(July 19, 2023 at 5:59 pm)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote:(July 19, 2023 at 5:29 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: too prolonged a stable environment discourages progress, periodic instability creates opportunities and demand for progress. Imperialism is both also a natural outcome of a periodically unstable world, and competing imperialism by several powers is one of the key mechanisms that maintains this periodic instability.
I didn't say "static", I said "stable". Being able to KNOW with some certainty that you can go to the market and sell your eggs, knowing that a strange army isn't going to confiscate your livestock, et cetera.
but not being absolutely sure that you will be able to go to the market to sell your produce tomorrow, because some imperial power might come in and push over your carts and seize all your produce focuses your mind on making the kind of innovations required to reduce the chance of that happening
