The Pillars: Jerusalem, Athens, and the Western Mind Death and Dissent: Disasters, Revolts and Wars of the 14th Century
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May 13, 2025 A tour of fourteenth-century calamities: famines, the Black Death, and the demographic collapse that reshaped society. Discussion of broken price and wage controls and the economic chaos that followed. Accounts of peasant revolts, shifting land and labor power, and the rise of parliamentary authority. Military conflicts from the Hundred Years War to Agincourt and Joan of Arc's pivotal role.
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Avoid Price Controls During Acute Supply Crises
- Avoid short-term price and wage controls during supply shocks because they block market adjustments and worsen shortages.
- Rocklin uses Hurricane Sandy gasoline price caps to show how controls deter profitable supply rerouting, producing black markets.
Personal Attempt To Reroute Gasoline After Sandy
- Rabbi Mitchell Rocklin shares his own attempt to reroute truckers to supply gasoline to post-Sandy New York.
- He recounts firsthand involvement in trying to haul cheaper gasoline into the city during price-cap enforcement.
Peasant Revolts Challenged Medieval Class Order
- Peasant revolts like Wat Tyler's Rebellion exposed demands to dismantle class structures even if they failed militarily.
- Rocklin notes rebels aimed for a society without formal classes, threatening medieval aristocratic order in 1381.