…or airborne avian flu, or the second cousin of that pesky airborne Reston ebolavirus, or even whatever it was that killed five billion people in Twelve Monkeys — what would blogging the experience be like?
Well, while unpacking the contents of the garage* this past weekend, I ran across this little book:
It’s quite dated (1971, reprinted 1978), but although I know there have been many interesting developments in medieval history and sociology since 1978, the fascinating first-hand accounts reprinted in the book are, at some level, much like contemporary blogs. Here’s one, by a French cleric at the University of Paris writing about the plague of 1348:
…All this year and the next, the mortality of men and women… in Paris and in the kingdom of France, and also, it is said, in other parts of the world, was so great that it was almost impossible to bury the dead….
And this fact was very remarkable. Although there was an abundance of all goods, yet everything was twice as dear, whether it were utensils, victuals, or merchandise, hired helpers or peasants and serfs, except for some hereditary domains which remained abundantly stocked with everything.
–Taken from The Chronicle of Jean de Venette, Jean Birdsall, trans.
This is borne out in other primary sources from England and Italy: despite the surplus of material goods, the main economic aftereffect of the plague was tremendous inflation. The sudden scarcity of food caused prices to rise.  Employees demanded wage increases because of the inflation in food prices. The sudden scarcity of laborers forced employers to give in to these demands.
I’ve seen lots of doom-n-gloom scenarios where inflation is part of the problem causing TEOTWAWKI, but I haven’t run across much discussion of the role inflation might play after TSHTF. Many seem to think we’ll just collapse into a world of barter, but that seems short-sighted to me; in all but the bleakest scenarios, an economy will continue, albeit at a depressed level. I’m no economist, but if history’s our guide, that might very well be an inflationary depression. The Great Depression was deflationary, so this would be an economy outside the modern American experience. Sort of like the late 1970s on steroids, perhaps? Or Germany between the World Wars? Something to think about….
Fun reading, eh? I’m about halfway through this text, and just starting to get into the academic articles. It’s pretty good, so I would recommend it to y’all, but then it’s not worth sixty bucks! I paid ten cents for mine at a thrift store.
Heh. I guess that’s an example of inflation right there. I probably have one of the few copies of this thing left on the planet. Anybody wants it, they’re gonna have to pay.
* Note to non-Californians: in California, garages are used in much the same way that basements are elsewhere in the country — as a very large closet. In my case, it’s a small library that’s in the process of being unpacked.
BTW, no self-respecting Californian parks a car in his or her garage. Cars belong in the driveway, where they can get a tan.