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Twas Ever Thus

Entry 2105, on 2021-01-31 at 15:33:50 (Rating 3, Comments)

I listen to a lot of interesting podcasts, and in a recent one I learned about the history of drinking gin in London. Yeah, you can find out about a great variety of different unusual topics in podcasts!

You might think drinking gin is an unusual subject for a blog post, and it is, but the thing that I found interesting were the parallels between the situation in the 18th century and today.

First, the gin craze started because of politics. Dutch king, William of Orange, became the new king of England and wanted to punish the French, so he introduced harsh trade penalties against them, including duties and bans on importing wine and brandy. So an alternative drink was needed and gin seemed he obvious choice.

This sounds similar to the often poorly considered trade bans we see today. What has changed?

And alcohol was important at the time. Most people drank alcohol all day; even young children started the day with weak beer. And that might seem like a really terrible idea, but the quality of water was so bad that it could easily have been healthier to drink beer or gin instead! Maybe the success of the British empire had a bit to do with their alcohol consumption.

Sure, we discourage excessive alcohol consumption today, but there are alternatives the poor might use to escape from their meaningless lives, and to be distracted from more significant matters, such as watching TV, movies, or sport. So, in some ways, little has changed.

There was an additional advantage to the popularity of gin too. Wheat was commonly grown to produce flour to make bread, but between crops of wheat the farmers had to grow barley to allow the land to recover. That isn't a particularly good grain for human consumption, but it is great for making gin!

So there was a parallel there to irrational production of some crops today, such as corn which must be converted to corn syrup and used as a sweetener. If you produce too much of a crop, you have to find a use for it, even if that makes little sense otherwise.

Having a significant fraction of the population mildly to heavily intoxicated most of the time had its bad effects too, of course. People needed money to pay for their habit, and this was especially a problem for women, so prostitution and child neglect were common. Sounds a lot like the situation many drug users find themselves in today. Again, things haven't really changed much.

And it was considered that the lower productivity of the working class was a problem, and even the fact that they had a small element of their life which was enjoyable was viewed negatively by some. The rich, of course, could get as drunk as they wanted, but the poor needed to focus on three things: their lives of drudgery doing all the work, sacrificing their lives in the army, and producing the next generation of poor to continue the effort.

And it's not so different today where most economies rely on a high enough birth rate to keep their financial systems, which are often little more than Ponzi schemes, going.

In fact, after the gin craze had proceeded for a few years the government decided to introduce new laws to limit it. But these were mainly ignored and when enforcement was attempted the people protested, using slogans such as "no gin, no king".

So protests were a thing then, like they are now. And you've got to admit: "no gin, no king" is a pretty catchy phrase; maybe even better than "black lives matter".

So the new laws limiting gin production were cut back considerably, and the message from those in power was very mixed, because there was a certain amount of encouragement for people to indulge in "vices" such as drinking and smoking because of the tax revenue they generated, and having those products loosely controlled by the government meant illegal sources could be reduced.

This sounds very much like prohibition and the war on drugs in more recent times. These laws rarely work very effectively; then or now.

Maybe the most pointed comment in the podcast was this: when one of the experts was asked why the poor were so badly treated and why the laws were so unfair, she replied "'twas ever thus". Sounds like things haven't changed much. You might very well get the same reply now if you asked why the top 1% of society have all the power and money, or why politicians ignore the people who vote for them in preference to corporate donors, or why people can't afford a house when their are more than enough empty. Yes, 'twas ever thus!

Comment 1 (6298) by Jim on 2021-02-02 at 09:52:34:

I know I will regret this but... in previous blog posts you told us you think everything is getting better. Now you say everything stays the same. So which is it?

Comment 2 (6299) by OJB on 2021-02-02 at 10:21:22:

I still think the world is improving, for the reasons I have given in previous blog posts. However, there are still areas where you could suggest there is room for improvement. The issues I mentioned in this post might be inevitable: there might always be some people who use their position in society to dominate others. Life in general for most people is getting better, but it's still far from perfect!

Comment 3 (6300) by Anonymous on 2021-02-02 at 12:36:17:

So to summarise: some things are better; some things are worse, some things are the same...

Comment 4 (6301) by OJB on 2021-02-02 at 16:30:24:

Yeah, sure. Sounds like I'm not really saying much, does it! :)

Comment 5 (6302) by OJB on 2021-02-02 at 16:31:30:

Actually, many things are better, some things are the same, a few (maybe none) are worse. Overall, things are better. Read Steven Pinker's book!

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