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A comment on When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think. Parent comment

Re:When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of... by ethbr0 on Thursday May 11, 2023 @09:37AM (#35901834)
Could see it going either way. Agricultural efficiency (in terms of person_fed : person_farming) in Europe was pretty low. So the dedicated headcount (monks) might dominate the net cost, which would make it scale more linearly with number of books.
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Re:When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of... by spacebanana7 on Thursday May 11, 2023 @09:59AM (#35902202)
The market price 1 medieval book was roughly the same price for 5 pigs according to this analysis [1]

Price of 7 books = £5 = 100s -> 14s per book / Price of 1 Pig in London = 3s

14 / 5 => roughly 5 pigs per book

Note £1 = 20s

[1] http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html

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Re:When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of... by ghaff on Thursday May 11, 2023 @10:26AM (#35902577)
Paper was also a huge cost--maybe more than the monks' labor depending upon how you want to value their real cost.
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Re:When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of... by ethbr0 on Thursday May 11, 2023 @01:41PM (#35905536)
Today I learned! Thanks!
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