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But the question is how you make the jump from tiny warring fiefdoms to bureaucratic administrative states. Neither Byzantium nor imperial China sprang into exi

by ksdale 6y ago

But the question is how you make the jump from tiny warring fiefdoms to bureaucratic administrative states. Neither Byzantium nor imperial China sprang into existence as full fledged empires.

paganel 6y ago
> warring fiefdoms to bureaucratic administrative states. As a warrior at some point you realise that you need "learned men" that can grant you legitimacy through their writings/sayings and who at the same time can help you collect taxes from the masses. For how things started in Western Europe during the Middle Ages see Adalberon, bishop of Laon [1], and his "oratores, bellatores, laboratores" triad: > He seems to be famous in French history because of a poem in which he made mention of (the) three orders in society : "oratores, bellatores, laboratores" : the clergy ("praying Church"), nobles and chivalry ("the fighting church"), and, third, the labouring people ("church of toiling"), the last one supporting the others, and all supporting the whole edifice of mankind. This idea was incorporated into the "three social orders" of the Ancien Régime in France. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adalberon_(bishop_of_Laon) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adalberon_(bishop_of_Laon)
justicezyx 6y ago
Oscar Wilder's quote "“The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.” has an underlying truth, particularly in agriculture society: such society depends on a large population to sustain itself. Prior industry revolution, agriculture is mostly a human-labor dominated activity. And the yield of the farm is mostly depends on the climate, and human-labor invested. Any small agriculture nation can easy get destroyed by a famine, or by an external roaming barbarians. Naturally, the rulers and residents of agriculture society intuitively feel that larger population is more stable and stronger. You can see this from Chinese people and their culture. They naturally likes mingling with their fellow men more than western people in much larger scale. While at the same time, they actually do not have intimate personal-level relationship between each other, beyond their direct family members. And to effectively manage a large population, without modern tech, demands a proportional bureaucracy. Then that's the logic of expanding bureaucracy. Historical China had always have this population boom and dwindle cycle on a massive scale. Records show in Han dynasty, the peak population is 50Mil, while in the 3-kingdom-era, it's 16Mil. Because the singular structure of the society is rather unable to innovate itself. And often they crack under their own weight, and got slaughtered by barbarians/foreign-invaders in an endless cycle (including the WWII). And that's one reason a lot of Chinese citizens welcomed Trump's hostility: that's an effective pressure to force the nation to innovate. And we actually see the results, for so many years, China effectively did nothing to catch up the modern IC industry. I am not saying without Trump, China wont pursue the tech independence, though. It's just that the tenancy of the society is not as innovative as the west.

by ksdale 6y ago

But the question is how you make the jump from tiny warring fiefdoms to bureaucratic administrative states. Neither Byzantium nor imperial China sprang into existence as full fledged empires.

paganel 6y ago

> warring fiefdoms to bureaucratic administrative states. As a warrior at some point you realise that you need "learned men" that can grant you legitimacy through their writings/sayings and who at the same time can help you collect taxes from the masses. For how things started in Western Europe during the Middle Ages see Adalberon, bishop of Laon [1], and his "oratores, bellatores, laboratores" triad: > He seems to be famous in French history because of a poem in which he made mention of (the) three orders in society : "oratores, bellatores, laboratores" : the clergy ("praying Church"), nobles and chivalry ("the fighting church"), and, third, the labouring people ("church of toiling"), the last one supporting the others, and all supporting the whole edifice of mankind. This idea was incorporated into the "three social orders" of the Ancien Régime in France. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adalberon_(bishop_of_Laon) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adalberon_(bishop_of_Laon)

justicezyx 6y ago

Oscar Wilder's quote "“The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.” has an underlying truth, particularly in agriculture society: such society depends on a large population to sustain itself. Prior industry revolution, agriculture is mostly a human-labor dominated activity. And the yield of the farm is mostly depends on the climate, and human-labor invested. Any small agriculture nation can easy get destroyed by a famine, or by an external roaming barbarians. Naturally, the rulers and residents of agriculture society intuitively feel that larger population is more stable and stronger. You can see this from Chinese people and their culture. They naturally likes mingling with their fellow men more than western people in much larger scale. While at the same time, they actually do not have intimate personal-level relationship between each other, beyond their direct family members. And to effectively manage a large population, without modern tech, demands a proportional bureaucracy. Then that's the logic of expanding bureaucracy. Historical China had always have this population boom and dwindle cycle on a massive scale. Records show in Han dynasty, the peak population is 50Mil, while in the 3-kingdom-era, it's 16Mil. Because the singular structure of the society is rather unable to innovate itself. And often they crack under their own weight, and got slaughtered by barbarians/foreign-invaders in an endless cycle (including the WWII). And that's one reason a lot of Chinese citizens welcomed Trump's hostility: that's an effective pressure to force the nation to innovate. And we actually see the results, for so many years, China effectively did nothing to catch up the modern IC industry. I am not saying without Trump, China wont pursue the tech independence, though. It's just that the tenancy of the society is not as innovative as the west.