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States with this amount of obstructive ossification, such as the Byzantine Empire or Austria-Hungary, don't generally stand the test of time. Just before Austr

States with this amount of obstructive ossification, such as the Byzantine Empire or Austria-Hungary, don't generally stand the test of time. Just before Austria-Hungary's collapse following WWI, the collection of taxes in Dalmatia (now Croatia) cost twice as much as it raised [0]. We still use the word Byzantine today to describe systems that are "complicated, secret and difficult to change" [1]. I don't know what this could mean at the city or county level. Keep an eye out for wayward Sultans and Allied powers? [0] https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-and-late-austrian-empire https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-and-late-austrian-empire [1] https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/byzantine https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/englis...

dragonwriter 5y ago
> States with this amount of obstructive ossification, such as the Byzantine Empire or Austria-Hungary, don't generally stand the test of time. Even if you only count from the time it didn’t share an Emporer with the West, rather than viewing it as a linear continuation of the Roman State, looking at the Eastern Roman Empire as somehow a state that did a substandard job of standing the test of time is, well, implicitly setting a really high bar, since even counted from the partition its, what, the second longest lasting state in history?
autocorr 5y ago
While I totally agree with the point you're trying to make, to be fair to the Byzantines, having a continuous state structure for a near millennium (500-1200 CE) is actually the near opposite of ossification leading to speedy collapse. To Western Europeans coming from the very loose state structure of feudalism, the fact that the Byzantine Empire was effectively a modern state (similar to ancient China) was practically incomprehensible to them. Hence the phrase! On the flip-side, the level of institutional capacity let the Romans and Byzantines ride out incompetent Emperors fairly well compared to feudal states that would quickly disintegrate with one bad roll of the "off-spring lottery".
- mkr-hn 5y ago
  This is one reason I'm wary of any big structural changes to the US tripartite system. "Abolish the Senate!" or "abolish the Supreme court!" sounds like a fun adventure in governance but, regardless of personal political tilt, the system gives people time to organize against bad policy. It's hard to get policy I like, but the same processes slow policy I don't like down enough to organize against it. Even the most blatantly tyrannical presidents through history hit a wall of bureaucracy. It's slow, but people like me tend to get murdered when tyrants take over, so I'll take it over a quick changing system that can easily turn against me.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> States with this amount of obstructive ossification, such as the Byzantine Empire or Austria-Hungary, don't generally stand the test of time. Even if you only count from the time it didn’t share an Emporer with the West, rather than viewing it as a linear continuation of the Roman State, looking at the Eastern Roman Empire as somehow a state that did a substandard job of standing the test of time is, well, implicitly setting a really high bar, since even counted from the partition its, what, the second longest lasting state in history?

autocorr 5y ago

While I totally agree with the point you're trying to make, to be fair to the Byzantines, having a continuous state structure for a near millennium (500-1200 CE) is actually the near opposite of ossification leading to speedy collapse. To Western Europeans coming from the very loose state structure of feudalism, the fact that the Byzantine Empire was effectively a modern state (similar to ancient China) was practically incomprehensible to them. Hence the phrase! On the flip-side, the level of institutional capacity let the Romans and Byzantines ride out incompetent Emperors fairly well compared to feudal states that would quickly disintegrate with one bad roll of the "off-spring lottery".

mkr-hn 5y ago
This is one reason I'm wary of any big structural changes to the US tripartite system. "Abolish the Senate!" or "abolish the Supreme court!" sounds like a fun adventure in governance but, regardless of personal political tilt, the system gives people time to organize against bad policy. It's hard to get policy I like, but the same processes slow policy I don't like down enough to organize against it. Even the most blatantly tyrannical presidents through history hit a wall of bureaucracy. It's slow, but people like me tend to get murdered when tyrants take over, so I'll take it over a quick changing system that can easily turn against me.