Public Speech in the Megalis
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Honoured Prinkipas, and my brothers amongst the great Megakyrioi and Fotismenoi families. Our great prinkipas has decided to waive certain land taxes for a period of time for all land-holding citizens of Athens. I applaud this action for it shows care and compassion in these times, which test us all as we seek to build a polis that will stand the test of time.
However there is a problem
I have talked to the elders and reviewed comprehensively the customary law of the hellenes in regard to the land taxes, distinct from the income taxes have implemented in the Syntagma, and have failed to find any evidence that they actually exist. Thus your reprieve from land taxation although excellent in intent, for indeed I remind the observors of the Megalis that it is these supposed land taxes and not the income taxes in the Syntagma that would be reprieved, would result in precisely no difference in the lives of our people because these taxes that you are waiving simply do not exist.
Now of course I may be merely missing something, afterall the lack of clearly remembered detail in regards ancient customary prices and taxes is well known and thus I myself am not immune to error. But I must ask out of paternal concern for my fellow hellenes that you have your secretaries review the ancient customary law on land tax, to which the tax reprieve you so recently announced applies, and find out with certainty whether such a tax exists so that this potential problem may be put at rest. I ask this of you my Lord because should these supposed taxes truly be non-existent it would certainly dishearten the people to know that their Lord, despite his good intent, gave them no true reprieve from their burdens in an act that can only be called, I am sorry to say it but it must be said, incompetent. This is of course presuming that no other reason is responsible for the misinformation should non-existence indeed be the case, such as government dysfunction under your period of singular, personal rule prior to your appointment of advisors.
Anyways to proceed from this point, I would ask that should the land taxes your original act of benevolence applied to be found to be truly nonexistent, that you lower for a time the income taxes mandated in the Syntagma to ensure that the common folk do indeed receive the reprieve in tacation your promised them. It would be most abominable in the sight of gods and men for you to in knowledge of such an error as my inquiries suggest exist, to willingly refrain from rectifying such an error. Indeed it would verge on caprice and tyranny to propose a gift to the people... only to take it away before it is even given.....
*turns over clay tablet inscribed with pictures*
On one other point, I would like to humbly propose that after the due process of learning to make.. what are they called... pots, to harness the earth for resources, learning to forge the earths resources into more usable materials, and recovering the knowledge of seasons (researching pottery, mining, bronze working and calendar), that we instead of creating signs to record knowledge as you suggest, instead learn how to tame the beasts of the wilds. The desert sheep would provide diversity into the wheat rich diet of the common folk and at the same time knowledge of how to tame animals could have other uses in the future. That said creating signs should most definitely proceed immediately after the taming of the beasts that I suggest, for it would be of most utility, it may of even prevented the previous question around the possible land tax from recurring, although I would think that a simple pictorial reminder would suffice.
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~Speech of Agamemnon Megakyrios at the first sitting of the Megalis
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OOC:
I have read through this and the entire opening post with its rules and so forth and found nothing that even indicates the original extra-constitutional tax which you have mentioned. I post the relevant section ( PROPERTY ) in spoilers above to point out the lack of tax, as you when I PMed you about the absence of the tax you are supposedly waiving for a time pointed to this section as the source of the tax.
As readers can see it says no such thing, it simply clarifies the following
- Characters can own hexes and gain income from them
- There are two types of owned of hexes
- The differences between the two types
- That npcs will demand a kind of hex dependant on their status
- The amount of drachmas one gets for each food, production and commerce point on a tile
- That tiles are, named, bouthg, distributed etc etc, based on player rules