William neidinger ancient greece lecture 1

He points out that their construction techniques saved them from the typical challenges of natural disasters such as earthquakes and were highly functional in their day to day life. One of the most striking aspects of the Minoan civilization was their artwork, as the documentary illustrates. Neidinger provides thorough coverage of the art forms prevalent in ancient Minoa.

He engages audiences by highlighting the inspiration for their art was their environment and how their religious beliefs shaped their artistic output.

William neidinger ancient greece lecture 1

The film features examples of pottery, jewelry, frescoes, and sculptures, showcasing the mastery that the Minoans possessed in these art forms. Lastly, the movie discusses the decline of the Minoan civilization. Neidinger outlines the myriad causes that ultimately lead to the civilization's downfall. One of the significant causes was the earthquake and subsequent resulting destruction of the island.

Search the history of over billion web pages on the Internet. Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future. Uploaded by station Hamburger icon An icon used to represent a menu that can be toggled by interacting with this icon. Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book.

Texts Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Audio Software icon An illustration of a 3. Software Images icon An illustration of two photographs. Therein we find the difference between failure and success. A competent government is generally able to assess what it needs in wartime; it knows how to provision its soldiers.

Provisioning its armed forces in war is one of the truly legitimate affairs of a government; it should know what its soldiers need. But no government has ever proved able to assess what its citizens need or want in peacetime. No financial wizard, no computer model has been found that is able to calculate the present and future needs and desires of an entire nation.

The most any government can do is to dictate what it is willing to offer its people out of the public purse. Another was European mercantilism, the alliance between government and business that dictated what goods could be sold from where and by whom. Another form of a state-controlled economy is socialism. But by whatever william neidinger ancient greece lecture 1 it operates under, a state-controlled economy can do no other than dictate what will be provided for its citizens.

And the fathers of European socialism realized this. Of course it is never publicly phrased as such. Rather, the government benevolently assures us that it can provide for our security against the vagaries, cruelties, and misfortunes of life if only we bestow upon them the power to decide for us: our liberty in exchange for security.

Consider next what might have been our present situation had we left the prediction of our needs and desires to state planners. What government was it that invented the automobile? Which administration made available the personal computer? What politician discovered the means of electrifying our homes? Whence radio and television? The point is that most of recent innovation did not flow from government but from the ingenuity of the private sector.

To consign to government the satisfaction of our needs and desires in a state-controlled economy is the Raw Deal. The state first proclaims its superiority over us; it claims to know better than we do what we want and need. Then it drains away our freedom. It is not, however, some sort of apocalyptic seizure of power with drum rolls and trombones.

It is more like the manner in which a yak is bled to death. To watch a yak die is a numbing and frightening experience. Given the scarcity of nutritional resources in the Himalayas, little is wasted of the animal. Once tied down, the yak is calmed, and slowly a bamboo tube is inserted into a major vessel to drain the blood into a container.

The poor yak now is too feeble to know what is happening to it; and too weak to move, it is finally dispatched and slaughtered — still with no waste of a drop of blood or a gram of flesh, nor viscera, horns or hooves. I propose the yak as the mascot of the populace that trades its liberty for security. Having made the trade of freedom for security, slowly one responsibility after the next is drained away: educating our children, preparing for our future, saving for a rainy day, caring for our family, arranging for our own health care, training ourselves to confront future upheavals, comforting our elders, serving our community.

We begin our stroll down the road to serfdom F. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom. The Raw Deal of liberty for security is always sugar-coated. A honey-tongued demagogue will come not threatening and intimidating, but preaching in righteous tones of charity, helping the most vulnerable amongst us, lifting the down-trodden, and creating the perfect society.

How often throughout history have tyrants sweet-talked their way into power! Individual lectures entitled "Why Did Rome Fall? Socrates was one of the first to issue this lament. Having both heard and used the admonition, I can appreciate it from both sides of the bullhorn. As hackneyed as the phrase may be, within lies a significant truth.

It may not be true that every single generation has lived better than the generation which preceded it; there are setbacks: barbarian invasions, Dark Ages, bubonic plague, civil war, and the vast array of natural disasters which Mother Nature visits upon us with great regularity. But in the main, for the past three centuries in the West there has been an astounding and steady increase in what we can loosely call progress and prosperity.

As an impoverished undergrad living in a south Bronx slum, I was well nigh flummoxed when a history professor informed our class that the poor of today enjoy benefits that the rich of yesteryear could hardly have imagined. He went on to enumerate: electricity; clean water; indoor plumbing; artificial heating and cooling; radio and TV; rapid transportation on land, water, and sky; freedom from a plethora of diseases at one time common and often fatal.

His list seemed interminable. And all that before laptops, iPods, and the Internet. So, when students, politicians, crusaders of various ilks, and NGO types urge us to return to the ways of our forefathers, to recapture a simpler way of life, to jettison the trappings of our materialistic modern culture, I feel like asking them which disease they want returned, how deep should we dig our own crapper, or how far did they walk to attend that conference where they could pontificate on the virtues of the simple life.

The rapid progress and increased prosperity in the West is undeniable; we can leave the debate on spiritual progress whatever that might mean for the theology class or the bar. But certain questions about progress and prosperity need to be asked and possibly answered. First, is not rapid progress and increased prosperity the historical norm? The norm.

Slowly one improvement builds upon another. Despite differences in weaponry, Thothmoses III 15th c. BC and Andrew Jackson both had to move their troops the same ways: by foot, on the backs of beasts, or with sail- or oar-propelled boats. Half a century after the War ofthe railroad and steamboat were in use. A century after the same war, warriors were in the air, under the sea, and racing across the land in machines powered by internal combustion engines.

Sometimes even slow progress was not the norm. A widely repeated and fairly reliable story about the construction of the Flavian Amphitheater the Colosseum illustrates the point. Vespasian reg. It is said that an army engineer came to Vespasian with an invention that could do the work of a dozen men. Vespasian, eager to see the machine, asked for a demonstration.

He argued that the machine would have put thousands out of work. The Romans knew the mechanics behind and even devised wind and water mills, but slaves were a cheaper source of energy. Hence, these inventions went nowhere until slaves became scarce in Europe in the Middle Ages. Many speculate that the ancient Egyptians probably also understood all the principles behind levers, fulcrums, pulleys, and transmission of power; but men and beasts being plentiful, these principles were never applied in their brilliant architectural projects.

In these cases progress was intentionally retarded because of the preferability of full employment on the cheap. The examples of Rome and Egypt actually indicate a deep understanding of the full consequences of progress and prosperity. Technological innovation has a number of easily discernable consequences. It often improves the quality of a product.

It drives the cost of a product down. But since innovation improves production efficiency, it can, thereby, reduce the number of people needed to do a job. Since the Middle Ages, innovations in agriculture have made it possible to do more on the william neidinger ancient greece lecture 1 with fewer people. The surplus unemployed rural labor fled to the cities.

Since the late s the beginning of the Industrial Revolution innovations in manufacturing have made it possible to produce more in the factory with fewer people. Those laid off have to find jobs elsewhere. The complaint of the unions is that once a manufacturing job is lost, the unemployed end up in the service industries. As I type this article on a laptop, I wonder what happened to all the workers employed in typewriter factories, as well as the makers of white-out and typewriter ribbons, and the typewriter repairmen and salesmen.

Should the computer revolution have been stalled to protect these jobs? Should any new industry be shackled for the benefit of an old technology? Few wish to return to typewriters or long hand, for that matter. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracythere are some that get washed up and stranded. What to do with them? It is easier to say what not to do with them.

Do not make them wards of the state. The most damaging thing to do to someone who is physically or mentally capable of employment is to create a scenario in which that person survives as an infantile dependent. CCT programs pay only upon verification that parents are sending their children to school, visiting the clinic, working, and so forth.

Unconditional dole pay-outs, however, have a way of rotting the spirit. Such a spiritual rot has a way of spreading throughout the body politic. By the fifth century AD Germans were being enlisted in the Roman legions to defend the Empire against other Germans and Hunsthe Romans themselves having lost interest in soldiering. And the imperial government came to make many decisions that were formerly regarded as being personal matters: certain trades were made hereditary; the ability to pick up and move was restricted; levels were set for prices and wages; and, finally, certain religious beliefs were declared heretic and the appropriate punishments set.

The Romans traded in their liberty for personal security — the imperial government now took care of them in exchange. An Empire of infantile dependents? Quo vadis, America? A denarius for those thoughts! The task of government is to govern. Its fundamental duties are: to defend its citizens, to adjudicate cases amongst its citizens, to represent its citizens in dealings with foreign entities.

In a democracy, the citizens determine who are its enemies, what its laws and rights are to be, with whom they want to deal. To protect a venue for our pursuit of happiness is nice, but historically rare. A government requires money to function. In a democracy the citizens determine how they wish to tax themselves. In non-democratic regimes professional politicians make these decisions for the citizens.

When a government moves beyond its basic responsibilities, it does so at its own peril — or that of its citizens. That is not to say that governments should not venture into other fields when appropriate. The transcontinental railroad here in the USA would not have been possible, at the time, without federal assistance. Likewise, for better or worse, the splitting of the atom.

Or the moon landing. Or the freeing of the slaves. But there are certain activities where governments have traditionally fielded dismal records. Venturing further afield often invites disaster. For example, when the Roman government attempted to stop inflation with the Edict of Wages and Prices ADit brought an already exhausted economy to its knees.

Another economic activity into which governments have historically dipped their fingers is job creation. Aside from altruistic concerns for its citizens, government is usually motivated to job creation by one of three deeper desires: to stimulate the economy to create more tax revenue; to keep people occupied and not politically volatile; or to keep people fed and not hungry and even more volatile.

Governments have only three ways of stimulating job creation. Two are quick and easy, with glamorous short-term results but disastrous long-term consequences. The third is slow and hard, but ultimately more productive. The easiest way for a government to create jobs is to hire people to do government jobs. Since governments need people to man the posts, this sounds like a no-brainer.

There are, however, certain hazards. The pages of the history of ancient Rome are littered with the futile attempts of emperors to subdue this beast. Likewise, the history of twentieth century America. And since governments rarely are able to produce wealth on their own, they must acquire it elsewhere to feed the beast. Short of stealing it in war from its neighbors, that leaves taxing its citizens.

So, for each job created in the government, money must be taken from one citizen to pay another. Up to a certain point this is necessary. Historically, this is another favorite. The pyramids of Egypt were perhaps the most colossal of all make-works projects. To keep the people occupied during Nile flood time, the pharaohs, it is believed, hired the sweating hordes to build the monuments.

In similar fashion the emperor Vespasian reg. And the beautiful temples and theaters of the Greeks across the Mediterranean were, for the most part, government financed. FDR employed some 8 million over the life of the WPA doing everything from archaeology to bridge building, photography, painting, sculpture, and parks creation. Untold numbers must have been employed in public works projects over the ages and were paid and fed.

We today have certainly enjoyed the aesthetic benefits of these ancient and modern projects. But others had to pay the price. There are other problems with government make-work projects, besides the matter of paying one citizen out of the pocket of another. Many of these projects have been, throughout history, low skill jobs. Granted, low skill jobs are always going to be necessary in every society, but many of the public works projects of the past offered no opportunity for skills acquisition.