Why were merchants and artisans lower than peasants in japan?

Why were merchants and artisans lower than peasants in japan?

Because they didn't produce anything. You see similar ideas among the French physiocrats.

Ever wonder why the Jew fears the samurai

...

Paesents production on fields was the measure of the net worth of your land. And thus was directly related to social standing, thus your rice growers are exponentially important.

Merchants and the like profit off of resale and opportunity and do not contribute to a lords recognizable net wealth and thus are considered lower professions, despite them being all in all more important to the function of the japanese feudal era economy

Dishounuruburu.

It's based in confucianism. Merchants and artisans were at the bottom of the Chinese social hierarchy as well. It's because were seen as a kind of necessary evil in society. Being a peasant wasn't grand, but it was still considered admirable to be the backbone of the whole of society. Being a merchant was seen as the least admirable thing you could be, because you didn't actually physically contribute.

This

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farmers produce food and thus wealth, artisans produce things that are not strictly necessary for life, and merchants just trade things.

On the other hand merchants often did much better than peasants and even poor samurai in terms of standards of living. So even purchased samurai status.

Similarly in china, wealthy families often produced both scholar bureaucrats and merchants, and then used that wealth to buy land, becoming gentry.

In practice, cutting people with money out from political power or social advancement just did not work very well

reddit spacing pls stop

R E D D I T

>artisans didn't produce anything

>(((merchants)))

They didn't make the materials they work with :>)

thats interesting, must have something to do with how their economy functioned, yout think craftsmen would just logicaly be one step above pesant, could be they were just a small percentage and treated like robots so they didnt get ahead socialy

neither does anyone. the matter and energy preceded everyone, we are all just engaged in various forms of transmutation :^)

but bulk capital is useless if you dont know what to make with it and thats useles if you dont know how to move it

kike

Logically speaking, merchants shouldn't exist. They have no relation to production and only came about as a stopgap measure to address distribution issues. But we've progressed enough technologically where markets and merchants have become an incredibly braindead way to allocate resources, and this one-time hack has long outgrown whatever use it might have had.

technology just gives more power to markets and merchants you idiot.

It is a hold over from the Chinese way of doing things. For them there was the following reasons...

1. Peasants make food, which can almost always be exported
2. Artisans makes valuable items but a given artisan can only make so wide a range of items.
3. The demand of those items can wax and wane and there may not be a effective market for export of a given item.
4. Blacksmiths do not follow the above rules because their goods are always needed but are so profitable ( on a guild level, not personal) they are a threat to the power of the land owners.
5. Everyone needs food. Peasants make food, artisans & merchants do not make food. Thus there needs to be a check on the growth of urban class's to prevent a long term food shortage.
6. Merchants are a threat to the power of land owners.