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Building something meaningful doesn't absolve the sins of its construction. The Romans were very good at conquering people and levying brutal taxes, but that d

Building something meaningful doesn't absolve the sins of its construction. The Romans were very good at conquering people and levying brutal taxes, but that doesn't add value and we shouldn't pretend that it does. They were also good at civil engineering, keeping the peace, and other economic activities which do add value and we should give them credit for it. I'd love to see a historical economic discussion that tries to tease apart these factors and weigh them against each other.

988747 5y ago
> levying brutal taxes One of the reasons why Roman empire was so stable was that Roman taxes were actually lower and simpler than whatever taxes the local kings imposed previously. This makes sense if you think about it: Romans only really cared about Italy, and they didn't have to extract much resources from all the provinces to enrich Italy significantly. Previous rulers typically had only their small kingdom to tax, so they taxed it heavily.
- jjoonathan 5y ago
  Were they? > Romans only really cared about Italy Yeah, so they famously instituted for-profit tax collection: "we'll auction off the right to collect what you can!" Are you telling me that the competing individuals who were willing to bid the highest amount for this privilege were less effective at it than the kings who had preceded them? Historians often talk about Rome's "tenacity" -- the fraction of their male population they were willing to throw into the meat grinder of a failing war machine, the number of people they were willing to nail to trees when they risked their lives to complain about taxes, the lengths they were willing to go to in order to put down a tax rebellion (see: the giant earthen ramp up the walls of Masada) and so on. Rome is often credited with being more tenacious than their adversaries. It's not impossible that taxes were generally lower, but I tend to suspect there are some serious qualifiers, like "in Italy," or "during peacetime," or "for those who the Romans were trying to make a positive example of."
  - zipswitch 5y ago
    There is, naturally, a Roman proverb along the same lines: qui vincit non est victor nisi victus fatebur. It translate s as "The victor is not victorious if the vanquished does not consider himself so."
  - Tuna-Fish 5y ago
    The qualifier is "during the Roman Empire". The height of power of the publicani, and the period when they did most of their excesses as tax farmers, was essentially the end of of the Republic (and a few years in the beginning of the Empire). As the Caesars consolidated power and established a centralized buraucracy, they restricted the authority of the publicani.
- Tuna-Fish 5y ago
  ... er, eventually. Rome tried many different kinds of tax policies in it's territories. The relatively light touch they finally ended up was essentially a reaction of first trying a policy so maximally extractive that it could be described as genocidal.
patrec 5y ago
> The Romans were very good at conquering people and levying brutal taxes, but that doesn't add value and we shouldn't pretend that it does. How do you think the nice things you seem to enjoy about Rome spread around?
cracrecry 5y ago
By that measuring stick, you must have a really bad opinion of the USA because they are what they are from conquering most of their territories and exterminating its native population, and that was done yesterday. The biggest country in the World, Russia did that expansion in 1500, and Germany wanted to replicate the Americans in WWII. Is the prosperity of the US independent from having a virgin country with bast resources and no population? Certainly it is not, (North)Americans could have a big number of children to replace the exterminated native population and exploit its bast resources and automate everything because there were few workers to do the job. In other places of the world automation was more expensive(China, India) than just using workers, so it did not happen. Population skyrocketing meant a healthy young population and economy to prosper. People got rich killing buffaloes or cutting down millennial forrest or gold(that had been extracted and depleted on other parts of the world for milenia) and not to talk about Industry being financed by(very expensive at the time) sugar and cotton cultivated by slaves in the South.
- tjr225 5y ago
  > By that measuring stick, you must have a really bad opinion of the USA because they are what they are from conquering most of their territories and exterminating its native population There have been large movements in the USA directed exactly at this multiple times over the last 3 decades. How would this be remarkable at all if the grandparent felt that way?

988747 5y ago

> levying brutal taxes One of the reasons why Roman empire was so stable was that Roman taxes were actually lower and simpler than whatever taxes the local kings imposed previously. This makes sense if you think about it: Romans only really cared about Italy, and they didn't have to extract much resources from all the provinces to enrich Italy significantly. Previous rulers typically had only their small kingdom to tax, so they taxed it heavily.

jjoonathan 5y ago
Were they? > Romans only really cared about Italy Yeah, so they famously instituted for-profit tax collection: "we'll auction off the right to collect what you can!" Are you telling me that the competing individuals who were willing to bid the highest amount for this privilege were less effective at it than the kings who had preceded them? Historians often talk about Rome's "tenacity" -- the fraction of their male population they were willing to throw into the meat grinder of a failing war machine, the number of people they were willing to nail to trees when they risked their lives to complain about taxes, the lengths they were willing to go to in order to put down a tax rebellion (see: the giant earthen ramp up the walls of Masada) and so on. Rome is often credited with being more tenacious than their adversaries. It's not impossible that taxes were generally lower, but I tend to suspect there are some serious qualifiers, like "in Italy," or "during peacetime," or "for those who the Romans were trying to make a positive example of."
- zipswitch 5y ago
  There is, naturally, a Roman proverb along the same lines: qui vincit non est victor nisi victus fatebur. It translate s as "The victor is not victorious if the vanquished does not consider himself so."
- Tuna-Fish 5y ago
  The qualifier is "during the Roman Empire". The height of power of the publicani, and the period when they did most of their excesses as tax farmers, was essentially the end of of the Republic (and a few years in the beginning of the Empire). As the Caesars consolidated power and established a centralized buraucracy, they restricted the authority of the publicani.
Tuna-Fish 5y ago
... er, eventually. Rome tried many different kinds of tax policies in it's territories. The relatively light touch they finally ended up was essentially a reaction of first trying a policy so maximally extractive that it could be described as genocidal.

patrec 5y ago

> The Romans were very good at conquering people and levying brutal taxes, but that doesn't add value and we shouldn't pretend that it does. How do you think the nice things you seem to enjoy about Rome spread around?

cracrecry 5y ago

By that measuring stick, you must have a really bad opinion of the USA because they are what they are from conquering most of their territories and exterminating its native population, and that was done yesterday. The biggest country in the World, Russia did that expansion in 1500, and Germany wanted to replicate the Americans in WWII. Is the prosperity of the US independent from having a virgin country with bast resources and no population? Certainly it is not, (North)Americans could have a big number of children to replace the exterminated native population and exploit its bast resources and automate everything because there were few workers to do the job. In other places of the world automation was more expensive(China, India) than just using workers, so it did not happen. Population skyrocketing meant a healthy young population and economy to prosper. People got rich killing buffaloes or cutting down millennial forrest or gold(that had been extracted and depleted on other parts of the world for milenia) and not to talk about Industry being financed by(very expensive at the time) sugar and cotton cultivated by slaves in the South.

tjr225 5y ago
> By that measuring stick, you must have a really bad opinion of the USA because they are what they are from conquering most of their territories and exterminating its native population There have been large movements in the USA directed exactly at this multiple times over the last 3 decades. How would this be remarkable at all if the grandparent felt that way?