8 ms·

That's not true, as evidenced by many, many empires, past and present (Spanish, British, Roman, American) that spanned more than a month of travel. What they'r

by manv1 4y ago

That's not true, as evidenced by many, many empires, past and present (Spanish, British, Roman, American) that spanned more than a month of travel. What they're trying to say is that the span of control is limited by the ability to project power/information to the extremities of the empire. That makes sense, but the way they measure the limits is wrong. The way the empires get around this problem is by putting people who have drunk the kool-aid in positions of power. While this can lead to abuse (ie: the Spanish), it can also lead to surprising amounts of consistency (all of the above). Empires that fail are empires that require centralized decision making...and that's due to the communication limits posited and the generally poor quality of the staff in those types of organizations.

derefr 4y ago
> The way the empires get around this problem is by putting people who have drunk the kool-aid in positions of power. I always understood the aphorism as taking delegation of power into account — it's "one month of travel" not because of the needs of top-down command-and-control, but rather because delegated power that's more than a month away falls past some threshold of latency required to "keep them in hand." The aphorism might make more sense flipped in perspective and inverted: as a magistrate/governor, if you see your colonists suffering under the tyranny of a remote power, you'd better be at least a month away from that power to be able to quietly rebel under the nose of that remote power. Otherwise a quiet rebellion will never work — any closer, and they'll be constantly watching/auditing you. At a closer distance, if you want to rebel, the only option is an active, bloody rebellion — and if that's unpalatable to you, then you'd better just not rebel!
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  There’s an old Chinese proverb for this that’s pretty succinct: “The mountains are tall and the emperor is far away.”
notch656c 4y ago
>centralized decision making Which bodes poorly for increasing federal power in the US.
- malfist 4y ago
  What part of the US is more than a month's travel from Washington DC?
  - prottog 4y ago
    The GP already pointed out that the "month's travel" rule doesn't apply in all cases. The poster you're replying to does have a point about increasing amounts of decisions being made at the federal level in this country, as opposed to state or local levels closer to the people affected.
- ssnistfajen 4y ago
  Hello? This is year 2023, not 1542. Communication happens at the speed of light and the only bottleneck is the human processing said communication. Obsessively devolving power to nesting lower levels of decision making bodies is just about the worst thing to do when technology has increasingly enabled organizations that are slim at the top to effectively manage complex systems at scale instead.
  - notch656c 4y ago
    Can you explain why more local decision making must be the worst thing to do?
    - ssnistfajen 4y ago
      Humans are the biggest bottleneck in orgs. More devolved power = more orgs = more humans = more gridlock.
  - wolverine876 4y ago
    The local decision-makers know much better the local needs: Local people can communicate with local decision-makers, they have far more experience with local needs (lifetimes worth), and human cognitive capacity is limited - nobody single federal decision maker can learn and know what all the local mayors know. Nobody a thousand miles away can know my neighborhood the way I do. That's a reason decision-making in business is often pushed to the lowest level - the central people can't know as much.
jimmytidey 4y ago
"Drunk the cool aid..." In the UK case I've heard the idea that the Publc School system emerged for exactly this reason. ('Public' schools being the most elite schools in the UK). A relatively small number of schools shaped a class of people who all thought in exactly the same way, so they would behave predictably even when far away and in a new context. Public schools, are not coincidentally noted for a focus on 'playing by the rules' and 'fair play', as inculcated through sport. Not to mention never breaking your word. All handy traits if your goal is breeding administrators you can trust without supervision.
- Balgair 4y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSGWoXDFM64 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSGWoXDFM64
  - jimmytidey 4y ago
    Amazing reference!
  - unsui 4y ago
    I've never seen the source, but was reminded of this excellent homage: - https://youtu.be/BQXbbWVJ4sA?t=133 https://youtu.be/BQXbbWVJ4sA?t=133
  - jfk13 4y ago
    For another awesome rendition, try the Simon Gallagher production, with Derek Metzger as the Major-General; the entire show is (in my opinion) utterly fantastic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DJaNbD6R2s&list=PLXRhW-jVlFrXnHp5YLG_KKSHwxjJW_YrG https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DJaNbD6R2s&list=PLXRhW-jVlF... (shame about the video quality, but it's still well worth watching)
- notch656c 4y ago
  Being trustworthy seems like an important trait in the older agrarian societies that depended on long-term planning and exchange, whether you were a farmer or an administrator.
UncleMeat 4y ago
History of Empire, History of Travel Technology, and History of Communications Technology are huuuuge fields with tons of professionals working today. I'm a little concerned about huge claims being made about empire by a Stanford MBA and a community of people mostly experienced in software and tech. The historians would love for you to read their books! AHA is literally happening right now! Go to bars in Philly and talk to them!
- Karrot_Kream 4y ago
  You don't even need to talk to someone. Pick up any book on European colonialism, the Roman Empire, Japanese imperialism, Chinese Imperial dynasties, medieval South Asia, pre-Islamic Persian empires, etc etc. Reddit's r/askhistorians is a great reference for sources on the more popular topics.
- wolverine876 4y ago
  I always look first for the reason I should trust them (how frustrating to look after reading a long article!). Don't forget they are also a highly trained engineer in SV, and made products used by lots of people today. Why not collaborate with a historian? > Go to bars in Philly and talk to them! ? What happens in bars in Philly? Nobody does it elsewhere?
  - UncleMeat 4y ago
    The American Historical Association Annual Conference (colloquially, AHA) is happening in Philly this weekend. Academics like to go out to drink after a day of talks. Mostly tongue-in-cheek. I don't actually think the best way to meet historians is to go to random bars in the cities hosting major conferences.
  - dcow 4y ago
    https://www.historians.org/annual-meeting https://www.historians.org/annual-meeting
- renewiltord 4y ago
  Yeah, but software engineers are better at many things than professionals in their fields. The classic example is Jeff Bezos and gang stopping their companies from flying people to/from China a month before US authorities reacted to COVID-19. They also cancelled conferences two weeks before shelter-in-place and asked people to work from home. Tech professionals said that masks would help in the early stages while the US Surgeon General said "Masks don't work!" and Dr. Fauci said that you shouldn't be wearing any. This is the magic of tech: the people there are there for comparative advantage. They would be better than epidemiologists at epidemiology and better than public health experts at public health. But they're much better at tech than epidemiologists and public health experts are at tech, and so they go to tech. In a similar vein, I would be unsurprised to find that new insights about history come from technologists. Of course, I don't think this is one.
nickelcitymario 4y ago
Empires that expand beyond the 30 day travel limit tend to fizzle out and crumble. Today, of course, we travel the whole planet roughly 30 times in that time frame. So it's not a limit on Earth anymore. But it was definitely a problem for all previous empires. The ones you listed prove the point. They all crumbled when they expanded too far. The reason is kinda obvious: If it takes 30 days to travel, it takes 60 days to travel there and back. Which means there is, at minimum, a 60 day delay between the start of a rebellion or war and your ability to respond to it. That's assuming you were ready for the news the moment you got it. Good luck with that. It's just one of many reasons why wars are won more by logistics than bullets. So I think it raises two really interesting questions: (1) Here on Earth, the elimination of this limit is pretty recent. Should we anticipate an empire that spans the globe truly taking over? (No need to sarcastically comment about America today.) (2) How does this impact space travel? Based on current and foreseeable technology, there's no planet we can regularly reach in that amount of time, because at any given time, the other planet could be on the other side of the solar system. Can we really colonize new areas if we can't reach them faster than 30 days? Maybe we can. Communication is nearly instant (relatively speaking), and there are no enemy combatants to deal with. But they'll still be stuck on their own if any unforeseen emergencies arise. Those never happen, right? Would we most likely see the formation of a new nation on each planet we colonize?
- deleted 4y ago
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- mcguire 4y ago
  Can I introduce you to the British Empire, pre-steamships: https://www.britishempire.co.uk/maproom/sailingtimes.htm https://www.britishempire.co.uk/maproom/sailingtimes.htm Or in 1914: https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter1/the-setting-of-global-transportation-systems/travel-time-between-london-world-1914/ https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter1/the-setting... (post-steamships) The Spanish Empire was probably worse at its height.
  - nickelcitymario 4y ago
    All those areas beyond 1 month travel? No longer a part of the empire. They kicked off the American revolution and the Indian independence movement. So yes, it's possible to create an empire beyond a month travel. But I maintain that no one has held onto one, which is the point the author was making I believe.
Bouncingsoul1 4y ago
It is for the Romans though, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2609654 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2609654 as for the others I'm a bit sceptical but haven't to knowlegde about them either
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- deleted 4y ago
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by manv1 4y ago

derefr 4y ago

> The way the empires get around this problem is by putting people who have drunk the kool-aid in positions of power. I always understood the aphorism as taking delegation of power into account — it's "one month of travel" not because of the needs of top-down command-and-control, but rather because delegated power that's more than a month away falls past some threshold of latency required to "keep them in hand." The aphorism might make more sense flipped in perspective and inverted: as a magistrate/governor, if you see your colonists suffering under the tyranny of a remote power, you'd better be at least a month away from that power to be able to quietly rebel under the nose of that remote power. Otherwise a quiet rebellion will never work — any closer, and they'll be constantly watching/auditing you. At a closer distance, if you want to rebel, the only option is an active, bloody rebellion — and if that's unpalatable to you, then you'd better just not rebel!

bobthepanda 4y ago
There’s an old Chinese proverb for this that’s pretty succinct: “The mountains are tall and the emperor is far away.”

notch656c 4y ago

>centralized decision making Which bodes poorly for increasing federal power in the US.

malfist 4y ago
What part of the US is more than a month's travel from Washington DC?
- prottog 4y ago
  The GP already pointed out that the "month's travel" rule doesn't apply in all cases. The poster you're replying to does have a point about increasing amounts of decisions being made at the federal level in this country, as opposed to state or local levels closer to the people affected.
ssnistfajen 4y ago
Hello? This is year 2023, not 1542. Communication happens at the speed of light and the only bottleneck is the human processing said communication. Obsessively devolving power to nesting lower levels of decision making bodies is just about the worst thing to do when technology has increasingly enabled organizations that are slim at the top to effectively manage complex systems at scale instead.
- notch656c 4y ago
  Can you explain why more local decision making must be the worst thing to do?
  - ssnistfajen 4y ago
    Humans are the biggest bottleneck in orgs. More devolved power = more orgs = more humans = more gridlock.
- wolverine876 4y ago
  The local decision-makers know much better the local needs: Local people can communicate with local decision-makers, they have far more experience with local needs (lifetimes worth), and human cognitive capacity is limited - nobody single federal decision maker can learn and know what all the local mayors know. Nobody a thousand miles away can know my neighborhood the way I do. That's a reason decision-making in business is often pushed to the lowest level - the central people can't know as much.

jimmytidey 4y ago

"Drunk the cool aid..." In the UK case I've heard the idea that the Publc School system emerged for exactly this reason. ('Public' schools being the most elite schools in the UK). A relatively small number of schools shaped a class of people who all thought in exactly the same way, so they would behave predictably even when far away and in a new context. Public schools, are not coincidentally noted for a focus on 'playing by the rules' and 'fair play', as inculcated through sport. Not to mention never breaking your word. All handy traits if your goal is breeding administrators you can trust without supervision.

Balgair 4y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSGWoXDFM64 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSGWoXDFM64
- jimmytidey 4y ago
  Amazing reference!
- unsui 4y ago
  I've never seen the source, but was reminded of this excellent homage: - https://youtu.be/BQXbbWVJ4sA?t=133 https://youtu.be/BQXbbWVJ4sA?t=133
- jfk13 4y ago
  For another awesome rendition, try the Simon Gallagher production, with Derek Metzger as the Major-General; the entire show is (in my opinion) utterly fantastic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DJaNbD6R2s&list=PLXRhW-jVlFrXnHp5YLG_KKSHwxjJW_YrG https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DJaNbD6R2s&list=PLXRhW-jVlF... (shame about the video quality, but it's still well worth watching)
notch656c 4y ago
Being trustworthy seems like an important trait in the older agrarian societies that depended on long-term planning and exchange, whether you were a farmer or an administrator.

UncleMeat 4y ago

History of Empire, History of Travel Technology, and History of Communications Technology are huuuuge fields with tons of professionals working today. I'm a little concerned about huge claims being made about empire by a Stanford MBA and a community of people mostly experienced in software and tech. The historians would love for you to read their books! AHA is literally happening right now! Go to bars in Philly and talk to them!

Karrot_Kream 4y ago
You don't even need to talk to someone. Pick up any book on European colonialism, the Roman Empire, Japanese imperialism, Chinese Imperial dynasties, medieval South Asia, pre-Islamic Persian empires, etc etc. Reddit's r/askhistorians is a great reference for sources on the more popular topics.
wolverine876 4y ago
I always look first for the reason I should trust them (how frustrating to look after reading a long article!). Don't forget they are also a highly trained engineer in SV, and made products used by lots of people today. Why not collaborate with a historian? > Go to bars in Philly and talk to them! ? What happens in bars in Philly? Nobody does it elsewhere?
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  The American Historical Association Annual Conference (colloquially, AHA) is happening in Philly this weekend. Academics like to go out to drink after a day of talks. Mostly tongue-in-cheek. I don't actually think the best way to meet historians is to go to random bars in the cities hosting major conferences.
- dcow 4y ago
  https://www.historians.org/annual-meeting https://www.historians.org/annual-meeting
renewiltord 4y ago
Yeah, but software engineers are better at many things than professionals in their fields. The classic example is Jeff Bezos and gang stopping their companies from flying people to/from China a month before US authorities reacted to COVID-19. They also cancelled conferences two weeks before shelter-in-place and asked people to work from home. Tech professionals said that masks would help in the early stages while the US Surgeon General said "Masks don't work!" and Dr. Fauci said that you shouldn't be wearing any. This is the magic of tech: the people there are there for comparative advantage. They would be better than epidemiologists at epidemiology and better than public health experts at public health. But they're much better at tech than epidemiologists and public health experts are at tech, and so they go to tech. In a similar vein, I would be unsurprised to find that new insights about history come from technologists. Of course, I don't think this is one.

nickelcitymario 4y ago

Empires that expand beyond the 30 day travel limit tend to fizzle out and crumble. Today, of course, we travel the whole planet roughly 30 times in that time frame. So it's not a limit on Earth anymore. But it was definitely a problem for all previous empires. The ones you listed prove the point. They all crumbled when they expanded too far. The reason is kinda obvious: If it takes 30 days to travel, it takes 60 days to travel there and back. Which means there is, at minimum, a 60 day delay between the start of a rebellion or war and your ability to respond to it. That's assuming you were ready for the news the moment you got it. Good luck with that. It's just one of many reasons why wars are won more by logistics than bullets. So I think it raises two really interesting questions: (1) Here on Earth, the elimination of this limit is pretty recent. Should we anticipate an empire that spans the globe truly taking over? (No need to sarcastically comment about America today.) (2) How does this impact space travel? Based on current and foreseeable technology, there's no planet we can regularly reach in that amount of time, because at any given time, the other planet could be on the other side of the solar system. Can we really colonize new areas if we can't reach them faster than 30 days? Maybe we can. Communication is nearly instant (relatively speaking), and there are no enemy combatants to deal with. But they'll still be stuck on their own if any unforeseen emergencies arise. Those never happen, right? Would we most likely see the formation of a new nation on each planet we colonize?

deleted 4y ago
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mcguire 4y ago
Can I introduce you to the British Empire, pre-steamships: https://www.britishempire.co.uk/maproom/sailingtimes.htm https://www.britishempire.co.uk/maproom/sailingtimes.htm Or in 1914: https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter1/the-setting-of-global-transportation-systems/travel-time-between-london-world-1914/ https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter1/the-setting... (post-steamships) The Spanish Empire was probably worse at its height.
- nickelcitymario 4y ago
  All those areas beyond 1 month travel? No longer a part of the empire. They kicked off the American revolution and the Indian independence movement. So yes, it's possible to create an empire beyond a month travel. But I maintain that no one has held onto one, which is the point the author was making I believe.

Bouncingsoul1 4y ago

It is for the Romans though, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2609654 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2609654 as for the others I'm a bit sceptical but haven't to knowlegde about them either

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