Ogmog said:
greed
Greed common throughout all the mammals.
PermeateFree said:
https://youtu.be/rStL7niR7gs
I can watch that now. I finally got computer sound back today.
Hey, this video is good! Very good. Thanks PF. Even more that that, it’s brilliant. It’s mostly what I would call “obvious”, but presented in a neat logical package that was not at all easy to put together.
And humorous.
I’ll have to think about “taxes in democracies are low in comparison to dictatorships”. That’s not obvious to me, but may be correct. Taxes in that past were way lower than those at present, and dictatorships in the past were way commoner than at present. Which is opposite. But comparing past and present has its own problems.
“Democracies are better places to live than dictatorships”. Again, not obvious. A democracy has more key holders to pay that a dictatorship does, an order of magnitude more key holders, so has a minimum tax level way above that needed for the minimal tax level in a dictatorship. On the other hand, as the video says, a dictator is not limited to taking the minimal tax, they can push the tax up as high as they like. It’s the high minimal tax level of democracies that forces democracies to invest in education, hospitals, roads etc. Which is a good feature of democracy. But if a dictator is smart (such as the emirs of the UAE and of some nearby countries) then they will realise that investment in education, hospitals, roads etc. increases the long term tax income for them, too.
“If the wealth of the nation is mostly dug out of the ground, it’s a terrible place to live”. Again needs thought. Australia being a case in point.
“Starving illiterate peasants don’t make good revolutionaries”. Again needs thought. Plenty of revolutions have been started and run by, and more often run for, starving illiterate peasants.
A corollary of what is being said about dictatorships is that there’s really only one important key, the military. See “revolutionaries only storm palaces when the military lets them”. Agree totally with this statement from the video.
“A revolt in a democracy would take away the very source of wealth. The productivity of the people”. That makes sense, I hadn’t thought of that.
“In a stable democracy that’s a terrible gamble”. Needs more thought. It’s true for military coups of course. But not so much for a political coup, as happened in Russia and the start of Nazi Germany and Maoist China and Northern Ireland. An elected political transition within the system in a democratic government can be a big gamble as well, for instance count the number of prominent powerful people who lost their jobs under Trump.
“When democracies fall, these are usually the reasons”. I wouldn’t say “usually”, sometimes it is race related as in Sri Lanka, Rwanda, Fiji. None is associated with the sudden discovery of more natural resources. Some revolutions are associated with control of the news media, and that wasn’t mentioned in the video.
Overall, very much like this video, and very much agree with everything said. My quibbles above are minor.
Ian said:
Moving up to city-state scale. There are enforcers. There are mercenaries. There are generals. There are spies. There are oracles. There are salesmen. The corrupt now fit into the system instead of trying to destroy it. There are bodyguards. The emergence of secret societies. Farming. The origin of territory. Slaves. Taxes on farming are levied through religion and pay for feasts. Hospitals. Brothels.
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Yes, farming followed directly on from spies, oracles and salesmen.
That’s not a bad hypothesis. One possibility is that the first farming was farming of narcotics.
Farming of narcotics can be intimately associated with spies, oracles and salesmen.