fucking have that at all. But yeah,
that is the story of how Edward the third and
then like the next fucking four leaders of England just
made sure that no one made money and at some
point they're basically trying to keep like fourteen twenty wages
(48:30):
at thirteen fifty levels. Yeah, state planned economy.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
And then my boy Henry five for kno getting the
soft I.
Speaker 3 (48:39):
Know, one man run economies absolute dogshit, but it predates
our modern ideas of economics by quite a bit. And
this one just tickled me in particular because of how
petty it was, like you look too rich, you look
too nice. I need you to smell more like shit.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
Where did the church come into play for this? Oh?
Speaker 3 (49:05):
They got fucked to priests basically were under the same
economic laws.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
Damn.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
So priests had their wages capped, Priests were not allowed
to travel unless without a passport or whatever it was.
Speaker 1 (49:19):
Ever, what was hitting the collection basket?
Speaker 3 (49:22):
What was in the collection basket?
Speaker 1 (49:24):
Just like a trial date?
Speaker 3 (49:28):
Yeah, I know the clergy. Nothing really like interesting happened
with the clergy, Like there was a whole part on that,
but it was basically just like the same shit happened
to them.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
Interesting. Well, I know what I learned to day, Rob,
what'd you learn today? Capitalism is the best system out there.
Speaker 3 (49:43):
I mean this was literally the term didn't exist, but
this was all free market oppression.
Speaker 1 (49:47):
I already knew it though. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's
not perfect, we get it, a lot of drawbacks. Capitalism
still the best, still, the best thing that ever come along.
There ain't a better.
Speaker 3 (50:00):
If you want to try to make a better one,
do it. But let's not do throwbacks.
Speaker 1 (50:05):
Yeah, it's never truly been tried.
Speaker 3 (50:12):
My favorite fact today was that, like just the the
fourteenth century equivalent of a waterman wasn't allowed as gold chain.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
You can't suppress the blue collar worker from putting on
his best Italian silver chain and going out and hitting
the bars.
Speaker 3 (50:38):
It's unnatural.
Speaker 1 (50:40):
You can't do it.
Speaker 3 (50:41):
He just wants one little chain.
Speaker 1 (50:43):
He just wants the peacock.
Speaker 3 (50:44):
I mean the nobles have like the slightest bit. The
nobles have like wrapper chains. Yeah, he just wants a
little baby thin just to wear it, and maybe one
ring to show off how cool he is. He doesn't
want your whole thing. I'm not a gaudy man.
Speaker 1 (51:01):
No, it's simplistic, it's easy.
Speaker 3 (51:06):
But yeah, they shut all down. I also liked that
they very successfully convinced juries to fuck their neighbors.
Speaker 1 (51:13):
You're taken from his pockets, but it's going into yours.
Speaker 3 (51:16):
Yeah. And I think also obviously the like Constables and
Justice of the Piece whatever it was, had some sort
of like traffic ticket quota.
Speaker 1 (51:26):
What's that experiment where they gave people the power at
Stanford prison experiment you had to harm others? Yeah, yeah,
we did that already. Yeah, a lot of times in England.
Speaker 3 (51:36):
A lot of a lot of times. It is like
they rolled over on each other con so they're not
innocent of this, by the way at all either. They
were happy to fuck each other over if it meant
more money in their own pockets.
Speaker 1 (51:49):
We have not really had community this whole time, have we.
Speaker 3 (51:55):
It just goes back to your point. People need people
want to get stuff, you.
Speaker 1 (52:00):
Know what I mean, collect your token.
Speaker 3 (52:02):
People need motivation.
Speaker 1 (52:04):
And if the only motivation on the table is uh
taking Steve's money, so be it.
Speaker 3 (52:10):
Yeah, that's what you gotta do. Who's today's hitler?
Speaker 1 (52:14):
I'm always gonna when I can have the opportunity to
blame Henry six, I will, So I'll just say it
was Henry six and six, Okay, because he gave back
so much of England to the French.
Speaker 3 (52:28):
I kind of yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was another
thing too. One of the motivators of keeping these economic
laws was that they were, ay, there were wars going
on the whole time that they need to pay for.
And B even though higher wages might have been higher
taxes fucking morons B or higher tax revenue I should
say B. Once they started losing the wars, they started
(52:50):
losing even more money and they were like, well, we can't.
We need to keep the money in our pockets.
Speaker 1 (52:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (52:58):
So none of this helped at all.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
Very fitting that you picked this for Labor Day. It
was an accident too, actually happy accident. Yeah, this did start.
I didn't get into it because again, there wasn't like
a ton of super interesting stuff about it. But this
did kick off a lot of unionization amongst the middle class,
like skilled workers like carpenters, blacksmiths, so on and so forth.
So I have a problem with the unions. Blame the English.
Speaker 3 (53:22):
Yeah, weavers, all that stuff. They unionized a lot, and
they would get around the laws by doing stuff, but
it just wasn't interesting. I kind of think my Hitler today,
I kind of think I'm just even gonna go back
to the people who asked Edward the third to do this,
all the assholes who were too lazy or too cheap,
(53:43):
too cheap to play the free market. Not grind, no grind.
Speaker 1 (53:48):
Hm hmm, I want to be handed everything.
Speaker 3 (53:52):
Yeah, all you had to do was pay. And actually,
what's funny is if you increase your wages enough and
took workers from everyone else, now you're even richer because
no one else can even put out any product.
Speaker 1 (54:04):
Yeah, well then.
Speaker 3 (54:06):
You buy their shit, their farms because they got no
one work at them.
Speaker 1 (54:11):
Just poor businessmen all around, bad business all around.
Speaker 3 (54:15):
But yeah, that's all I got for today. That was
how England shot their own economy in the dick after
the Black Death.
Speaker 1 (54:22):
Man, So not the worst thing that happened around that time.
Speaker 3 (54:25):
Second worst thing, Yeah, at least.
Speaker 1 (54:28):
The Black Death being number two.
Speaker 3 (54:29):
Yeah, black death is two.
Speaker 1 (54:32):
Rolling over on your neighbors number one, and.
Speaker 3 (54:34):
Not allowing you know, people to wear gold chains after
their blue collar job.
Speaker 1 (54:40):
Your skill set doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (54:42):
Yeah, you're a farmer forever.
Speaker 1 (54:44):
Fuck you.
Speaker 3 (54:46):
Internal passport would piss me off endlessly.
Speaker 1 (54:50):
I'm just stuck in this like zone.
Speaker 3 (54:52):
Yeah sweet, yeah, fucking awesome, dude. But yeah, that's all
I got for today. Again, we have a Patreon with
a lot more episodes like this and a whole bunch
of other cool stuff.
Speaker 1 (55:01):
Everyone was in hot like house arrest.
Speaker 3 (55:02):
It was just yeah, actually, let me not move. There's
a great line from the start of this article again,
Age of Invention by Anton Howe's uh, there's an old
proverb about I'm quoting it here. There's an old proverb
about England current in the sixteenth century, that it was
hell for horses, a paradise for women, and a purgatory
or prison for servants.
Speaker 1 (55:24):
What did women have it so?
Speaker 3 (55:25):
Well? Yeah, I don't know. It doesn't doesn't sound like
they did, but.
Speaker 1 (55:30):
It's like prossed. Two wadges remained up the roof.
Speaker 3 (55:34):
Yeah, I guess if you're a contractor like that, but
maybe you have to cap your prices.
Speaker 1 (55:41):
Oh dude, like sorry, sorry, mamm, you cannot charge three
shillings for that snatch that.
Speaker 3 (55:49):
Is that is too much. I made half a shilling today.
Speaker 1 (55:52):
Two and a half at most.
Speaker 3 (55:56):
I'll skip the hell and slager voice.
Speaker 1 (55:58):
Yeah, yeah, but yeah. Patreon dot com soa software history,
just did an episode on the Mongols on Friday. Good
Eppy did a voicemail episode. We got plenty of content
on there, you know, three years of evergreen content. At
this point, five dollars get you two episodes a week,
and then we have a twenty dollars tier because we
(56:21):
need money and people have just willingly upped their membership
to twenty bucks, so we felt like we needed to
provide some more stuff.
Speaker 3 (56:30):
We are nothing if not riddled with Catholic guilt. Yeah,
and so we.
Speaker 1 (56:34):
Don't want to be a charity. We're gonna contribute a
bunch of stuff onto the twenty dollars tier as well.
Included a sports show every week.
Speaker 3 (56:41):
So sports show every week and a lot of other
really cool content. We are not taking anything away from
the five dollar tier.
Speaker 1 (56:47):
It's just an additional stuff. It's all additional, so check
it out. Yeah, check it out. But that's all we
got for today. For dan Or Jester, I'm Rob Fox.
You just got saucer.
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