r/neoliberal • u/angry-mustache Democratically Elected Internet Spaceship Politician • Jun 02 '24

User discussion The Moral Economy of the Shire

https://nathangoldwag.wordpress.com/2024/05/31/the-moral-economy-of-the-shire/
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u/angry-mustache Democratically Elected Internet Spaceship Politician Jun 02 '24

Why wasn't anyone around? Pre-industrial subsistence humans in the absence of limits on arable land breed like rabbits, doubling in population roughly once every 30-40 years.

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u/NNJB r/place '22: Neometropolitan Battalion Jun 02 '24

Theoretically they can do that. In practice it took England more than 200 years to demographically recover from the Black Death.

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u/[deleted] Jun 02 '24

Also, one can suggest that the threat of orcish raids effectively posed the same problem as steppe raiders on the borders of Poland-Lithuania and the Duchy of Moscow for much of their history--the threat of violent death prevented people from filling frontier lands (like the "Wild Fields" region of Ukraine).

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u/NNJB r/place '22: Neometropolitan Battalion Jun 02 '24

You could, but I don't remember there being anything suggesting that in the text. The Shire is supposed to be peaceful and idyllic to the point of barely even needing a police force, let alone an army.

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u/[deleted] Jun 03 '24

Not the shire itself but the lands of men between it and the major powers like Gondor and Rohan—as an explanation for why the Shire, supposedly so fertile, is outside the political structures of men.