6 ms·

Machiavelli: Whatever It Takes

14 points by mitchbob 6y ago

082349872349872 6y ago
> "a letter in which Niccolò describes “his ‘desperate rut’ with an old and atrociously ugly prostitute” while on mission in Verona. Lee gives the full story: tricked by low light and a bawd’s wiles, the Florentine envoy did not actually see the woman until, after sex, he lit a lamp and “nearly dropped dead on the spot.”" sounds like a scene out of the fast-forward around Goldstein's Theory and Practice. I guess that EA Blair chap may have made a shout-out to his influences?
082349872349872 6y ago
Note also that, pedantically speaking, “Florence First” (Prima Firenze) is much closer to "London First" or "Los Angeles First" than it is to Brexit or "America First", which themselves are closer to Deutschland Über Alles.
- afiori 6y ago
  During Machiavelli lifetime Florence was a nation by itself.
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    A city state. Nations weren't much of a thing before the eighteenth century. Conversely, city-states are (pace Monaco, Singapore, etc.) not much of a thing now. Within the existing nation of the US, potential city-states would be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area#Economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area#Eco... (USD 1,8T would put it between italy and canada) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Los_Angeles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Los_Angeles (USD 1,3T would put it between australia and spain) Looking at https://apps.bea.gov/iTable/drilldown.cfm?reqid=70&stepnum=40&Major_Area=7&State=7&Area=XX&TableId=501&Statistic=1&Year=2018&YearBegin=-1&Year_End=-1&Unit_Of_Measure=Levels&Rank=1&Drill=1&nRange=5 https://apps.bea.gov/iTable/drilldown.cfm?reqid=70&stepnum=4... next would be the SF bay area, with 1T putting it between indonesia and the netherlands... S'pore itself (0,4T) would be between Miami and Detroit.
    - afiori 6y ago
      But New York (city), Los Angeles, or London are nothing like states/nations at a political or social level. The difference between a Nation and a city state are size and centralization, and in the case at hand Florence as a city state was not too much smaller than its neighbours in Italy. In this context I don't really see a meaningful distinction between city state and nations.
      - 082349872349872 6y ago
        The difference I see between a city state and a nation is that in the former people belong to it by being part of the same strongly economically connected component[1], while in the latter people belong to it by being part of some granfalloon[2]. Some nations share an ethnicity, some a language, some a religion. As my country shares none of those, we've fallen back on shared historical myths and shared cultural traits, such as celebration of diversity ("il faut de tout pour faire un monde"). Consider cities in Alsace: they retained their economic identity despite intermittently swapping nations for the last couple of centuries. Returning to Machiavelli, Firenze has been under roman, Odoacer's, Ostrogothic, byzantine, lombard, carolingian, monarchic, feudal, local republican, local aristocratic, monarchic, french revolutionary, monarchic, Savoyard, and monarchic regimes before being incorporated into republican italy. I'm having trouble thinking of a nation which has stayed constant while having its cities change instead. If Detroit had an army[3] and in principle set its own foreign policy, it would be considered a country just like Singapore. Consider the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_Monaco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_Monaco , all few hundred of them, or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_Monaco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_Monaco . [1] from TFA: "... he means loyalty to Florence. He was a civil servant, serving regardless of regime; the Medici were hardly worse than many others. ... What mattered were family, friends, particularly circles of friends, lovers, the polis." [2] consider before the nation was a thing, when larger-than-city political entities were simple: all the land that currently belonged to the same monarch. [3] I'm not very familiar with the Detroit CSA, but it seems that of the local militia, at least four army companies are based in Detroit proper, so just the city proper, without land units from its periphery or the air wing at Selfridge, could probably field a larger military than Monaco.

14 points by mitchbob 6y ago

> "a letter in which Niccolò describes “his ‘desperate rut’ with an old and atrociously ugly prostitute” while on mission in Verona. Lee gives the full story: tricked by low light and a bawd’s wiles, the Florentine envoy did not actually see the woman until, after sex, he lit a lamp and “nearly dropped dead on the spot.”" sounds like a scene out of the fast-forward around Goldstein's Theory and Practice. I guess that EA Blair chap may have made a shout-out to his influences?

082349872349872 6y ago

Note also that, pedantically speaking, “Florence First” (Prima Firenze) is much closer to "London First" or "Los Angeles First" than it is to Brexit or "America First", which themselves are closer to Deutschland Über Alles.

afiori 6y ago
During Machiavelli lifetime Florence was a nation by itself.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  A city state. Nations weren't much of a thing before the eighteenth century. Conversely, city-states are (pace Monaco, Singapore, etc.) not much of a thing now. Within the existing nation of the US, potential city-states would be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area#Economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area#Eco... (USD 1,8T would put it between italy and canada) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Los_Angeles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Los_Angeles (USD 1,3T would put it between australia and spain) Looking at https://apps.bea.gov/iTable/drilldown.cfm?reqid=70&stepnum=40&Major_Area=7&State=7&Area=XX&TableId=501&Statistic=1&Year=2018&YearBegin=-1&Year_End=-1&Unit_Of_Measure=Levels&Rank=1&Drill=1&nRange=5 https://apps.bea.gov/iTable/drilldown.cfm?reqid=70&stepnum=4... next would be the SF bay area, with 1T putting it between indonesia and the netherlands... S'pore itself (0,4T) would be between Miami and Detroit.
  - afiori 6y ago
    But New York (city), Los Angeles, or London are nothing like states/nations at a political or social level. The difference between a Nation and a city state are size and centralization, and in the case at hand Florence as a city state was not too much smaller than its neighbours in Italy. In this context I don't really see a meaningful distinction between city state and nations.
    - 082349872349872 6y ago
      The difference I see between a city state and a nation is that in the former people belong to it by being part of the same strongly economically connected component[1], while in the latter people belong to it by being part of some granfalloon[2]. Some nations share an ethnicity, some a language, some a religion. As my country shares none of those, we've fallen back on shared historical myths and shared cultural traits, such as celebration of diversity ("il faut de tout pour faire un monde"). Consider cities in Alsace: they retained their economic identity despite intermittently swapping nations for the last couple of centuries. Returning to Machiavelli, Firenze has been under roman, Odoacer's, Ostrogothic, byzantine, lombard, carolingian, monarchic, feudal, local republican, local aristocratic, monarchic, french revolutionary, monarchic, Savoyard, and monarchic regimes before being incorporated into republican italy. I'm having trouble thinking of a nation which has stayed constant while having its cities change instead. If Detroit had an army[3] and in principle set its own foreign policy, it would be considered a country just like Singapore. Consider the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_Monaco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_Monaco , all few hundred of them, or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_Monaco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_Monaco . [1] from TFA: "... he means loyalty to Florence. He was a civil servant, serving regardless of regime; the Medici were hardly worse than many others. ... What mattered were family, friends, particularly circles of friends, lovers, the polis." [2] consider before the nation was a thing, when larger-than-city political entities were simple: all the land that currently belonged to the same monarch. [3] I'm not very familiar with the Detroit CSA, but it seems that of the local militia, at least four army companies are based in Detroit proper, so just the city proper, without land units from its periphery or the air wing at Selfridge, could probably field a larger military than Monaco.