A light history story

Tuesday, November 18, 2025

Goguryeo Army vs Roman Army – Who Would Win?

An Imaginary Matchup to Read East–West Military Civilizations

If you hang around online history forums long enough, you’ll see this question pop up over and over:

“If the Goguryeo army fought the Roman army, who would win?”

Goguryeo was the military powerhouse of Northeast Asia that held out against Sui and Tang.
Rome was the giant empire wrapped around the entire Mediterranean.

It’s the kind of matchup where fandom divides instantly:

“Goguryeo had more cavalry, so they’d steamroll Rome,” vs
“Roman legionaries would just cut them to pieces.”

And the debate usually degenerates into pure emotion.

In this piece, instead of crowning a winner outright, we’ll ask:

Under what conditions and which time periods is it even fair to compare them?
How far can we reconstruct army size, troop types, tactics, and command systems from the sources?
And what does this comparison tell us about the actual level of ancient Eastern and Western civilizations?

Let’s walk through it calmly.

1. First, Sync the Timelines

Goguryeo and Rome aren’t really “exact contemporaries” in the strict sense.

Goguryeo’s heyday

Roughly 4th–6th century CE, around the reigns of Gwanggaeto, Jangsu, and Yeongyang.

Militarily, Goguryeo is most famous for its wars against Sui and Tang in the 6th–7th centuries. (Wikipedia)

Rome’s heyday

Late Republic to early Empire (roughly 2nd century BCE to 2nd century CE).

Especially under Trajan–Severus, the empire fielded about 28–33 legions,
and with auxiliaries, some 400–450,000 standing troops. (Wikipedia)

By the time Goguryeo was fighting Sui and Tang in the 7th century,
“Rome” in the West was already in its Eastern Roman / Byzantine phase.

So most historians don’t compare “Goguryeo vs Rome” directly, but rather:

Goguryeo ↔ Sui–Tang, and
Rome ↔ Han / Later Han,

matching them with their primary regional rivals. (scholarsarchive.byu.edu)

Here, we’ll allow ourselves one controlled fantasy:

Compare the respective peak capabilities of each side.

2. Population and Mobilization – The Reality of Numbers

Goguryeo’s mobilization capacity

If you combine the Samguk Sagi, Chinese histories, and modern scholarship,
Goguryeo at full mobilization is usually estimated at up to ~300,000 troops. (Wikipedia)

Recent research puts Goguryeo’s population roughly in the 2–3 million range. (De Gruyter / Brill)

So a realistic upper bound might be:

“A military state with around three million people
that could, in a crisis, drag close to 300,000 into the field.”

Rome’s mobilization capacity

At its peak, the Roman Empire’s population is estimated at 50 million+. (Wikipedia)

End of Augustus’ reign: c. 250,000 standing troops (legionaries + auxiliaries). (Wikipedia)
Under Septimius Severus (c. 211 CE):
33 legions + over 400 auxiliary units = around 450,000 standing troops. (Wikipedia)

In sheer population and permanent military manpower,
Rome absolutely dwarfs Goguryeo.

So those DC-style claims like “Goguryeo 400k vs Rome 350k, similar numbers”
don’t line up with current scholarship.

That said, it is true that Goguryeo showed an unusually high mobilization rate
for its population size—classic behavior for a small frontier state
forced to face giant empires head-on.

3. Troop Types and Equipment – What Did They Actually Fight With?

3-1. Goguryeo’s forces

Direct written descriptions of Goguryeo’s army are scarce,
but murals, archaeological remains, and Chinese accounts allow us to reconstruct roughly:

(Wikipedia; art-and-archaeology.com)

Heavy cavalry (armored horsemen)

Horse and rider covered in lamellar armor—essentially cataphract style.
Armed with long lances, ring-pommel swords, and shields.
Elite shock troops designed to punch holes in enemy lines.

Horse archers

Mounted archers firing from the saddle.
Goguryeo / Maek composite bows were famous for high draw weight and penetration.

Infantry (heavy and light)

Lamellar or scale armor, armed with spears, shields, axes, etc.
Used for fort defense, choke points, siege work (assault and defense), and as support in field battles.

Specialized siege and defense units

Troops trained to carry ladders, scale walls, handle siege engines, and so on. (Wikipedia)

Strengths:

High proportion of heavy cavalry and horse archers.
Excellent use of mountain fortresses and terrain,
especially in defensive battles and attritional warfare. (Wikipedia)

3-2. The Roman army

The Roman army changes structure over time,
but a typical early imperial (Principate) setup looks like this: (Wikipedia)

Legionaries

Heavy infantry. Armed with scutum (large rectangular shield), gladius (short sword), and pila (heavy javelins).
Each legion: roughly 4,800–5,500 men, forming the core combat block.

Auxilia (auxiliaries)

Non-citizen troops from the provinces.
Provided more than half of the empire’s total manpower.
Included most of the cavalry, archers, and special units. (Wikipedia)

Cavalry (ala, cohors equitata)

Many recruited from traditional horse cultures: Gauls, Germans, Numidians, etc.
Mixed heavy and light cavalry using lances, javelins, swords, and sometimes bows. (Wikipedia)

Archers (sagittarii)

Often from Eastern regions such as Crete, Syria, and Palmyra.
Deployed throughout Roman forces as dedicated archer units. (Roman Army Museum)

Strengths:

A thick, disciplined heavy infantry line of legionaries,
Combined with cavalry, archers, and slingers arranged around them in a fairly standardized combined-arms system.

So the online cliché, “Romans had no cavalry and couldn’t use bows,”
is based on overextending a few early Republican examples.
By the imperial period, Rome was actively using allied cavalry and archers through the auxilia. (Wikipedia)

4. Tactics and Command – How Systematic Were They?

4-1. Goguryeo command and tactics

We lack detailed organizational charts for Goguryeo,
but Chinese sources and modern research point to a few key traits. (Wikipedia)

Five-division (五部) structure + regional forces

About 12,500 elite cavalry as the capital guard.
Multiple regional forces of 20–30,000 stationed in key areas.

Large-scale royal hunts doubled as military exercises,
training soldiers’ riding and archery skills.

Strategically, Goguryeo excelled at:

Using fortresses, rivers, and mountain passes for delay and chokepoint defense,
Employing cavalry and archers for feigned retreats, ambushes, and counter-encirclement.

Famous examples include the Battle of Salsu and
multiple campaigns where Goguryeo wore down massive Sui/Tang armies
and then smashed them. (Wikipedia)

Some scholars, however, argue that because units were organized more by weapon type or troop kind,
it may have been harder for a single formation to execute fully integrated combined-arms tactics. (Wikipedia)

4-2. Roman command and tactics

Rome is famous for its small-unit command structure and standardized training. (Wikipedia)

Centuries and cohorts

The basic building block was the century (about 80–160 men),
led by a seasoned centurion.
Six centuries formed a cohort,
and ten cohorts formed a legion.

Because each century trained together with its own officers over long periods,
Roman units could repeatedly execute quite complex battlefield maneuvers.

Under capable commanders (Caesar, Trajan, etc.), Roman armies could pull off:

Double-envelopment maneuvers like Cannae,
Feigned retreats, night attacks,
Sophisticated siege warfare and river crossings. (scholarsarchive.byu.edu)

We don’t have enough detail to run a fine-grained “century vs Goguryeo unit” matchup,
but purely in terms of documented layered command structure and standardization,
the Roman side is more fully reconstructed—and that almost certainly reflects a highly organized training system.

5. “If They Actually Fought?” – A Thought Experiment

From a historian’s standpoint, forcing two states that never met onto the same battlefield
is asking for trouble. But as a thought experiment, it’s fun.

Let’s assume a neutral plain, and equal numbers—say 50,000 on each side.

Conditions favoring Goguryeo

A wide plain with gentle rolling hills,

where heavy cavalry and horse archers can swing around the flanks and rear,
probing and harassing the Roman line.

Rome might be caught off guard at first by:

Eastern-style mobile warfare,
Constant harassment, feints, and “Parthian shot”–style backward archery.

As in the wars against Sui and Tang,
Goguryeo hitting supply lines, luring the enemy toward mountain fortresses,
and then counterattacking could be extremely dangerous for Rome. (Wikipedia)

Conditions favoring Rome

A narrower, more constrained plain

where large flanking moves are difficult,
and Roman heavy infantry and siege equipment can do their work.

If Rome has time to:

Adapt its allied cavalry and archers to Goguryeo-style warfare,
Build up defenses with fieldworks, stakes, shield walls, and layered formations,

then the shock power of Goguryeo heavy cavalry is greatly reduced. (Wikipedia)

If the fight turns into a prolonged siege campaign where Roman engineering shines,
defending Goguryeo fortresses frontally could become nightmarishly hard. (Wikipedia)

In the end, who wins depends entirely on:

Terrain,
Logistics,
Intelligence,
And above all, the quality of commanders.

No serious scholar today claims, “Side A is definitely superior to Side B in all respects.”

6. What This Comparison Actually Tells Us About East–West Civilizations

The biggest trap in “Goguryeo vs Rome” threads is how fast they slide into:

Inferiority complex, or
Blind nationalism.

“Eastern strategy is sophisticated; Western warfare was just thuggish brawling.”

“Rome was on a totally different level; East Asia lagged across the board.”

Both are heavy overstatements given current research.

In modern comparative history, scholars usually focus on “Han vs Rome” and conclude roughly this: (scholarsarchive.byu.edu)

Military and administration

Rome: decentralized provincial governance, flexible legion system,
strong bond between citizenship and military service.
Han / Goguryeo sphere: bureaucratic document culture, counties-commanderies + army integrated,
excellent at large-scale mobilization and frontier defense.

Technology and economy

Rome: roads, aqueducts, concrete, glass, iron smelting—
exceptional civil engineering and urban infrastructure. (Reddit)
East Asia: iron agricultural tools, irrigation and flood control, paper, advanced fortification methods—
high agricultural productivity and a state built around administration.

War culture

East Asia: treatises like The Art of War, a massive military-text tradition,
and a view of war as an extension of political technique. (Taylor & Francis Online)
Rome: practical experience converted into training manuals, engineering,
and a legal/organizational culture around the legions.

So rather than one side being “universally superior,”
we’re looking at two highly developed civilizations that optimized in different directions.

Goguryeo, within this East Asian military world, was:

Not “a random small border kingdom of China,”
But a state with its own fairly sophisticated military and administrative system,
And a tough frontier power that held out for a long time
against the Sui and Tang “superpowers” to its south. (Wikipedia)

7. How to Enjoy the “Goguryeo vs Rome” Debate Productively

To sum up:

On raw numbers

In population and standing armies, Rome is much larger.
Goguryeo is a high-mobilization military state relative to its population size.

On troop types and weapons

Goguryeo: strong in heavy cavalry, horse archers, and fortress defense in rough terrain.
Rome: strong in heavy infantry and standardized combined arms with auxiliaries; excellent at siege/engineering.

On tactics and command

Goguryeo: fewer records, but clearly very capable at terrain use, mobile warfare, and fortress warfare.
Rome: multi-layered command and training so systematic that we still have the details.

On “civilization levels”

Current scholarship leans much more toward:

“They developed in different, equally sophisticated ways”

than toward:

“X was definitely above Y in every respect.”

So the best way to enjoy “Goguryeo vs Rome” isn’t to boost one side and trash the other.

It’s to ask:

“Where does Goguryeo really sit on the global ancient-civilization map?”

and try to see that position in 3D.

Viewed that way, Goguryeo was neither:

A trivial border state overshadowed by China, nor
A transcendent super-civilization that “outclassed Rome.”

It was:

A hyper-efficient military frontier state
that had to fight giant empires with a relatively small population,
and one of the key players in Northeast Asia’s ancient history.

Monday, November 17, 2025

The Most Henpecked Emperor in Chinese History?

The Strange Romance of Emperor Wen of Sui and Empress Dugu

When we hear the word “emperor,” we usually picture something like this:

Hundreds of maids and concubines,
court in the morning, banquets at night,
and a man who enjoys every possible privilege under the sun with his so-called “three thousand palace women.”

But in Chinese history, there is one imperial couple who openly broke this script.

The man is Emperor Wen of Sui (Yang Jian), the ruler who ended the chaos of the Northern and Southern Dynasties and reunited China.

At his side stood a woman who insisted on “one man, one woman”,
and who turned even an emperor into a textbook henpecked husband:
the formidable Empress Dugu (Dugu Qieluo / Kara Dugu / “Dugu Chela”).

Their story is more than a cute “love story.”

It’s a fascinating case study of:

An emperor’s private life and public power,
How marriage intersects with politics,
And how one woman’s personality and principles
could reshape an entire dynasty.

1) The Unifier Yang Jian – and the Young Girl Standing Next to Him

Yang Jian grew up as a scion of a northern aristocratic family,
moving through the courts of Western Wei and Northern Zhou.

As a youth, he was the son of the general Yang Zhong,
and he caught the eye of Dugu Xin, a major strongman of Northern Zhou.
At sixteen, Yang Jian married Dugu Xin’s daughter, Dugu Qieluo.

The Dugu clan was one of the famed “Eight Great Noble Families of the North.”

The eldest daughter became empress of Northern Zhou,
Another daughter married into the imperial family,
And Dugu Qieluo herself would later become empress of Sui.

In other words, it was literally a “one family, three empresses” situation.

Yang Jian and Dugu Qieluo, who had known each other since childhood,
are said to have been not just a political match,
but emotionally very close as husband and wife.

There’s a famous vow that Yang Jian is said to have made to her in his youth:

“I will not let any woman but you bear my children.”

This wasn’t just romantic drama someone made up centuries later;
versions of this vow appear repeatedly in more formal historical traditions as well.

And in practice, the couple stuck to it:

Dugu Qieluo personally gave birth to ten children—
five sons and five daughters, all of them Yang Jian’s.

In a world where emperors were expected to scatter offspring across dozens of concubines,
this level of de facto monogamy makes Emperor Wen almost unique in Chinese imperial history.

2) “These Two Rule the Empire Together” – The Couple Called the “Two Sages”

In 581, Yang Jian deposed the young emperor of Northern Zhou,
founded the Sui dynasty, and became Emperor Wen.

He then went on to end centuries of north–south division,
destroying the Chen dynasty in 589
and reunifying China.

Throughout this process, Empress Dugu was not content to be
the classic “virtuous wife quietly supporting from behind the curtain.”

She:

Read state documents together with the emperor,
Offered opinions on rewards, punishments, and appointments,
Accompanied him right up to the door of important meetings,
Had eunuchs report to her on what was happening inside,
And when the emperor made a bad decision, she corrected him with blunt remonstrance.

Because of this, courtiers sometimes referred to Emperor Wen and Empress Dugu as:

“The Two Sages in the Palace (二聖, er sheng).”

In that phrase you can hear two feelings mixed together:

On the one hand, recognition of a genuine political partnership,
On the other, a hint of unease—
that the empress’s power might be too great for everyone’s comfort.

3) “If You Mess Around With Another Woman, I’ll Kill Her”

Empress Dugu was not only a sharp political partner—
she was also an intensely jealous woman of iron principles.

The official histories preserve one particularly vivid scene that sums up her jealousy.

● The Emperor’s Slip – and Dugu’s Bloody Response

One day, in the palace, a woman named Lady Yuchi was working as a lowly maid.
She was the granddaughter of Yuwen Shu/Yuwen Rong’s clan—
a general whose family had risen in rebellion, lost,
and been reduced to slavery.

Emperor Wen noticed her beauty
and slept with her.

When Empress Dugu found out, she did not leave the matter alone.

She had Lady Yuchi hunted down and killed—
cutting off her husband’s “moment of weakness” in blood.

When the emperor learned of this after the fact,
he was furious. He mounted his horse and rode out of the palace, declaring in effect:

“I’d rather quit being emperor than live like this, under such interference.”

● The Emperor Storms Out – and the Ministers Step In

For a time, Emperor Wen did not return.
Senior officials like Gao Jiong and Yang Su went after him and tried to reason with him:

“Your Majesty, how can you abandon the empire over a single woman?”

By nightfall, the emperor finally returned to the palace.

According to the story, he found Empress Dugu waiting for him at the gate,
having stayed there all night,
tearfully apologizing and begging for reconciliation.

From this episode alone, you can see why people say:

“It wasn’t just the emperor—
even the ministers were constantly watching Empress Dugu’s mood.”

The Korean internet meme of Sui Wen as
“the ultimate henpecked emperor”
did not come out of thin air.

4) Was He Really Henpecked, or a Man Who “Feared and Respected” His Wife?

Here’s where it gets interesting:
Emperor Wen is not just a tragic husband who “lived in fear of his wife.”

① More Than Henpecked – An Emperor Who Respected His Political Partner

Emperor Wen didn’t only fear Empress Dugu;
he also deeply trusted her as a political ally.

When members of her own clan abused their influence,
Dugu was the one who demanded their punishment.
When the emperor handed down excessively harsh decisions,
she would go on hunger strike and submit petitions until lives were spared.

So she was:

A wife who kept her husband under tight control,
and at the same time
a cool-headed politician who wouldn’t bend to kinship or factional pressure.

From Emperor Wen’s perspective,

Politically, she was his most reliable advisor,
Privately, she was the one person he truly feared.

Those two roles overlapped in a single human being.

② The Fall of Gao Jiong – The Price of Saying “A Woman Is Just a Woman”

The story about Gao Jiong’s line
“Will you abandon the empire over a woman?”
actually has a fascinating sequel.

On the surface, his words helped bring the emperor back to the palace.

But Empress Dugu quietly remembered that phrase—
the way he had referred to her as “just a woman.”

Later, she began to dig into Gao Jiong’s private life:

After vowing not to remarry when his wife died,
he quickly took a concubine and had a son with her.

Empress Dugu repeatedly reported this to the emperor as hypocrisy:

“His words and deeds do not match.”

In the end, when the Sui campaign against Goguryeo faltered,
Gao Jiong was saddled with responsibility for the failure
and pushed out of high office.

In modern terms, you could sum it up like this:

“He butted into the boss’s marital drama,
dropped one poorly chosen line,
and his career trajectory went from ‘glory’ to ‘crash and burn.’”

5) After Dugu’s Death – Did the Emperor Really Become a “Freed Man”?

In 602, Empress Dugu died, around the age of fifty.

The official record says that Emperor Wen:

Was devastated by her death,
And sank into a deep period of grief and loss.

Soon after, though, another change appears in the sources:

“After that, the emperor took two palace women as consorts—
Lady Chen and Lady Cai—and began to lavish favor upon them.”

In other words:

While Dugu was alive, he was almost a model husband
who kept his vow in practice.
Once she was gone, he seems to have tried—finally and belatedly—
to enjoy a bit of what imperial status traditionally allowed.

But by then Emperor Wen was already in his early sixties,
and he died just two years later, in 604.

Online jokes that he “overindulged in women after being freed and shortened his life”
are obviously colored by modern imagination.

Still, the basic pattern holds:

It was only after Dugu’s death that he seriously took concubines,
And he died not long after.

That much is broadly consistent with the historical record.

6) How Was He Different from Other “Henpecked Emperors”?

Chinese history has a few emperors often labeled as “henpecked”:

Tang Gaozong, overshadowed by Empress Wu Zetian,
The Xianfeng Emperor of Qing, overshadowed by Empress Dowager Cixi, and others.

But the relationship between Emperor Wen and Empress Dugu
is of a different kind.

Gaozong and Xianfeng were emperors who gradually lost power
due to political weakness, health, or circumstances.

By contrast, Emperor Wen and Empress Dugu were:

A relatively normal married couple
who simultaneously functioned as near co-rulers of the state.

That’s why some scholars suggest that, for Emperor Wen:

Instead of calling him a simple “henpecked husband,”
It’s more fitting to see him as a “respect-and-fear husband”—
a man who deeply respected and simultaneously feared his wife.

7) Looking at Emperor Wen’s “Henpecked Legend” from Today’s Perspective

Seen with modern eyes, this imperial couple can be read on several levels.

● On the level of personal love

An emperor who spends effectively his whole life with one woman,
and swears that no other woman will bear his children—
that alone is an extraordinary exception in the long history of East Asian monarchies.

● On the level of power and jealousy

From a today’s perspective, Empress Dugu’s jealousy and punishments
can look extreme and violent.

But behind that is a very clear understanding of palace politics:

“If a concubine bears a son,
she instantly becomes a political rival.”

Her brutality is inseparable from the brutal logic
of succession and faction struggle inside the court.

● On the level of political partnership

Empress Dugu was not a background supporter.
She was a genuine co-governor who shaped policy and personnel decisions.

Emperor Wen, for his part, acknowledged this
and shared power with her.

That joint rule is a big reason why
the early Sui dynasty achieved such stable and efficient government.

So the “henpecked emperor” legend of Sui Wen

is less about a “pitiful man crushed by his wife”
and more about a rare case where love, jealousy, power, and trust
were tightly braided together in one marriage at the very top of the state.

8) Conclusion – Why Talk About Emperor Wen and Empress Dugu Now?

At first glance, the story of Emperor Wen and Empress Dugu
looks like a small side episode in the vast sweep of Chinese history.

But it’s a case that makes us think simultaneously about:

Relationships between men and women,
Power and responsibility,
Monogamy and the harem system,
And where the line lies between family and state.

By contemporary standards,
Empress Dugu’s actions were clearly problematic and violent in many ways.

Yet at the same time, she was:

A woman who discussed state affairs on equal footing with her husband,
A figure whose influence was so great that even the emperor bent before it,
And someone who played a deep role in the rise and fall of a dynasty.

In that sense, she stands out as one of the most intense empresses in Chinese history.

And beside her,
moving constantly between love and fear,
respect and exhaustion,
stood Emperor Wen of Sui.

His life reminds us that:

“Even an emperor is, in the end, someone’s husband.”

In a long history full of emperors who collected concubines like stamps,
there was exactly one who swore:

“I will have children with one woman only.”

That man is the one Korean netizens love to call:

“The most legendary henpecked emperor in Chinese history – Emperor Wen of Sui.”

Was Malthus Wrong – Or Are We Just Too Relaxed? Optimists vs. Pessimists on Population, Resources, and Nature

Was Malthus Wrong – Or Are We Just Too Relaxed?
Optimists vs. Pessimists on Population, Resources, and Nature

1) “Population grows geometrically, food only arithmetically” – Malthus’ uneasy intuition

In 1798, the English cleric and economist Thomas Malthus published
An Essay on the Principle of Population, where he famously argued:

Population grows geometrically (1, 2, 4, 8, 16…)
Food supply grows only arithmetically (1, 2, 3, 4, 5…) (oll.libertyfund.org)

If nothing checks this trend, he thought, population will eventually outstrip food production,
and then mechanisms like war, disease, famine, and poverty will step in to “correct” the numbers. (Wikipedia)

In short, his message was:

“A rosy utopia? Not happening.
Humanity will always run up against limits and collisions.”

A cold, sharp warning against easy optimism.

2) Why Malthus was called “wrong” for 200 years

For about two centuries after his book, Malthus has often been treated as a failed pessimist.
There are two big reasons why.

① The productivity revolution

Since Malthus’ time in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, humanity has gone through:

Chemical fertilizers, better crop varieties, irrigation systems, farm machinery
And, in the mid-20th century, the Green Revolution

Together these drove agricultural productivity through the roof. (Wikipedia)

In the 20th century alone, world population more than quadrupled,
and yet average calories available per person actually increased. (Wikipedia)

If you plug that into Malthus’ simple model, we should have hit a food apocalypse long ago—
but reality refused to follow that script.

② Demographic transition – after industrialization, birth rates fall

The second piece is what we now call the demographic transition.

In the early stages of industrialization, death rates fall first, so population booms.
But once a country reaches a certain level of income, education, and social welfare,
birth rates start to drop sharply, and population growth slows. (ResearchGate)

In many countries—across Europe, and in places like Korea and Japan—
the big worry today is not “too many babies,” but low fertility and population decline.

That’s a situation Malthus never really imagined.

So many economists and techno-optimists say:

“Malthus was wrong because he didn’t anticipate technological progress and demographic transition.”

Which is partly true.

But is that really the end of the story?

3) Neo-Malthusianism – tug-of-war between resource depletion and substitution

Over time, Malthus’ core concern has morphed a bit.

The question now is less:

“Will we run out of food?”

and more:

“What happens if we hit limits on resources as a whole—
energy, minerals, water, soil?”

Oil depletion, rare metals, water shortages, shrinking arable land…
Bundle these together and you get what’s often called neo-Malthusianism. (ResearchGate)

On the other side, resource optimists respond like this:

When the stock of a resource shrinks, its price rises.
As prices rise, firms and researchers:
- Look for new deposits, and
- Develop substitute resources and new technologies. (ResearchGate)
Thus, simple doomsday stories like “If this resource runs out, humanity is finished”
rarely play out as advertised.

Oil is the classic case.

Since the 1970s and 80s, we’ve heard repeated “peak oil” narratives about imminent depletion.
Yet technological advances, new discoveries, and the shale revolution have so far kept the
“we literally run out of oil” scenario from becoming reality.

In textbook economics, this all gets wrapped up as:

“Scarcity is largely managed through prices and innovation.”

On that logic, it’s very tempting to side with the optimists.

But there’s a gaping hole in this picture.

4) Problem #1 – Nature is not a “background object,” it’s the rules of the game

In traditional economic models, nature usually shows up in two roles:

As resources: oil, minerals, land, forests, fisheries…
As sinks: the atmosphere that absorbs CO₂, rivers that carry away pollutants…

In other words, nature is treated as an input warehouse and a waste dump
for human activity.

Our choices are always framed in terms of human utility and profit,
and nature appears only as the object of those utility functions.

That’s why, even when economics talks about “environmental destruction,”
it tends to package it as an externality:

Firm A pollutes in order to raise its profits.
The damage is passed on to third parties and to ecosystems.
If this cost isn’t reflected in prices, the market leads to “overproduction.”

To fix this, economists came up with ideas like the Pigouvian tax. (Investopedia)

The idea is:

For activities like pollution or carbon emissions that impose costs on society as a whole,
You impose a tax equal to that social cost,
So that “private cost + social cost = the real price.”

But in the 21st century, we’re seeing warning signals that go way beyond “fix the externality with a tax.”

The IPBES (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services) estimates that current extinction rates are up to 1,000 times higher than natural background levels. (files.ipbes.net)
Research on planetary boundaries suggests that we’ve already overshot 6 out of 9 key Earth-system thresholds. (Science)

This implies that nature is no longer just a “background” that silently absorbs our externalities.
The rules of the game themselves are starting to warp.

Climate, biodiversity, water cycles, soils, oceans…
These aren’t issues you can fix by tweaking one variable at a time.
They’re signals that the Earth system as a whole is being pushed toward its limits.

At this point, Malthus’ old question comes back in a new form:

“Are our beloved ideas of ‘substitution’ and ‘market adjustment’
actually operating inside the safe zone of the Earth system—
or are we quietly betting beyond that boundary?”

5) Problem #2 – What money hides from view

The second uncomfortable question is this:

“If the world produces more than enough food overall,
why are people still starving in Africa and other regions?”

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO),
about one-third of all food produced globally is lost or wasted every year—
through post-harvest losses, retail waste, and household food waste. (FAOHome)

And yet on the same planet:

More than 600 million people suffer from chronic hunger and malnutrition, (FAO Open Knowledge)
And in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, food crises keep recurring
due to climate shocks, civil conflict, and political instability.

Economics textbooks explain it like this:

Grain markets are driven by international prices.
A small number of highly productive countries dominate exports.
Firms and farmers, aiming at profit maximization, choose among:
- exporting,
- holding stocks,
- dumping surpluses,
- or switching uses (feed, biofuel, etc.).

In this process, people who are “too poor to pay market prices”
are simply pushed outside the demand curve.

Poor countries may have a clear need,
but from the market’s perspective, that doesn’t count as “effective demand”—
demand backed by money.

So the real picture looks like this:

On a global scale, we produce enough calories to feed humanity.
Huge quantities of food are discarded along the supply chain and at the consumer level.
Yet the poorest people still die of hunger.

Malthus worried about the physical limit of production.
Our 21st-century reality looks much more like a limit of distribution, prices, and power structures.

6) Between optimism and pessimism – what we must not overlook

Let’s recap the story so far:

Malthus’ population theory is often said to be “historically wrong”
- because he failed to anticipate technological progress and demographic transition. (Wikipedia)
Neo-Malthusian resource arguments are criticized as
- partial-equilibrium models that ignore prices, substitutes, and innovation. (ResearchGate)
Optimists argue that:
- “Technology, markets, and innovation have solved most problems so far,
  and they’ll keep doing so.”

But as this discussion keeps prodding us to notice,
this optimism rests on two hidden assumptions:

① The central actor is always humanity; nature is just an instrument.
② Ultimately, all values can be translated into money.

The problem is that both assumptions are now cracking.

Treating nature purely as a tool has boomeranged back at us in the form of
climate crisis, mass extinction, and overshooting planetary boundaries. (Science)
A system that pushes hundreds of millions of lives outside the market
simply because they lack money is becoming morally, and in terms of long-term stability,
increasingly hard to defend.

So a natural question follows:

“Can our current economic and social system—unchanged—
really deliver what we call ‘sustainable development’?”

7) What we need is not “new pessimism,” but a paradigm shift

The point here is not to resurrect Malthus wholesale,
and it’s also not to relax into “technology will fix everything” complacency.

What we actually need looks more like this:

1. Treat nature not as an externality, but as a condition

Take the planetary boundaries of the Earth system
and embed them as hard rules in policy, investment, and corporate strategy. (Science)

2. Build an economy with metrics beyond money

Use tools like carbon pricing and Pigouvian taxes to internalize externalities. (Investopedia)
At the same time, expand indicators beyond GDP to track
welfare, environmental health, and inequality together.

3. Global solidarity that starts from the most vulnerable

The damage from climate and food crises tends to fall hardest on countries
that historically emitted less and benefited less. (Financial Times)
Climate finance, technology transfer, and debt relief are not just “charity”;
they’re closer to insurance for stabilizing the system as a whole.

4. A philosophical rethinking of “development”

Seeing nature not as something to conquer, but as a “condition we must live with.”
Shifting the goal from simply “more” to
“longer, more widely shared, and more livable.”

Original-flavor Malthusian pessimism was too simple.
Twentieth-century optimism was too human-centered.

Now we need a new frame that looks at:

humans and nature, growth and limits, technology and ethics
all at the same time.

8) In closing – Why read Malthus again?

Malthus’ math was clearly off in that
he underestimated technological change and demographic transition.

But in trying to think simultaneously about:

Human desires and numbers that want to expand without limit,
A planet with real, physical boundaries,
And inequality and ecological crisis that markets alone can’t fix,

his uncomfortable questions are still very much alive. (Wikipedia)

We don’t revisit Malthus today because it’s fun to say “Humanity is doomed.”
We do it to quietly ask:

“On what assumptions are we basing our optimism?
And are those assumptions really valid for the Earth and for all of humanity?”

At this point, the key issue is not
“pessimists vs. optimists,” shouting at each other from opposite corners.

The real question is:

“If we want a sustainable optimism,
what values, institutions, and ways of thinking
do we need to redesign from the ground up?”

On that question, Malthus, the resource optimists,
and even the anonymous posters on DC Gallery can each still offer
at least one meaningful line in the conversation.

Sunday, November 16, 2025

Were the “Dongyi (東夷)” Really “Barbarians”?

The Old Stories of Eastern Peoples Hidden Inside the Character 夷

When we learned Korean history in school, most of us had to memorize a phrase like this at least once:

“Eastern barbarians, Dongyi (東夷).”

And next to the character 夷, there was always a small annotation saying
“yi (夷), meaning barbarian.”

That’s where the problem starts.

On the one hand, we hear people proudly say “We are descendants of the Dongyi,”
while on the other hand, the same Dongyi are introduced as “barbarians.”
It’s a strange combination.

So in ancient texts, did Dongyi (東夷) really refer to the kind of “primitive savages” we casually imagine today?
And originally, what kind of “face” did the Chinese character 夷 have?

In this piece, we’ll take a look at classical sources and modern research side by side,
and try to turn over the simplistic formula of:

“Dongyi = barbarians.”

1. The Gap Between the “Barbarian Yi (夷)” We Learned and the Classical Tradition

First, in modern Korean, the word “orangkae” (오랑캐) carries the nuance of

“Those outside the civilized center; backward, uncivilized outsiders.”

In ancient China, there was a system of the so-called “Four Barbarians (사이, 四夷)”:

Dongyi (東夷) – the East
Xirong (西戎) – the West
Nanman (南蠻) – the South
Beidi (北狄) – the North

These groups were often lumped together as the periphery/frontier of the “Huaxia (華夏) central civilization.” (OhmyNews)

This framework later hardened into a dichotomy of

“China = civilization / surrounding peoples = barbarians.”

Within that, the Dongyi were simplified into “eastern barbarians.”

However, the image of Dongyi (東夷) in classical texts is not so easy to summarize that way.
Once we dig only a little deeper, we find surprisingly positive depictions mixed in as well.

2. What Shuowen Jiezi Says About 夷 – “Eastern People, a Character from 大 and 弓”

In the classic dictionary of Chinese characters, Shuowen Jiezi (說文解字), 夷 is explained as follows:

“夷, 東方之人也從大從弓”
“Yi (夷) refers to the people of the East. The character is formed from 大 (great person) and 弓 (bow).” (Encyclopedia of Korean Culture)

In other words, Xu Shen (許慎) interpreted 夷 as:

People of the East (Easterners)
Structurally composed of a great person (大) + a bow (弓)

Of course, in modern paleography, scholars point out that the oldest forms of 夷 in oracle bone and bronze inscriptions have a different shape (a bent human figure, etc.), and argue that

“The ‘大 + 弓’ analysis may be a later reinterpretation.” (독단론)

Even so, the exegetical tradition that links Easterners (夷) with “a great person + bow” has persisted for a long time. (Encyclopedia of Korean Culture)

On top of that, figures considered to be of Dongyi origin:

Yi (羿), the famous archer of the Xia period,
The king Xu Yan in the Huai River region,
Jumong, the founding king of Goguryeo,

are all portrayed as heroes of archery, which further strengthens the image of

“Dongyi = Easterners who are skilled with the bow.” (Encyclopedia of Korean Culture)

3. The Hou Hanshu “Treatise on the Dongyi” – “Kind and Life-Loving, Land of Gentlemen and Immortals”

Even more interesting is the preface to the “Dongyi Lie Zhuan (東夷列傳, Biographies of the Eastern Barbarians)” in the Hou Hanshu (History of the Later Han).
There, the Dongyi are described as follows:

“‘The Wangzhi (王制)’ says, ‘The East is called Yi (夷).’
Yi (夷) means root (根本). The Yi love benevolence (仁) and cherish life,
so it is like all things taking root in the earth and growing.
Therefore their natural disposition is gentle and they are easy to govern by the Way (道),
and so there exist among them the Land of Gentlemen (君子國) and the Land of Immortals (不死國).” (History & Economy Blog)

Three keywords stand out in this passage:

Root (根本) – the Dongyi are likened to “the root.” (Encyves DH Center)
Love of benevolence and life – “they are kind and love life.” (History & Economy Blog)
Land of Gentlemen / Land of Immortals – a land where gentlemen live, and a land where people do not die. (CRS News)

This is quite far from the image of “eastern barbarians” we were given in school.

In short, in the perspective of Fan Ye (范曄), the Later Han literatus who compiled the Hou Hanshu,
the Dongyi are not merely “savages,” but in some sense appear as “simple, gentle, and easily governed ideal peripheral peoples.”

Of course, this description still carries the subtle viewpoint of “the center looking at the periphery,”
but it is clear that the image was by no means one of pure primitive savagery.

4. Confucius and “Yujugu’i (欲居九夷)” – Why Did Confucius Mention the Land of the Nine Yi?

In the Analects, in the “Zihan (子罕)” chapter, there is a famous passage where Confucius mentions the Nine Yi (九夷):

子欲居九夷
“Confucius wished to go live among the Nine Yi.”

When someone asked, “How could you live in such a crude place?”
Confucius replied:

“君子居之, 何陋之有?”
“If a gentleman lives there, how could it be crude?” (건빵이랑 놀자)

The Hou Hanshu’s “Dongyi Lie Zhuan” cites this passage and connects the Nine Yi to the traditional view that

“There are nine types of Yi (夷) in the East.” (History & Economy Blog)

Two points matter here:

Confucius clearly sees the Nine Yi as “lands outside China,” a kind of frontier,
but even so, he imagines them as places where he would actually like to live.
When someone calls it “crude” (陋),
Confucius responds that “a gentleman living there will bring transformation,” thus elevating its potential.

This passage is one facet of the Sinocentric idea of “civilizing the barbarians,”
but at the same time, it shows a stance that does not see all peripheries as inherently filthy or inferior. (문과 字의 집)

In other words, in the classics, the world of the Dongyi was not just a space of hatred and contempt, nor a pure utopia, but a complex realm where imagination and politics intertwined.

5. Then Who Were the Dongyi? – Does “Dongyi = Korean People” Hold?

By this point, a natural question arises:

“So does Dongyi = us (the Korean people)?”

Modern historians generally整理 this as follows:

Dongyi (東夷) is not the fixed name of a single ethnic group, but a “historical concept” whose referent shifts over time. (OhmyNews)
In the Shang and Zhou periods, various groups in eastern China—Shandong, Jiangsu, Anhui, etc.—were called Dongyi. (OhmyNews)
As Chinese territory expanded, various peoples of Manchuria, the Korean Peninsula, and the Japanese archipelago—Buyeo, Goguryeo, Yemaek, the Samhan, Wa, and so on—also came to be included under the Dongyi category. (Encyclopedia of Korean Culture)

Thus, it is roughly accurate to say:

“Ancient Chinese referred to a variety of Eastern peoples and tribes collectively as Dongyi (東夷).”

But the sweeping formula:

“All Dongyi = the Korean people;
the ancestors of the Chinese = Dongyi = us,”

is quite far from the mainstream position of current scholarship. (OhmyNews)

Yet one thing is clear:

In the Hou Hanshu “Dongyi Lie Zhuan,”
Buyeo, Goguryeo, Ye, and Han (the Samhan) all appear under the heading of “Dongyi.” (History & Economy Blog)

So it is reasonable to say that:

“Among the various groups that later formed the Korean people,
at least some were categorized as ‘Dongyi’ in classical texts.”

What matters here is not insisting that “they were all us” or “all of them were others,”
but adopting a perspective that sees ancient East Asian history as deeply intertwined.

6. “Easterners Who Shoot Well with the Bow” and Ourselves Today

One of the traditional images associated with the Dongyi is skill in archery.

Beyond Shuowen Jiezi’s explanation of 夷 as “formed from 大 and 弓, people of the East (東方之人),”
many leaders categorized as Dongyi have heroic stories centered on bow and arrow. (Encyclopedia of Korean Culture)

The Xia-period lord Yi (羿) is famous as a master archer,
And Jumong, the founding king of Goguryeo, is also portrayed as “a hero who excels in archery.”

The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture puts it this way in its entry on Dongyi:

“There are many tales of bow and arrow (弓矢說話) concerning leaders of Dongyi lineage,
giving the impression that the Dongyi were a people who excelled at archery.” (Encyclopedia of Korean Culture)

When we consider South Korea’s overwhelming record in modern Olympic archery,
it is hard not to see this traditional image overlapping in our imagination.

Of course, explanations like “an archery gene embedded in the DNA” have no scientific basis.
Even so, linking together:

The ancient image of Eastern frontier peoples skilled in cavalry and archery,
The archery and horsemanship scenes in Goguryeo tomb murals,
And the modern cultures of Olympic archery and traditional Korean archery (gukgung),

can be a very appealing narrative thread—especially from the perspective of a content or revenue-oriented blog.

7. Instead of “Barbarian Yi,” What Should We Remember?

To sum up, three layers overlap in the notions of Dongyi (東夷) and the character 夷:

A geographic concept
- The broad meaning of “people of the East”
- The concrete referent and scope change continuously over time (OhmyNews)
An ideological / symbolic concept
- In Five Phases and directional theories, the East is associated with wood (木) and benevolence (仁).
- In the Hou Hanshu, the Dongyi carry positive images of root, kindness, and the Land of Gentlemen / Land of Immortals. (History & Economy Blog)
A political / ideological concept
- The “Four Barbarians” scheme of civilization (Huaxia) vs. barbarian periphery
- Over time, the nuance “frontier = barbarians” becomes more fixed.

So it is difficult to see 夷 purely as a derogatory slur,
but it also cannot be placed on a pedestal as a purely sacred name.

In that case, how should people living today handle this ancient character?

Self-deprecating version
- “We were just eastern barbarians…”
Overly nationalist version
- “The ancestors of Chinese civilization were all Dongyi,
  the Dongyi were us Koreans!”

Both are exhausting narratives.

Instead, we might整理 it like this:

“Dongyi (東夷) was an old name for ‘the peoples of the East’
who, from beyond the Huaxia center,
sometimes interacted and sometimes competed,
together shaping ancient East Asian history.”

Within that category we find:

Buyeo, Goguryeo, Samhan, and Ye, which are among the root groups of the Korean people, (History & Economy Blog)
As well as various groups in Shandong, Jiangsu, and the Huai River region,
Plus groups that connect to the Japanese archipelago.

Our task is not:

To remember only the history of contempt contained in this name and use it to belittle ourselves,
Nor to pull it in as a straight, glorious ancestral line,

but rather:

To use the concept of “Dongyi” as a lens
for imagining more broadly the exchanges, conflicts, and coexistence of ancient East Asia.

Conclusion – Why Bring Up “Dongyi” Again Now?

It can be dangerous to grab onto a few characters from texts thousands of years old
and project our current identity straight into them.

However:

Once we realize that behind the casual textbook gloss of “barbarian yi (오랑캐 이)”,
There also lies another face—
“eastern peoples, great figures holding bows, lands that love benevolence and life, lands of gentlemen and immortals”—

our perspective on East Asian history and the place of the Korean people within it becomes much more three-dimensional.

So the next time you encounter the term “Dongyi people (東夷族)” in a textbook or online,
try letting this thought cross your mind:

“This is not just ‘eastern barbarians,’
but a single line in a very long story about the peoples of the East.”

From that point on,
a more mature humanistic conversation can begin—
about how we name ourselves and our neighbors.

An Age Where Two People Can Feed Twenty, So Why Are We More Anxious Than Ever?

An Age Where Two People Can Feed Twenty,

So Why Are We More Anxious Than Ever?

“In the past, ten people had to work so that twenty people could live.
Now, thanks to advanced technology, even if just two people work, twenty can live.”

On the surface, this sounds like a complete utopia.
We are surrounded by an abundance of goods, and thanks to automation, AI, and smart factories, human labor is decreasing.
Yet reality looks almost the opposite.

Precarious work, temp jobs, part-time gigs, and platform labor are more common than stable full-time jobs.
“Labor flexibility”—the idea that you can be laid off at any time—has become a daily keyword.
On paper, GDP and productivity are rising, but people keep saying their quality of life doesn’t feel much better.

Surprisingly, there was someone who more or less foresaw this situation:
Albert Einstein. We know him as an icon of physics, but he also left behind some sharp observations on economics.

1. The Dilemma of Capitalism as Seen by Einstein

Around the time of the Great Depression in the 1930s, Einstein wrote pieces like
“Thoughts on the World Economic Crisis” and “Why Socialism?”,
where he pointed out structural contradictions in capitalism. (Monthly Review)

His core concern is unexpectedly simple:

As technology advances, the amount of labor actually needed keeps decreasing.
But in a laissez-faire market, reduced labor demand appears as unemployment.
If unemployment grows, purchasing power shrinks → goods don’t sell → firms fail → even more unemployment.

In other words, we repeatedly end up in the paradoxical situation where:

“We have more than enough capacity to produce what is needed,
yet the wallets of those who might buy it are empty.”

Einstein also played with the term “overproduction.”

Just because warehouses are full of goods does not mean
human needs have truly been met.
The issue is not that there are “too many goods,” but that
people lack the wages and income to buy those goods. (Grademiners.com)

So he took a bold step and began to think about:

A planned economy and
Social coordination of working hours and wages.

Of course, the socialist model he imagined never took shape exactly as he envisioned,
and real-world socialist states collapsed under other kinds of problems.
Still, his basic critique remains striking:

Instead of “technological progress → shorter working hours and better lives,”
we get “technological progress → unemployment, insecurity, and polarization.”

That structural direction of travel is exactly what he warned about.

2. The First Wave of Globalization, 1870–1914: A Game We Already Watched Collapse

Today we talk as if “globalization” were the spirit of the age,
but in fact the globalization we’re living through now is not humanity’s first experiment.

Economic historians call the period from about 1870 to 1914
the era of “First Globalization.” (Wikipedia)

Back then, the world looked strangely familiar:

Railways, steamships, and the telegraph sharply lowered the cost of transport and communication.
European capital flowed around the world, building railways, plantations, and mines in colonies and emerging regions.
The gold standard and free trade combined to create a vast network of trade and finance.

In today’s language, it was “a 19th-century version of global supply chains plus financial globalization.”

But that system was rocked by two massive shocks:

World War I (1914) – arms races and imperial rivalries exploded into war.
The Great Depression (1929) – followed by protectionism, financial collapse, and mass unemployment.

As a result, the first globalization ended in the upheavals of the 20th century:

Some countries tried to survive through reformed capitalism, welfare states, and New Deal–style policies.
Some raced toward fascism and militarism.
Others opted for Soviet-style planned economies.

As the original DC post puts it, this shows that capitalism is not some
“gentle system that has never gone through crisis,” but rather:

“Version 1.0 of globalization already blew up once and had to be rebuilt from the ground up.”

3. Second/Third Globalization and Neoliberalism:

If the Economy Is Growing, Why Isn’t My Paycheck?

The era we live in now is often described as one of
“neoliberal globalization.”

From the 1970s and 80s onward, we see a push for: (Wikipedia)

Deregulation
Privatization
Fiscal austerity
Labor market flexibility
Free movement of capital and goods

The stated goal is always roughly the same:

“Free up markets, remove regulations, maximize efficiency and growth.”

And indeed:

World GDP has risen substantially.
Many emerging economies have successfully industrialized.
Global corporations have seen explosive gains in productivity.

Yet what many people actually feel is closer to this:

Stable full-time jobs are declining, while non-regular work, temp jobs, and platform gigs are on the rise.
Companies are doing well, but my own wages and sense of security are stagnant—or even declining.
Workers feel like “easily replaceable labor,” with weaker bargaining power.

Why?

In very simplified form, the picture looks like this:

Thanks to technology and automation, we now have the capacity for “two people to feed twenty.”
From the perspective of capital, there is no reason to employ all twenty.
The remaining eighteen are pushed into precarious, low-wage sectors—non-regular, platform, or service work.
Productivity soars, but labor’s share of total income shrinks,
and income and wealth concentrate at the top.

Many studies argue that when neoliberal policies, financialization, and automation are combined,
inequality and precarious labor tend to intensify together. (People UMass)

In this sense, the scenario Einstein feared—
“technology reduces the need for labor, but the fruits of that progress do not reach everyone”—
has taken on a more complex, updated form in our time.

4. If There Is Enough Food, Why Do Hundreds of Millions Still Go Hungry?

One especially striking part of the original DC post was this:

“In some places, surplus food is dumped into the ocean,
while in others, tens of millions starve to death.”

The phrasing is extreme, but the core concern is quite realistic.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that
about one-third of all food produced globally is lost or wasted. (FAOHome)
At the same time, as of 2024,
about 673 million people (over 8% of the world’s population) suffer from hunger,
and more than 2 billion people cannot afford a stable “healthy diet.” (FAOHome)

So the problem is not:

That we lack the capacity to produce food, but that
Because of prices, incomes, debt, conflict, infrastructure, and policy failures,
people cannot access that food. (AP News)

This lines up exactly with Einstein’s argument:

“Humanity has the capacity to produce enough goods to sustain everyone,
but because of market structures and income distribution,
countless people cannot reach those goods.”

Between our productive capacity and human lives,
a massive “wall of distribution” has been erected.

5. The Age of Labor Flexibility and “Bullshit Jobs”

The original post makes another intriguing point:

“The amount of necessary labor declines,
but because we can’t just let people sit idle,
we create unnecessary ‘bullshit jobs’ to burn off the surplus productive power—
the former is communistic, the latter fascistic.”

Put more gently, it means this:

Thanks to technology, the amount of essential labor has decreased,
but people’s income is still tied to “having a job.”
So society can either move toward
“Let’s all work less and share life more” (shorter working hours, stronger welfare, etc.),
Or it can move toward
“Let’s create jobs, even pointless ones, to keep people busy”
(military buildup, bloated bureaucracy, purely formal tasks, and so on).

British anthropologist David Graeber used the term
“bullshit jobs” to describe such roles—jobs that persist structurally,
even though it is hard to articulate why they are really needed.

Of course, we cannot simply declare soldiers, civil servants, or managers “useless” across the board.
But:

There clearly are organizations that have grown big not because of real social need,
but because of politics, ideology, or power maintenance.
There are also inefficiencies that remain because of vested interests,
even though technology could automate or streamline them.

Meanwhile, critical areas like care work, education, environmental protection, and public health
struggle with staff shortages,
while other areas are overloaded with work that looks a lot like “making reports and staying in line.”

6. So Where Can We Go From Here?

At this point, the important move is not to shout “Let’s overthrow capitalism right now,”
but to calmly examine the debates that are already underway.

Some of the key discussions in real-world politics and policy include:

Shorter working hours and work-sharing
- Four-day workweeks, strict limits on overtime, expansion of part-time options, etc.
- Sharing the same total volume of work among more people.
Stronger minimum wages and income floors
- This connects directly with Einstein’s intuition that
  “we must secure a minimum level of purchasing power to avoid repeated crises.” (Grademiners.com)
Basic income and social allowances
- Ideas to redistribute part of the gains from automation directly to citizens.
- The debate is intense, but the goal is to loosen the tight linkage between “labor = right to exist.”
Expansion of public services and public goods
- Moving basic domains like education, healthcare, housing, and transport
  closer to “social rights” and further from pure “market-priced commodities.”
A recalibration of globalization
- Shifting away from totally unregulated, fully open markets toward
  new rules that include environmental and labor standards.
- Stronger regulations on excessive financialization and tax avoidance by multinational capital.

What counts as the “right answer” will vary by political position.
But one thing seems clear:

We live in an era where the old formula
“as long as we grow, everyone will naturally prosper”
no longer works automatically.

7. Conclusion – Technology, Capitalism, and a Life Worth Living

Let’s return to where we started:

We have technologies advanced enough that two people can support twenty,
Yet we live in a society where those twenty include eighteen people
struggling with precarious work, unemployment, or low wages.

Almost a century ago, Einstein anticipated this kind of situation and argued that,
while preserving the advantages of capitalism (creativity, efficiency),
we should think seriously about how to ensure that:

“The fruits of technological progress are shared by everyone.” (Monthly Review)

Today, we face that question again, now entangled with:

The first, second, and third waves of globalization,
The achievements and side effects of neoliberalism,
Automation, AI, and the platform economy,
And the contradictions of food, environment, and inequality.

The proposal of this piece is simple:

As technology increasingly frees us from necessary labor,
we can no longer avoid the question of
how to reconnect labor, income, and a life worth living.

In the next installment, we’ll look at historical attempts to answer that question:

Fordism,
The welfare state,
The 40-hour workweek,
And more recent debates over basic income and the four-day workweek—

all in one sweep.

If we want to move from a society obsessed with “producing more”
to one focused on “living more humanely,”
what exactly needs to be redesigned?

That question will be a useful starting point
for the humanities, political, and economic discussions to come.

How Did Sedentary Societies Manage to Defeat Nomadic Peoples?

– Survival Strategies Through the Cases of Han China, Rome, Hungary, and the Mongols

Mounted nomadic warriors galloping across the steppe,
and farming kingdoms plowing fields behind city walls.

Once human history moved into the era of full-fledged “states,”
a clash between these two lifestyles was almost inevitable.

Nomadic peoples held mobile assets like horses, livestock, and furs,
While sedentary peoples controlled fixed assets such as grain, textiles, and metalwork.

The friction point was the terms of trade.
From the perspective of settled societies, nomadic goods were often “nice to have, but not strictly essential.”
From the nomads’ perspective, however, agrarian products like grain, cloth, and iron tools were very close to a lifeline.

Because of this imbalance, disputes over trade very often escalated into:

Trade conflicts → Raiding and war.

On top of this, climate acted as an additional variable.

Recent research suggests that when the Huns (often regarded as the western offshoot of the Xiongnu) began battering the borders of the Roman Empire, the severe droughts and climatic instability of the 430s overlapped with this process. ([University of Cambridge][1])
As their means of subsistence collapsed, they effectively chose to “move with sword in hand.”

Anyone who has played the strategy game Civilization V will know exactly what this feels like in game terms: Attila the Hun’s early-game aggression is absolutely terrifying. The designers effectively turned that historical sense of desperation into raw in-game aggressiveness.

The expansion of the Mongol Empire shows a similar pattern.
There is research indicating that a period of heavy rainfall and high grass productivity in the Central Asian interior deserts coincides with the period of Mongol expansion. ([ScienceDirect][2])
When there is more grass for the horses, the mobility and long-range operational capacity of a nomadic army naturally increase.

So let’s go back to our core question:

Under what conditions could an agrarian, sedentary state avoid being overwhelmed by nomadic powers, survive, and even claim to have “won”?

Drawing on historical examples, we can organize the answer into three stages:

① How to prevent war from breaking out in the first place →
② How to split and co-opt nomadic powers →
③ If you absolutely must fight, how to avoid losing and sometimes even win.

1. The Best Outcome Is Not “Winning,” but “Preventing War”

1-1. From the Nomads’ Perspective, War Is a “Risky Investment”

Even when nomadic confederations use powerful cavalry to invade a sedentary state,
war itself is a high-risk gamble for them.

Even if they win a battle, if they can’t break into the grain stores behind city walls, the gains are limited;
If they lose, they may forfeit horses, livestock, and warriors, risking the collapse of the entire tribe.

So nomadic powers generally seek one of three outcomes:

“Tributary relations” – a system where they regularly receive grain, silk, silver, etc.
“Favorable trade terms” – obtaining cheap grain and silk through border markets (the chekmen / frontier markets).
Short-term raids – “hit-and-run” campaigns during climatic crises or political vacuums.

If the first two are reasonably satisfied,
the nomadic confederation has less incentive to risk everything in a full-scale war against a single state.

1-2. Han China’s Heqin Policy and Managed Truces

Early relations between Han China and the Xiongnu are a classic example.

During the period when the Han frontier defenses were incomplete and Xiongnu cavalry was at its peak,
the Han court sent princesses in marriage alliances (heqin, 和親) and provided huge quantities of silk and grain to buy time. ([ResearchGate][3])

From a modern viewpoint this can look like “humiliating tribute,” but:

While they were doing this, the Han were also fortifying their frontier defenses,
Preparing to seize control of the Silk Road routes to the Western Regions,
And building up their internal economic strength.

In other words, it functioned as a kind of “purchased peace”—an insurance premium.

1-3. A Strategy for Buffering Climatic and Economic Stress

Research on the interaction between the Huns and Rome also points to severe climatic and economic stress.

Droughts in the Danube region between the 4th and 5th centuries appear to have hit both the Huns and Roman frontier populations hard, and the Huns responded with frequent raids and pressure. ([University of Cambridge][1])

In such circumstances, if a sedentary state provides nomadic groups with at least a minimal “survival mechanism,” there is a chance tensions can be channeled away from war and toward regulated trade or mercenary contracts.

To summarize:

Stage 1 victory for a sedentary state = “Avoiding war by giving nomads fewer reasons to draw their swords.”

2. If War Is Unavoidable, “Split and Draw Them In”

At some point, however, war does break out.

At that point, the smartest move for a sedentary state is to split the nomadic confederation from within.

Nomadic empires and confederations tend to have these traits:

When faced with a strong, obvious external threat, they can unite very quickly;
But if war drags on or spoils decline, competition and division among the constituent tribes rise to the surface almost immediately.

One of the most effective uses of this structure can be seen in Han China vs. the Xiongnu.

2-1. After Emperor Wu: From All-Out Offensive to Division Strategy

Under Emperor Wu of Han, the empire poured enormous financial and human resources into large-scale campaigns against the Xiongnu. ([위키백과][4])
Economically, the Han state came close to being exhausted,
but in the process they stripped away Xiongnu bases and alliances one by one.

The core of this offensive was not just winning battles. It also involved:

Planting Han-controlled commanderies and colonies in the frontier, and
Cultivating pro-Han factions within the Xiongnu,
Ultimately encouraging a split of the Xiongnu confederation into Southern and Northern Xiongnu. ([Open Research Repository][5])

In short:

“Break them with a frontal blow, then split them, defeat each part separately, and turn some into our allies.”

2-2. Creating “Our Nomads”

The ideal scenario for a sedentary state is:

To turn certain nomadic groups into military partners of the empire or frontier defense forces.

In practice:

Chinese history contains many cases where northern nomadic or semi-nomadic groups were absorbed as “border troops” (藩兵) or cavalry units;
The Roman Empire accepted Germanic and Hunnic groups as foederati (allied troops) and used them to defend its frontiers.

Once this stage is reached, the nomadic confederation is no longer

“A single external enemy,”

but rather

“Multiple fragmented groups, some of whom are on our payroll.”

From the perspective of the sedentary state, the burden of fighting a unified external enemy is greatly reduced.

3. When You Actually Have to Fight: Cavalry vs. Infantry, Who Wins?

Sometimes diplomacy and politics are not enough,
and full-scale field battles become unavoidable.

One of the most famous examples is the Battle of Carrhae: Rome vs. Parthia.

3-1. The Battle of Carrhae: Disaster for Infantry Without Cavalry

In 53 BCE, Crassus—Rome’s wealthy magnate—invaded Parthian territory in pursuit of glory and wealth.
The result was the catastrophic defeat at Carrhae. ([위키백과][6])

The Roman army: centered on heavy infantry legions with insufficient cavalry.
The Parthian army: a combination of mounted archers and heavy cavalry (cataphracts).

On the flat plains of Mesopotamia, Roman infantry:

Were subjected to relentless arrow fire from mounted archers, and
Whenever their formations wavered, they were smashed by heavy cavalry charges.

They were effectively annihilated without being able to counterattack properly.
This battle is an extreme demonstration of the rule:

“On open plains, without cavalry and long-range firepower, infantry have no good answer to nomadic/steppe cavalry.”

3-2. Hungary vs. the Mongols: Lacking Infantry–Cavalry Balance and Fortifications

In the early 1200s, as the Mongol Empire expanded into Europe,
the Battle of Mohi (1241) against the Kingdom of Hungary presents a similar lesson. ([위키백과][7])

Hungary possessed one of the most formidable cavalry forces in Europe at the time, but:

Early strategic mistakes,
Poor choice of battlefield,
And, crucially, a weak network of stone fortifications on the Hungarian plain
(partly because Hungarian kings had long restricted the construction of private castles by the nobility for political reasons) ([위키백과][7])

all contributed to a crushing defeat at the hands of the Mongols.

After this experience, Hungary drastically changed its national defense strategy by heavily promoting stone fortress construction.
Subsequently, the Mongols never again swept across Europe at a similar scale, and Europe developed increasingly dense systems of:

“Fortifications + cavalry/infantry + missile/ artillery defenses.”

3-3. Military Conditions for Sedentary States to Beat Nomadic Cavalry

Summarizing historical cases, the conditions under which a sedentary state could hold its own—and sometimes win—against nomadic forces in the field were roughly:

Integrated use of cavalry + infantry + long-range firepower (archers / artillery / siege engines)
- Infantry: form shield walls and spear lines to blunt enemy cavalry charges.
- Archers / crossbowmen / artillery: block or disrupt enemy cavalry’s approach.
- Cavalry: protect the flanks of friendly infantry, and execute counter-encirclement and pursuit.
Choice of terrain
- Avoid direct confrontation on wide, open plains when possible.
- Choose battlefields anchored on rivers, marshes, hills, or fortifications
  to limit the mobility advantage of nomadic cavalry.
Networks of fortifications and supply
- Even if they lose a field battle, forces can fall back, regroup, and counterattack around strongholds.
- Ringing grain-rich regions with fortresses ensures the enemy cannot maintain long campaigns without supply.

In modern gaming terms, this is very close to a question of:

“How do you build a team composition that blends solid front-line (infantry), mobility (cavalry), and long-range poke (archers/artillery) in a balanced way?”

No single arm can dominate on its own.
What matters is how each role covers the others’ weaknesses as part of a larger whole.

4. Bonus Factors: Climate, Fortifications, and “Assimilation”

4-1. Climate: The Invisible Hand Behind the Rise and Fall of Nomadic Empires

As briefly mentioned earlier, recent research suggests that:

The rapid rise of the Mongol Empire is linked to wetter conditions on the steppe and increased grass productivity; ([ScienceDirect][2])
During the 1241 Mongol invasion of Hungary, warm and dry weather favored Mongol cavalry,
while the following year’s sudden cold and heavy rainfall hampered their operations. ([MIT News][8])

In other words, no matter how clever the strategy of a sedentary state may be,
if climate shifts decisively in favor of nomads, defense becomes dramatically more difficult.
Conversely, abrupt climatic changes can also make it nearly impossible for nomadic powers to sustain long-distance campaigns.

4-2. Fortresses and Cities: “The Final Line of Defense and the Graveyard of Nomadic Armies”

Compared to the vast regions the Mongols conquered across Eurasia,
the areas they failed to completely subjugate tend to share a common set of features:

Dense networks of strong fortifications,
Mountainous terrain, and
Maritime barriers.

Examples include:

Japan: typhoons (“divine winds”) and the difficulty of maritime logistics.
Mamluk Egypt: strong cavalry and military slave system combined with the Nile and fortified cities.
Some European regions: high density of fortifications and mountain/river terrain favoring defense.

When a sedentary state:

Builds a dense network of fortresses and cities;
And successfully operates cavalry, infantry, finances, and logistics within that system,

nomadic armies may score a spectacular early victory,
but run into severe difficulties in long-term occupation and administration.

4-3. Assimilation: Turning “Enemy Limbs” into “Imperial Arms and Legs”

The final stage is this:

“Bring the nomads fully into the system of the state.”

In Chinese history:

Northern nomadic groups repeatedly end up either founding dynasties in China proper (Northern Wei, Liao, Jin, Yuan, Qing, etc.),
or being absorbed into existing dynasties as officials and military elites. ([Oxford Research Encyclopedia][9])

In the Roman case:

Germanic and Hunnic groups were first accepted as allied troops and frontier defenders,
and eventually the Western Roman Empire itself effectively passed into the hands of Germanic generals.

When this assimilation proceeds smoothly,
the empire gains new mobility and reinforced border defenses.

But if control fails, the process can end with:

“The heart of the empire falling into the hands of elites of nomadic origin.”

5. Conclusion: What It Really Meant to “Defeat” Nomadic Peoples

Looking across history, the situations in which sedentary states can truly be said to have “defeated” nomadic powers usually share the following conditions:

They replaced war with managed trade and tributary structures, giving nomads a reason not to draw their swords.
When war was unavoidable, they split and played off nomadic confederations against each other and drew some tribes over to their own side.
When it was clear they would lose in the field and be forced into temporary retreat,
they sometimes resorted to scorched-earth tactics, denying even the opportunity for effective plunder.
They built a military system capable of integrated use of cavalry, infantry, and long-range firepower,
and used fortifications, terrain, and supply lines to neutralize the mobility advantage of nomadic cavalry.
Over the long term, they absorbed nomadic groups as allies, border troops, or ruling elites,
transforming them from an external enemy into internal participants in the imperial system.

In that sense, for sedentary states, “defeating” nomadic peoples rarely meant simple battlefield domination.
More often, it meant successfully managing and re-embedding nomadic powers within a broader political, economic, and military system.

[1]: University of Cambridge – Evidence for severe drought and Hunnic incursions in the 430s
[2]: ScienceDirect – Climate variability and the expansion of the Mongol Empire
[3]: ResearchGate – Han–Xiongnu relations and the heqin policy
[4]: Wikipedia – Han–Xiongnu War
[5]: Open Research Repository – The division of the Xiongnu and Han frontier policy
[6]: Wikipedia – Battle of Carrhae
[7]: Wikipedia – Battle of Mohi and fortifications in medieval Hungary
[8]: MIT News – Climate analysis of the Mongol invasions of Europe
[9]: Oxford Research Encyclopedia – Nomadic empires and China