I feel the same about the movie business. Indie films can be awesome, but some kinds of movies are hard to do without a large budget.

Pyramids are hard to build without a super-feudal economy and society. But we got rid of that, losing the practical ability to make pyramids in the process, because we value other things like democracy higher.

Uhh we still build things like pyramids all the time - Three Gorges Dam, Burj Khalifa, One World Trade Center - it's just we don't build pyramids themselves anymore.

The Burj Khalifa was notoriously built with more or less slave labour, so maybe not the best example.

Or maybe that was part of the point, that unfortunately some large structures are still built by people working under slave-like conditions.

I don't think the Three Gorges Dam was built by something most would call a democracy.

Hm. The pyramids were an architectural and supply chain genius stroke considering when they were made. It also took fantastic human sacrifice to achieve that. One world trade center was built with the assistance of trains and semi trucks brining ore to smelters and steel to the construction site, electricity, cranes etc.

Minus the slavery, have we really expended that much human effort and equivalent wealth and time on something in the modern era? The only thing I can think of is Free software products, shit like Linux.

This is only tangentially related, but because you are all leaning on this pyramid analogy so hard, I thought I would mention that many scholars now believe the pyramids to have been built by some type of salaried (and very skilled) labor. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_pyramid_constructio...

Pretty sure Appolo or Space Shuttle both were more expensive projects than the pyramids, even adjusted for inflation.

The Large Hadron Supercollider?

> Pyramids are hard to build without a super-feudal economy and society

[citation needed]

The 10th-tallest pyramid was built in Memphis, TN 30 years ago [0] and it's now used as a Bass Pro shop. Say what you will about working conditions in the US in the 90s, but I don't think it'd be fair to call it "a super-feudal economy and society".

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memphis_Pyramid

Call me skeptic, but I’m not really sure that pyramid would be able to stand in place 4500 years. Same shape, way less durability.

Yea building a pyramid is easy, you just need to invent the internal combustion engine first.

That said, pyramids seem to have been built with hired labor so the point is pretty muddy regardless.

Huh? Pyramids exist because they are the easiest comparably thing to make. no one makes them because they have better skyscraper designs now and no one cares about making a 4000yr old tomb.

You know what's today's 4000yr long monument to vanity? Elon Musk's orbiting Tesla