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The Italian city-states as a distant mirror
- Slava_Propanei 4y ago[dead]
- greatgib 4y agoI really don't understand what is going on with the top page of HN. At the time of this message, this link is in third position with only 5 points. It is an philosophical economic/historical éditorial piece. Probably not too bad as a thesis, and a little bit of interesting for curiosity, but a long a little bit boring post with nothing particularly thrilling, or related to hacker news main interests. Looks like a lot like long NY posts, not so interesting, that we see posted regularly.
- zeckalpha 4y agoThere's been connections between this community and the history of Italy since before HN was a thing. You may be interested in pg's Hackers and Painters.
- pelasaco 4y agoIt's matter of taste. I prefer this kind of article that those about "how to make your product annoying through gamification to guarantee eternal growth to your company"
- h2odragon 4y ago"Quirky" things tend to happen on weekends. In this case I will guess that the upvotes / time were more positive than anything else; there being few people reading through /newest early this morning.
- inglor_cz 4y agoI don't particularly agree with that article, but I find it more interesting than many others that landed up on the top page. The hacker community is defined, amongst others, by its very diverse field of interests.
- santiagobasulto 4y agoIt's an interesting piece. It fails to mention the North-Western side of Italy, with the duchy of Piedmont/Savoia and then Kingdom of Sardinia. Pretty strong and wealthy region altogether.
- AstixAndBelix 4y ago- Italian city-states had a level of antagonism towards each other that is not found in 2020 Europe. The amount of freedom europeans have today to travel and work and do business in the EU is incomparable - Armies in those times in Italy were mainly composed of mercenaries. Again, incomparable to the state of european ones. There was no such thing back then like the joint exercise and shared equipment and tactics between NATO countries. - Comparing the role of the podesta` or signorie with central banks or, I suppose, the bureaucracy of the EU does not make much sense. I believe this article to be very poorly thought out and the author just wants to force a parallel because he might have read an interesting book about the subject.
- icegreentea2 4y agoYeah, I'm really trying to figure out what the parallels are - especially since the biggest take away stated (the dynamism created by having competing smaller states has a downside of being relative vulnerable to external pressure from large unified blocs) clearly doesn't quite hold. Modern Europe has two-ish major (EU and NATO-ish) supra-national systems that are notionally designed specifically to bind European states together to help resist and compete against these external pressures (though obviously NATO comes at the cost of binding together along with one of the large external forces to buffer against others). I guess the message might be that the EU is important for Europe? I dunno. Like it's not exactly wrong, but I don't think it's a particularly interesting point... I guess it's probably interesting to consider that the title (and article ending) is referencing a Tuchman book from 1978.
- dash2 4y agoYou're right about the antagonism - though the long run history of Europe shows plenty of that. I don't believe you're correct that because of it, citizens could not travel between Italian states. Plenty of famous artists did so. I do point out that NATO and the EU are two key differences between then and now. I also compare the signorie with "elected autocrats", in that they take real power while preserving the façade of democratic or republican institutions. Does that make more sense?
- analyst74 4y agoHistory may not repeat, but it rhymes. Great empires all eventually fall because its citizens started to see each other as enemies more than allies. That being said, the narrative is also written by victors in the eyes of the ruling class. So take them with a grain of salt. For example, America was only a symbol of freedom for those fled Europe, not much for those who were here before or shipped from Africa.
- Swizec 4y ago> written by victors in the eyes of the ruling class One interesting artefact of growing up in the European … what word do you use for a nation ruled by a foreign upper-class from 800 AD to 1991 (Slovenia)? … is that you get a strongly ingrained cultural instinct that ”The government or ruling class is not for you, they are for themselves”. Until very recently, and some would argue even now, our rulers never had our best interests at heart. For most of our history we were peasants to be exploited. Our great history lessons aren’t about conquest, they are about peasant revolts seeking basic human rights. We weren’t even allowed school in our native language until the 1800’s. And you learn that governments change, the name of your province and the country it belongs to comes and goes, but the people stay. edit: Since 1800 my city has been part of - Austrian Empire, Illyrian Provinces (Napoleon), Austro-Hungary, State of Slovenes Croats and Serbs, Kingdom of Serbs Croats and Slovenes, Yugoslavia 1, Italy, Germany, Yugoslavia 2, Slovenia. That’s 10 countries in 223 years.
- rajin444 4y ago> Great empires all eventually fall because its citizens started to see each other as enemies more than allies. This has proved true countless times along with the age of an empire spanning roughly 250 years. Other signs also include glorification of entertainers (lack of heroes who actually improve the culture), political infighting, and desecration of the empires history/heroes. > For example, America was only a symbol of freedom for those fled Europe, not much for those who were here before or shipped from Africa. America’s 250th birthday is fast approaching.
- nine_k 4y agoEmpires stay empires in the original sense only when there is a core where people are privileged, and colonies where people are exploited and lack rights. Roman Empire stayed like that for a long time (even Latin rights were introduced relatively late), Russian Empire had a lot of that, and British Empire was practically an epitome of that. I don't see how the modern US is comparable: equality is formally enshrined in the Constitution, and whatever inequality exists is delineated more by ethnic / cultural lines than by geography of birth or living, driven by private xenophobia, not institutions.
- anovikov 4y agoWhat's even more important, antagonism and competition between European states is a main driving factor of European success. China destroyed itself and faced a century of humiliation (in fact at last 1.5 centuries, it's been a pathetic shithole by 1835 and still was in 1985), exactly because it had none of that, but a strong centralised government with nothing that could seriously threaten it. Preserving the status quo has become a lot more important than progress, and they found themselves at the very bottom of global food chain before they realised. In the Western world, we have a very acute perception of importance of all kinds of competition, and regularly get examples of how ugly things turn if it is thwarted. So, our disunity is our strength and our defining factor, not our weakness.
- jgeada 4y agoFunny because at corporation level competition is almost gone, and too big to fail makes most of the behemoths immune to consequences for bad decisions. And yet any time people want to enforce antitrust we get astroturfing about too much regulation.
- anovikov 4y agoAnd yet top rich lists are almost entirely made of new names. Few people are rich because they were born into it - fewer than ever before. Which suggests competition is still very much alive, we are further from "feudal" society than ever before.
- wongarsu 4y agoMaybe it's more accurate to say "few super rich people were born super rich". Competition seems healthy in the upper 10% of society. For those having less than that it looks a lot less egalitarian though.
- inglor_cz 4y ago"For those having less than that it looks a lot less egalitarian though." Does it still hold when you look outside the US? Wealth relations have certainly changed a lot in Europe since the Iron Curtain fell. I remember Poland suffering from shortage of pretty much everything (in 1989, the shops were empty and your only recourse was the black market), nowadays they seem to be building more skyscrapers than the rest of the continent together.
- juve1996 4y ago> (Paradoxically, Russia’s woes at the hands of Ukraine might be bad news for democracy, because they suggest that this trend has strengthened: so far, Russia’s advantage in numbers has been offset by Ukraine’s more advanced doctrine and NATO’s better kit.) In the long run, maybe the material basis for representative democracy has fallen away. I find this claim to not make much sense. A technological power + more people would be stronger than just a technological power.
- nine_k 4y agoTechnological advantage + barely enough people overpowered lack of relevant technology + lots of people many times in history. Cortez in Mexico and Pizarro in Peru are two best-known examples.
- juve1996 4y agoI'm not arguing that. Technology can make smaller forces stronger. But it can also make larger forces stronger. Technology + people loses to the same technology + more people. If Ukraine had more people, the war would be going much more favorably, for example.
- nine_k 4y agoRoughly, if you have much more people than guns, these people, however brave, don't have any more guns to man, and making them fight with spears is pointless. A technology makes more people stronger only if it can be scaled; Ukraine in particular is strained more by things like the number of 155 mm shells, HIMARS rockets, advanced tanks than by the number of willing infantrymen, as far as I can tell from reporting. A small group with an advanced coercion tech subduing a larger group that lack it is just a very common scenario, sadly. Modern technology though becomes more and more affordable and scalable, potentially empowering the oppressed: say, off-the-shelf "big toy" drones made some difference in the Ukraine war.
- juve1996 4y ago
- localplume 4y ago[dead]
- photochemsyn 4y agoThe first paragraph of this article is not very convincing. The history of Europe over the past couple centuries is mostly about the rise and fall of industrial-based global empires - the French and British imperial agenda in particular dominated much of the 19th century, often in competition with Russia, and the rise German imperial ambitions in the early 20th century (in particular, I'd say, German plans to move in on the Middle East oil zones where Britain and France had been established for some times) set the stage for World Wars One and Two. With the destruction of Europe at the end of World War II, and the downfall of the Japanese imperial dream in the Pacific, the stage was set for two new great imperial powers to stuggle to divide up the world between them - American vs. the Soviet Union. By 1954 the last remnants of the British and French Empire had mostly been consigned to the dustbins of history, and although remnants persisted for decades afterwards, as in Vietnam, Algeria, etc., it was clear the struggle for control of global resources (such as Middle Eastern oil) now was dominated by Soviet-American conflict (with Vietnam in the 1960s and Afghanistan in the 1980s involving American and Soviet soldiers fighting proxy forces supplied by the opposing side). While there was a lull after the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the fact that NATO persisted to encroach eastward up towards Russian borders then set the stage for the new outbreak of war between these aging 'great powers' in Ukraine (which is quite like 80's Afghanistan/ 60's Vietam, only in Europe). Anyone claiming the primary motivation in this record conflict had anything to do with fighting for democracy or promoting socialism should be laughed out of the room. This was all about control of mineral, oil, agricultural and similar resources and, often underappreciated, of the cash flows arising from those resources (aka petrodollar recycling on the American side). The propagandists would like to promote a story of good vs. evil but it's really just a story of two greedy thugs fighting over terriotory, not so different than the organized crime cartels portrayed in The Godfather and similar popular Hollywood movies. As far as Ukraine today, any informed observer can see that the real prize in this conflict is control of access to the lucrative European energy market, a fight dating back to 2003 or so when Putin broke with Wall Street on petrodollar recycling, instituting his own local oligarchy of oil wealth. If he hadn't done that, this war in Ukraine would be treated the same as the Saudi war on Yemen's separatist tribal groups (who started off fighting for parliamentary democracy, in fact) - the NYT and WaPo would have wagged on about the necessity of suppressing the violent neo-Nazi militias in the region, as they did with 'Al Qaeda in Yemen' as the justification for Saudi military intervention there. This doesn't fit the desired simplistic morality play story, even if it is accurate. This of brings us to the Italian city-states, though in something of a different light. Here Machiavelli can be seen as the original tutor of the organized crime cartels, and of the rise of the 'stationary bandits' who came to dominate political life in the region. https://broadstreet.blog/2021/04/05/the-rise-of-the-stationary-bandit/ https://broadstreet.blog/2021/04/05/the-rise-of-the-stationa... > "Mancur Olson famously argues that if rulers expect to stay in power for a long time, they will promote economic growth so they have something to steal in the future. These rulers become stationary bandits, which distinguishes them from the roving bandits who simply plunder and maximize short-term gains." That seems to fit the current political trajectory in the USA over the past decade, with the rise of the robber barons aided by government bailouts and handouts over the past two decades or so. The Iraq War was a profitable adventure for some, the 2008 economic crash and bailouts for others, the Covid CARES act and now the billions being recycled through Ukraine and the boost in oil prices flowing into the trough.
- jonstewart 4y agoSerendipitously I’m reading Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror. It’s a frustrating book, very knowing, referencing many historical figures without any sort of introduction. I’m not sure I’d recommend and I hope there’s a better book written. France is its main focal point, though it discusses French relations with the Italian city states at length. The Black Death came to Genoa in 1348 and decimated Europe’s population over the next two years. Smaller waves of the plague occurred every decade or two as population immunity waned (due to children not having been exposed). The decrease in the labor forced caused a spike in inflation. So I kind of think there’s a closer parallel to ~1400 than 1500…