Comment by bpt3
5 hours ago
> farming was insanely lucrative during that time
That is wildly inaccurate. Do you think people were flocking to cities to flee the "insanely lucrative" jobs they already had?
Farm labor paid significantly less than industrialized labor at the time. I suspect in addition to just making things up, you're looking at a few landowners who were quite wealthy due to their land holdings (and other assets) and what they have left behind while completely ignoring the lives led by the vast majority of farmers at the time.
> Do you think people were flocking to cities to flee the "insanely lucrative" jobs they already had?
The non-farmers were already accounted for. Did you, uh, forget to read the thread?
I read the thread. I don't see where that's addressed
I also see survivorship bias keep coming up. Each time it claims to be have been addressed in the original comment, and that's that. Yet I don't see how the existence of surviving mansions today proves anything about the prevalence of wealthy farmers at the time
Similarly, there's no inherent reason subsistence farming should prove or disprove work outside the farm. The existence of farms large enough to grow and sell surplus food, that doesn't mean all farms could do so