Most Brutal/Lethal Regime/Institution Ever

[CmdrWilkens]

My points exactly. Every other regime was created by the very people who suffered from it. They did not strive to destroy other cultures like the mingols did.

Still, its interesting to consider that the Mongols didn't strike out for nationalism (they weren't technically a real nation) or simple imperialism. They just wanted some nice things to put in their yurts.

Well that and Genghis Kahn was possibly the most xenophobic person in history. If you weren't a Mongol then you were worthless to him

[CmdrWilkens]

They were paid and given livelihoods. There were small towns that the work camps became. Economic stimulus. Do you apply the same derision toward Franklin D. Roosevelt for arranging his work programs that produced Mount Rushmore? Who cares if it is viewed as useless now. Evidence says they were workers, not slaves, and a lot of people would kill for a fucking job in the world.

We can never see what could have come into being had so much human productivity, time, and money not been wasted on as worthless of a public works program as the pyramids (something that could have actually been consumed and used by someone other than a self-important asshole pharoah, perhaps?). Opportunity cost, my friend. As for Mt. Rushmore, it was nowhere near being a project on the same scale as the worthless pyramids, and it wasn't a selfish extravagance like the pyramids.

The pyramids, and there were many more than 3, were religious temples to help the passage of the god-pharoh into the after life where he would watch over the Egyptian people. In other words it was every bit as mcuh a temple as anything the later Greeks and Romans built, simply on a greater scale.

Furthermore the uselessness of the pyramids as compared with Mt Rushmore is a comparison based solely on your opinion. Frankly neither is of any economic use besides tourism and both are nothing more than overblown tributes to mythological figures in a nation's history. The pyramids, at least, sprung up econoically viable towns whereas Rushmore left nothing but a tourist oupost in the wilderness.

[Illuminatus Primus]

I agree with Wilkens. To treat the use of free workers in building an apparently useless structure as relevent in a discussion about genocide and mass-murder is somewhat out-of-context and extreme. I don't think the pyramids' construction was that harmful to the people. Especially since they were not slaves.

[David]

http://uses.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm


You might consider this when thinking about how much damage has been done. This is only for the 20th Century though.

[Sea Skimmer]

They were paid and given livelihoods. There were small towns that the work camps became. Economic stimulus. Do you apply the same derision toward Franklin D. Roosevelt for arranging his work programs that produced Mount Rushmore? Who cares if it is viewed as useless now. Evidence says they were workers, not slaves, and a lot of people would kill for a fucking job in the world.

We can never see what could have come into being had so much human productivity, time, and money not been wasted on as worthless of a public works program as the pyramids (something that could have actually been consumed and used by someone other than a self-important asshole pharoah, perhaps?). Opportunity cost, my friend. As for Mt. Rushmore, it was nowhere near being a project on the same scale as the worthless pyramids, and it wasn't a selfish extravagance like the pyramids.

The pyramids, and there were many more than 3, were religious temples to help the passage of the god-pharoh into the after life where he would watch over the Egyptian people. In other words it was every bit as mcuh a temple as anything the later Greeks and Romans built, simply on a greater scale.

Furthermore the uselessness of the pyramids as compared with Mt Rushmore is a comparison based solely on your opinion. Frankly neither is of any economic use besides tourism and both are nothing more than overblown tributes to mythological figures in a nation's history. The pyramids, at least, sprung up econoically viable towns whereas Rushmore left nothing but a tourist oupost in the wilderness.

Rushmore however used up only a tiny fraction of the US national resources. The Pyramids used up a much greater percentage.

[Illuminatus Primus]

It's still ludicrious to bring it up as if it is relevent to the mass execution and extermination of peoples. The Pyramids' construction may be viewed as stupid from our enlightened 21st Century minds, but who really cares? They weren't slaves, and they performed a job. Better then working at the Aztec Temple....

[David]

It's still ludicrious to bring it up as if it is relevent to the mass execution and extermination of peoples. The Pyramids' construction may be viewed as stupid from our enlightened 21st Century minds, but who really cares? They weren't slaves, and they performed a job. Better then working at the Aztec Temple....

You got something against human sacrifice?

[Joe]

They were paid and given livelihoods. There were small towns that the work camps became. Economic stimulus. Do you apply the same derision toward Franklin D. Roosevelt for arranging his work programs that produced Mount Rushmore? Who cares if it is viewed as useless now. Evidence says they were workers, not slaves, and a lot of people would kill for a fucking job in the world.

We can never see what could have come into being had so much human productivity, time, and money not been wasted on as worthless of a public works program as the pyramids (something that could have actually been consumed and used by someone other than a self-important asshole pharoah, perhaps?). Opportunity cost, my friend. As for Mt. Rushmore, it was nowhere near being a project on the same scale as the worthless pyramids, and it wasn't a selfish extravagance like the pyramids.

The pyramids, and there were many more than 3, were religious temples to help the passage of the god-pharoh into the after life where he would watch over the Egyptian people. In other words it was every bit as mcuh a temple as anything the later Greeks and Romans built, simply on a greater scale.

So the Greeks and the Romans built comparable structures; does that make them any less useless?

Furthermore the uselessness of the pyramids as compared with Mt Rushmore is a comparison based solely on your opinion. Frankly neither is of any economic use besides tourism and both are nothing more than overblown tributes to mythological figures in a nation's history. The pyramids, at least, sprung up econoically viable towns whereas Rushmore left nothing but a tourist oupost in the wilderness.

I did NOT say that the pyramids were less useful than Mt. Rushmore; I merely said that Mt. Rushmore was not a selfish self-tribute that took up a probably significant portion of the economy to create like the pyramids were.

And it's easy to say that the pyramids gave people jobs and caused economically viable towns to spring up, but that's a half-truth because it fails to acknowledge the enormous opportunity cost that surely existed because of the pyramids.

[Joe]

I agree with Wilkens. To treat the use of free workers in building an apparently useless structure as relevent in a discussion about genocide and mass-murder is somewhat out-of-context and extreme. I don't think the pyramids' construction was that harmful to the people. Especially since they were not slaves.

I wasn't really bringing it into that particular discussion; it just sort of entered the thread as a side note due to Wong's comment. And YES, the pyramids were ultimately more harmful than beneficial to the people of Egypt, because they took a huge chunk of the economy to produce huge, majestic, incredible structures that were of no use to anyone other than the ruler, thus denying other, more useful goods the channel to come into being. One thing is for sure; any right-thinking country with a market economy would never produce a pyramid, because market economies actually produce goods and services that people want to consume. I doubt even the Soviet Union would have produced something of such little use to everyone.

As for the issue of slavery; yes, there is recent evidence that suggests the Egyptians may not have been slaves, since they appear to have had fairly good living conditions. Of course, I don't think that's ample evidence to dismiss the slavery theory (which Egyptian history would probably confirm; personal freedom was not highly valued in Egyptian society), because it has been a fairly common practice for slaveholders to take good care of their slaves so as to maximize their working potential. But I am no Egyptologist, so I would not dare enter any serious debate on this matter.