The practice of begging came up in passing back in Year Four, when we discussed charity. I want to loop back around, though, and look

Servants and aristocrats: wildly different on the social scale, yet often found together.

Ah, aristocracy. It would be the best form of government . . . if only it were humanly possible to implement as originally conceived, instead

When talking about the divisions within a society, we tend to toss around terminology with a lamentable lack of precision. But it’s useful to pay

If I followed the general pattern of this Patreon, I would write an essay that gives an overview of different basic economic systems. But as

If you’ve ever taken an economics class — or possibly even if you haven’t — you’ve probably encountered the notion of the “invisible hand” that

“It’s mine!” All of us probably uttered that sentence at some point in our childhood — probably many, many times. One of the jobs of

Where does wealth come from? The answer to that question has changed over time, to a far greater degree than you may realize if you’re

My original title for this essay was “Magic and Culture.” But that makes those two things sound separate, like they exist side-by-side, and the point

Our previous tour through physical punishments, back in Year Four, stopped short of a rather crucial one: execution. (Content warnings for basically every form of

One of the interesting things about police as an element of society is just how broad the concept is. In various times and places, their