WHY DON’T MODERNS BUILD MONUMENTS —“..ancient societies spent ~5-20% of their

WHY DON’T MODERNS BUILD MONUMENTS
—“..ancient societies spent ~5-20% of their GDP on monumental buildings. Why did they spend so much compared to us on such things?”—@robinhanson

I’ve worked on this issue for a number of years. First, it’s surprising just how extraordinary are the very long term returns on production of monuments. Second, it’s rather easy to understand the incentives, in particular the difficulty in otherwise investing surplus production under agrarianism’s perishability of surpluses. Third They function as a massive redistribution program producing loyalty and legitimacy. Fourth, the institutional legitimacy produced: same as gods, they abstract and depersonalize loyalty in-time to over-time). Fifth, they are a status symbol that is very difficult to compete with, which in turn produces legitimacy in every dimension from human aesthetic and spiritual identification of ‘resources’ to pride and unification of the polity, to trade to tourism (pilgrimage), to war. ‘Wonder’ (the presence of resources) that makes humans feel small (submission to power) is effectively a calming effect (sedative) against anxiety.

Now, (a) once we have democracy and politicians who must serve the voters (b) voters can extract the capital for their own consumption instead of concentrating it in long term indirect returns.

Aristocracy produces art. Democracy does not.

Cheers
CD

Reply addressees: @Hail__To_You @robinhanson