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Devils advocate; In order for the elite to rule, they need a rich oligarchy of support. At least that’s how it’s always been. And you want cooperation from th
by shwouchk 2y ago
Devils advocate;
In order for the elite to rule, they need a rich oligarchy of support. At least that’s how it’s always been.
And you want cooperation from the mob, if you want the place in general to thrive - and you do, if you’re smart. Because your genes do. Look what eventually happens to the progeny of /most/, bad dictators these days, eventually.
Using the biggest gang as protection for smaller, even tiny gangs kills two birds with one stone; Anyone can join the protection racket so the mob is pacified, and the biggest gang gets the support of the rich gangs, who get to sit in on the council.
Terey pratchett’s genius is slowly revealed to me over the years)))
- nonrandomstring 2y ago"biggest gang" is a natural order outcome and yes, Pratchett probably calls it better than Hobbes or political "scientists".
- shwouchk 2y agoidk if it was sarcasm or not. yes of course it’s natural. it’s just that, with time, discworld universe starts to resemble the real world more and more to me, not a weird parody copy…
- Terr_ 2y ago> Being an absolute ruler today was not as simple as people thought. At least, it was not simple if your ambitions included being an absolute ruler tomorrow. There were subtleties. Oh, you could order men to smash down doors and drag people off the dungeons without trial, but too much of that sort of thing lacked style and anyway was bad for business, habit-forming and very, very dangerous for your health. A thinking tyrant, it seemed to Vetinari, had a much harder job than a ruler raised to power by some idiot vote-yourself-rich system like democracy. At least they could tell the people he was their fault. -- Going Postal by Terry Pratchett