From Dizzynomics:
Tribute series – Part 2 (The Romans as frantic organisers)
The Romans get a bad rap because people always think of them as oppressive expansionists.Here's her earlier: "The tribute and organisation theory of value – Part 1"
In reality, the Romans were frantic organisers who had found a great way to organise life and desperately wanted to maintain that level of civil society. They also couldn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want to benefit from their superior way of doing things. (What have the Romans ever done for us?)
Unfortunately, there were always things getting in the way of their organised and civilised existence, whether that was barbarians at the gate, greedy rivals, internal rebellions, pirates or grain shortages due to bad agrarian management (the concentration of grain supply) or other externalities. Such disruption, especially when it resulted in the loss of human capital or output, created a scarcity of the stuff that the Romans needed to be able to maintain domestic order, especially among the city dwellers who relied on a constant flow of cheap wheat. This created an incentive to catch up on the organisation that was lost through the acquisition of new resources or energy.
Defending Rome’s organised equilibrium was thus the key motivation for creating the organisationally superior Roman military machine. This machine was crucial in securing new lands and resources whenever output or human capital was lost to wars, invasions or confiscations. Regions with high crop yields were particularly desirable. What followed were tit-for-tat retaliations which eventually led to the creation of empire, but which were all mainly driven by a desire to maintain stability in the capital.
The tribute system
Roman expansion was interesting in so much as all the Romans really longed for was tribute from the occupied lands (usually in grain form) and respect for civilising processes. Other than that, most occupied territories were allowed a great deal of autonomy. As long as you paid your tribute, allowed the Romans to bring organising technology to your regions, and respected their authority, the Romans cared little for how you chose to govern yourself locally, your cultural practices or your belief-systems....MUCH MORE
Some of our previous pirate posts:
"Kidnapped by Pirates at Sea? Here's How Economics Can Save You"
How Investment Bankers Are Like Sexy Pirates
Arrgh: 'Pirates Not a Good Long Term Bet'
...Start up costs
Piracy: Gun, boats, a handful of men, rocket-propelled grenades.
Private equity: Office on Park Avenue.
Obama Reaches Out to 'Moderate' Pirate Community (and we plan to make a buck-o, or two)...Jargon
Private equity: “Internal rate of return,” called IRR.
Piracy: Eerily similar: “Aaarrr.”....>>>MUCH MORE
Speaking Fees of Various Economists
Forbes: "Top-Earning Pirates"
