BRICS wants to expand

I respect some countries like Brazil, Argentina, and India. They are not doing well economically, but they still seem out of place. And no, the monarchy in the UK is not really comparable to the monarchy in Saudi Arabia.

I don't know what countries like Iran or Ethiopia is doing there. They are probably in the worst shape since its existence.

The only member who is really dangerous is China. According to most analysts, Chinese economy is inevitably slowing down due its tightening screws. Some of them see current China in the same light as Japan in the 30s. They may try to solve their frustration in the same way as Russia. It would be good, if BRICS would find way how to ease the pain without murdering people.

But otherwise I think much more better for world and non-westerners would be actually regional unions like EU.
 
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And many more are ruthlessly exploited by them. Indeed petite bourgeoisie can be just as ruthless and exploitative as the industrial bourgeoisie because the whole principle of their existence is to profit off the workers. The workers get to live and the petite bourgeoisie get to rule their local politics. So what exactly is your point? A serf could have a great relationship with his lord and still be a serf.

That's not how the suburban town works. Yes you probably don't like your boss and would probably not be genuine friends with HIM (just faux friends so you have job security), however it's easy and quite common to be friends with someone who is a boss that you aren't employed to.

So like you work at McDonald's as a worker, but your friend is the son and co-owner of a heating oil company with his father who you used to go to public school with where you originally became good friends. In that specific relationship there is no conflict of tension specifically because you don't work at your friend's business as an employee, your specific issue to deal with is your McDonald's manager.

And relationships like this happen all the time in middle class suburbia, between those self employed and those employed. A sort of cross pollination that intermixes the two classes into the pan-class identity that is being middle class rather than proletariat vs bourgeoisie.

One of the most populous revolutions in modern history was the Iranian one, and it’s estimated about 6% of the population participated. The October revolution? Less than 2%.

Yeah which is what makes it evil and without legitimacy in the eyes of the majority.

Perhaps a little too convinced of the permanence of industrial civilization, they were, and later the scholars of imperialism would find other problems with it, but so it goes.

Then why do you prefer socialism over capitalism?
 
That's not how the suburban town works. Yes you probably don't like your boss and would probably not be genuine friends with HIM (just faux friends so you have job security), however it's easy and quite common to be friends with someone who is a boss that you aren't employed to.

So like you work at McDonald's as a worker, but your friend is the son and co-owner of a heating oil company with his father who you used to go to public school with where you originally became good friends. In that specific relationship there is no conflict of tension specifically because you don't work at your friend's business as an employee, your specific issue to deal with is your McDonald's manager.

And relationships like this happen all the time in middle class suburbia, between those self employed and those employed. A sort of cross pollination that intermixes the two classes into the pan-class identity that is being middle class rather than proletariat vs bourgeoisie.
Yeah, of course dude, I get how human society works. But there's nothing special at all about what you describe. Do you really think America is the only country in the world where people make friends, even across class lines, and fear war and revolution? Come on, dude. It's neither here nor there! American workers can still have friends who are owners and still engage in politics on the basis of their interests. And for that matter, owners can also participate in the revolution as individuals. But trying to guess peoples' individual behavior is not the point of class analysis. It's about identifying those interests and how they are different. It usually comes down to material conditions. You can be a friendly workin' class dude just trynna live your best life, and still come to know in your heart of hearts that the reason your "friends" keep voting to keep your wages low is because they do not really give a single damn about you.
Yeah which is what makes it evil and without legitimacy in the eyes of the majority.
You keep addressing this "majority" yet it's only you and me talking. How's that work?
Then why do you prefer socialism over capitalism?
For the same reason I prefer round wheels over square ones.
 
You keep addressing this "majority" yet it's only you and me talking. How's that work?
Social Contract theory whereby the legitimacy of a regime is derived from the majority of it's people including autocratic and oligarchic ones.

The social contract means the system above has to allow the majority to do certain things or give them certain things for them to actually care about the system above to actually uphold and defend it. Without a viable social contract in existence or a failing one, corruption, intentional ineptitude, plus sabotage increases as the people no longer have any passion to uphold the above system leading to inefficiencies in the above system's abilities to conduct proper governance over its territories and people below. Even the most autocratic and oligarchic societies are prone to this, examples like being unable to pay the troops properly or disrespecting them are common examples that then lead to inefficiencies of governance since those troops may either attempt a coup or stop fighting passionately or with delayed reaction next time a riot happens, or the generals may feel they aren't respected by the government they are supposed to serve anymore and embezzle public defense funds for themselves hindering the state's ability to levy or improve it's armies leading to possible further inefficiency of governance.

Therefore chosing to start a rebellion with such a low approval from the masses is never a good way to start one. Because if you are a small group of elites imposing your will top down after the revolution, the people in their hearts see you as illegitimate and not really the group that they would have supported. So already the people have no passion and are likely to be more corrupt, not follow laws and directives to the dot and t, might even decide to support a counterrevolutionary force if enough time passes and you can't mint out a proper social contract.

It's much easier to start a populist revolution so it starts out with an "in the moment" social contract of approval over the more corrupt system the majority want overthrown. Then after the revolution is over you'll still have their mass faith and support during a honeymoon phase whereby you can implement the systems of government which make way for a proper civilian peacetime social contract.

Otherwise you just degenerate from corruption and lack of passion like the U.S.S.R. did and collapse. China was smart and moved to globalism to improve their social conditions to the masses after they realized they were falling behind and the people were becoming less passionate, Tianamen Square was one instance of this temporary loss of mass approval.
 
Yeah, of course dude, I get how human society works. But there's nothing special at all about what you describe. Do you really think America is the only country in the world where people make friends, even across class lines, and fear war and revolution? Come on, dude. It's neither here nor there! American workers can still have friends who are owners and still engage in politics on the basis of their interests. And for that matter, owners can also participate in the revolution as individuals. But trying to guess peoples' individual behavior is not the point of class analysis. It's about identifying those interests and how they are different. It usually comes down to material conditions. You can be a friendly workin' class dude just trynna live your best life, and still come to know in your heart of hearts that the reason your "friends" keep voting to keep your wages low is because they do not really give a single damn about you.

If course it's not unique to America, I'm just using an example. But currently people to people bonds within certain environments are stronger than tribal identities along socioeconomic class lines. And most make no difference between the two sub types of middle class.
 
Social Contract theory whereby the legitimacy of a regime is derived from the majority of it's people including autocratic and oligarchic ones.

The social contract means the system above has to allow the majority to do certain things or give them certain things for them to actually care about the system above to actually uphold and defend it. Without a viable social contract in existence or a failing one, corruption, intentional ineptitude, plus sabotage increases as the people no longer have any passion to uphold the above system leading to inefficiencies in the above system's abilities to conduct proper governance over its territories and people below. Even the most autocratic and oligarchic societies are prone to this, examples like being unable to pay the troops properly or disrespecting them are common examples that then lead to inefficiencies of governance since those troops may either attempt a coup or stop fighting passionately or with delayed reaction next time a riot happens, or the generals may feel they aren't respected by the government they are supposed to serve anymore and embezzle public defense funds for themselves hindering the state's ability to levy or improve it's armies leading to possible further inefficiency of governance.

Therefore chosing to start a rebellion with such a low approval from the masses is never a good way to start one. Because if you are a small group of elites imposing your will top down after the revolution, the people in their hearts see you as illegitimate and not really the group that they would have supported. So already the people have no passion and are likely to be more corrupt, not follow laws and directives to the dot and t, might even decide to support a counterrevolutionary force if enough time passes and you can't mint out a proper social contract.

It's much easier to start a populist revolution so it starts out with an "in the moment" social contract of approval over the more corrupt system the majority want overthrown. Then after the revolution is over you'll still have their mass faith and support during a honeymoon phase whereby you can implement the systems of government which make way for a proper civilian peacetime social contract.
Okay yeah yeah yeah, I don't actually think inertia should be confused with mass support, and I think it makes more sense to assume regimes are just alliances of factions, and the structure of a regime reflects the interests of those factions. But let's not get into that, the actual point I was trying to make was that I don't think you can speak for the people to me. You may think that what you're describing is Americans' secret love for the system, but what you're actually describing is how liberal middle class Americans think most Americans feel about the system. However I have often gone outside the comfortable little circles the liberals live in and I think my view on the national mood is a lot more... sanguine.
Tianamen Square was one instance of this temporary loss of mass approval.
Only high ranking party officials and their families were even allowed to go to Beijing. Tiananmen Square was the party massacring the flower of its own youth, not the masses. Mass movements in China tend to take on a much more outside-the-capital-city kind of character.
 
You may think that what you're describing is Americans' secret love for the system, but what you're actually describing is how liberal middle class Americans think most Americans feel about the system.

The cities are different from the suburbs, that's where you do have more of a traditional tension between proletariat vs bourgeoisie due to the majority of housing in such highly dense areas being rental combined with the high value of property and therefore increased demand for upward wage pressure which in turn leads to more tension between employer and employee. Plus the segregation and descrimination of certain minority neighborhoods with rough policing strategies leading to increased riotous pressures inducing destruction of their own local shop owner's businesses has the consequences of leaving the only self employed ownership in the more affluent and non minority districts, forcing minorities into exclusively proletarian paths with little opportunity of self sufficiency via entrepreneurship if not without work altogether. Higher taxes and regulations on top of rent and the dense nature of population requiring payment of utilities (such as water and sewage which are usually cheaper or via leach field and well in suburbs) force conditions whereby only the larger and more ruthless businesses and therefore businesses owners can survive, leading to increased tension among the Petite Bourgeoisie to cut or hinder wages. This in turn allows larger businesses and multinationals operating in the city to then take advantage of the underemployed laborers produced as a result of this by offering to pay a larger salary enabling them to pick and choose from a sea of many desperate and destitute hoards to then only pick a finite few to work in their metallic office spires forcing them into utmost conformity and lack of leverage (to form unions or better dignity) for threat of a return to having to remain underemployed with less pay to the more dingy and dirty Petite Bourgeoisie and struggle to pay the high upkeep costs of urban living.

The countryside on the other hand operates under an old style mercantilist structure of farming, hunting, and extraction of raw resources of lumber, minerals, etc. It is exploited in a different way whereby it's people are kept ignorant via fundamentalist religion and traditionalist notions of doing, self enforced and everlasting by morbid depression, alcoholism, and opioid abuse induced from long hours in the mines, mills, farms, trucks, trains with sh** pay, overextended hours, hazards cancerous from various chemicals in processing in those mines or mills, or perhaps more physical in the form of cave ins, explosions, etc. Other coping methods include blowing off steam by resorting to blasting things at the range and the subsequent gun culture that stems as a result further spiced up in a more radical direction with the morbid hopelessness causing an increased belief of conspiracy theories. Sometimes even sundown town shenanigans take place in secret not long thereafter in some more remote parts. The horrific coping methods which keep the rural workers compliant via staying in a state of constant stupor and inability to gain class consciousness is oftentimes intentionally increased via corporatist lobbying to ruin local public infrastructure through land purchasing/selling manipulation, dumping of pollution to lower valuations on land and therefore reduce local taxation for local municipalities to fund such public works with the added fleeing residents contributing to brain drain and further devaluation and lack of public funds, bribing corrupt local state or federal government officials to enact eminent domain procedures which lead nowhere but to displace local populations to further manipulate land valuation again further starving the ability to tax and raise public funds. This then leads to the perpetual lack of funds creating a lack of infrastructure which then in turn makes it hard to convince health professionals trained in urban areas to want to take up a practice in such remotes which has the further compounding effect of a lack of reliable healthcare system and nearby physicians which in turn leads to desperation among local workers who could possibly get injured while working on the job. This final desperation allows the corporatists and multinationals to then maximize leverage to force the unions into desperate compliance and lose bargaining abilities for fear of not getting enough money to purchase enough gas to get to a far away hospital. Same corporations then fund local televangelist style mega preachers to reinforce the workers back into nihilistic and backwards coping methods of evangelical radicalism to increase the stupor.

America however via it's sprawled out car culture created a unique third way of living within the nation separate from the urban and rural zones of existence. This car culture in part pushed by corporatists afraid of socialism during the cold war and wanting to create a perfect consumerist zone within the nation which would balance out the two other zones and their natural competition via the urban rural divide. Taking the divide and turning it from a two way into a three way. The increased and rivalrous competition of interests of a third class zone created the ability to create a much more controllable balance of power because of the increased unpredictability of introducing an extra actor into a system that would otherwise be naturally self annihilating if it were to remain a diad. This in turn muddies the ability of revolution of a socialist nature from taking place in the states now that reactionary politicians can always rely on pandering exclusively to the suburban zones when unable to please either the rural or urban zones due to increased entropy of control induced by over exploitation induced via excessive corporatist pandering, plus various temporary alliances can be made to put the suburbanites under an either rural or urban alignment to cancel out the over populous urbanites through elections by having just enough votes whereby the electoral college system can cancel their vote if they become too socialistic to stomach or the self sufficient due to living of the land ruralites by having such an overwhelming population to bear for a large enough conscription pool which can be utilized if ever those ruralites become aware and start a guerilla movement. The suburbia is further enshrined by reactionaries as a political counterweight to throw around by intentionally dismantling and letting rot away the nations earlier public transportation networks so as to ensure suburbia never urbanizes via public transport lines linking to currently urbanized zones, thus controlling the flow of people and therefore attitudes so the suburbs remain pure in ideological thought for manipulation. Europe never allowed it's public infrastructure to rot hence there are no as prominent suburb zones and more of a traditional diad of urban rural division which in turn is naturally self annihilating in nature accelerating the development of class consciousness over there, and thus increased amount of leftist parties and activities, in comparison for the far more stagnant United States which has a natural resistance to change via it's counterweight of suburbia induced by intentional promotion of car culture and defunding of public transit.

This is the only time I will ever attempt to come up with a Socialist "analysis" btw.
 
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As the oracle at Tezmir says, you have paid the price and I am summoned once more.

Argentina's incorporation is a *weird* thing.

[a lot of information, most of which I wasn't aware of]

Enough?
Oh my goodness, that is quite informative. I knew about the darn-near-approaching-hyper inflation, but was not aware of everything else that was going on in Argentina. Most of the press I see up here about South America is focused on Lula in Brazil, or occasionally the latest legal troubles Bolsonaro is running into (pawning off potential state gifts in Philadelphia for cash being one I read about within the past week). For whatever reason the English-language press doesn't write much about Argentina, but it sounds far worse than Brazil.

I see CFK is the current vice president; I did used to see her in press articles (probably when she was president), but it doesn't sound like her years of experience have translated into competence. Power corrupts, as they say?

No wonder you haven't been focusing on Civilization a whole lot.

Thanks for the replying and informing me better. Your post deserves more than a low-effort 'like' as acknowledgement.
 
The cities are different from the suburbs, that's where you do have more of a traditional tension between proletariat vs bourgeoisie due to the majority of housing in such highly dense areas being rental combined with the high value of property and therefore increased demand for upward wage pressure which in turn leads to more tension between employer and employee. Plus the segregation and descrimination of certain minority neighborhoods with rough policing strategies leading to increased riotous pressures inducing destruction of their own local shop owner's businesses has the consequences of leaving the only self employed ownership in the more affluent and non minority districts, forcing minorities into exclusively proletarian paths with little opportunity of self sufficiency via entrepreneurship if not without work altogether. Higher taxes and regulations on top of rent and the dense nature of population requiring payment of utilities (such as water and sewage which are usually cheaper or via leach field and well in suburbs) force conditions whereby only the larger and more ruthless businesses and therefore businesses owners can survive, leading to increased tension among the Petite Bourgeoisie to cut or hinder wages. This in turn allows larger businesses and multinationals operating in the city to then take advantage of the underemployed laborers produced as a result of this by offering to pay a larger salary enabling them to pick and choose from a sea of many desperate and destitute hoards to then only pick a finite few to work in their metallic office spires forcing them into utmost conformity and lack of leverage (to form unions or better dignity) for threat of a return to having to remain underemployed with less pay to the more dingy and dirty Petite Bourgeoisie and struggle to pay the high upkeep costs of urban living.

The countryside on the other hand operates under an old style mercantilist structure of farming, hunting, and extraction of raw resources of lumber, minerals, etc. It is exploited in a different way whereby it's people are kept ignorant via fundamentalist religion and traditionalist notions of doing, self enforced and everlasting by morbid depression, alcoholism, and opioid abuse induced from long hours in the mines, mills, farms, trucks, trains with sh** pay, overextended hours, hazards cancerous from various chemicals in processing in those mines or mills, or perhaps more physical in the form of cave ins, explosions, etc. Other coping methods include blowing off steam by resorting to blasting things at the range and the subsequent gun culture that stems as a result further spiced up in a more radical direction with the morbid hopelessness causing an increased belief of conspiracy theories. Sometimes even sundown town shenanigans take place in secret not long thereafter in some more remote parts. The horrific coping methods which keep the rural workers compliant via staying in a state of constant stupor and inability to gain class consciousness is oftentimes intentionally increased via corporatist lobbying to ruin local public infrastructure through land purchasing/selling manipulation, dumping of pollution to lower valuations on land and therefore reduce local taxation for local municipalities to fund such public works with the added fleeing residents contributing to brain drain and further devaluation and lack of public funds, bribing corrupt local state or federal government officials to enact eminent domain procedures which lead nowhere but to displace local populations to further manipulate land valuation again further starving the ability to tax and raise public funds. This then leads to the perpetual lack of funds creating a lack of infrastructure which then in turn makes it hard to convince health professionals trained in urban areas to want to take up a practice in such remotes which has the further compounding effect of a lack of reliable healthcare system and nearby physicians which in turn leads to desperation among local workers who could possibly get injured while working on the job. This final desperation allows the corporatists and multinationals to then maximize leverage to force the unions into desperate compliance and lose bargaining abilities for fear of not getting enough money to purchase enough gas to get to a far away hospital. Same corporations then fund local televangelist style mega preachers to reinforce the workers back into nihilistic and backwards coping methods of evangelical radicalism to increase the stupor.

America however via it's sprawled out car culture created a unique third way of living within the nation separate from the urban and rural zones of existence. This car culture in part pushed by corporatists afraid of socialism during the cold war and wanting to create a perfect consumerist zone within the nation which would balance out the two other zones and their natural competition via the urban rural divide. Taking the divide and turning it from a two way into a three way. The increased and rivalrous competition of interests of a third class zone created the ability to create a much more controllable balance of power because of the increased unpredictability of introducing an extra actor into a system that would otherwise be naturally self annihilating if it were to remain a diad. This in turn muddies the ability of revolution of a socialist nature from taking place in the states now that reactionary politicians can always rely on pandering exclusively to the suburban zones when unable to please either the rural or urban zones due to increased entropy of control induced by over exploitation induced via excessive corporatist pandering, plus various temporary alliances can be made to put the suburbanites under an either rural or urban alignment to cancel out the over populous urbanites through elections by having just enough votes whereby the electoral college system can cancel their vote if they become too socialistic to stomach or the self sufficient due to living of the land ruralites by having such an overwhelming population to bear for a large enough conscription pool which can be utilized if ever those ruralites become aware and start a guerilla movement. The suburbia is further enshrined by reactionaries as a political counterweight to throw around by intentionally dismantling and letting rot away the nations earlier public transportation networks so as to ensure suburbia never urbanizes via public transport lines linking to currently urbanized zones, thus controlling the flow of people and therefore attitudes so the suburbs remain pure in ideological thought for manipulation. Europe never allowed it's public infrastructure to rot hence there are no as prominent suburb zones and more of a traditional diad of urban rural division which in turn is naturally self annihilating in nature accelerating the development of class consciousness over there, and thus increased amount of leftist parties and activities, in comparison for the far more stagnant United States which has a natural resistance to change via it's counterweight of suburbia induced by intentional promotion of car culture and defunding of public transit.

This is the only time I will ever attempt to come up with a Socialist "analysis" btw.
Yes; suburbia is the epitome of the middle class made to identify with the state a la "reactionary" but really just conservative interests. They are both democratic and republican. Notably, they are the class I identified as projecting onto both your first and second categories of people the "social contract"-style compliance you suggested earlier. I would argue that actually, the first and second categories of people, the masses of rural and urban workers, are separated and governed by opposing parties who use the third class of people to legitimize this entire arrangement. Hence does the middle class become the bulwark of the upper class against the working classes, both proletarian and peasant.
 
Yes; suburbia is the epitome of the middle class made to identify with the state a la "reactionary" but really just conservative interests. They are both democratic and republican. Notably, they are the class I identified as projecting onto both your first and second categories of people the "social contract"-style compliance you suggested earlier. I would argue that actually, the first and second categories of people, the masses of rural and urban workers, are separated and governed by opposing parties who use the third class of people to legitimize this entire arrangement. Hence does the middle class become the bulwark of the upper class against the working classes, both proletarian and peasant.

By bulwark you mean like a political tool which is used to uphold a higher class? A historical example being a knight who works as a professional military bondsman of lower status than the higher nobility, yet gets bestowed special privileges to militarily suppress the peasant class? If so then yes to all of the above.

I would also add that in a very eerily similar way to the medieval example, in the suburbs many veterans who are done with their tour of duty receive their pension and special benefits which allows them to easily settle down into and purchase single family homes for themselves and their families in such areas. Thus creating a reservist class of experienced soldiers who can be "back drafted" and called back into service in a very ironic homage to a superior lord or king re-levying his bondsmen to arms.
 
By bulwark you mean like a political tool which is used to uphold a higher class? A historical example being a knight who works as a professional military bondsman of lower status than the higher nobility, yet gets bestowed special privileges to militarily suppress the peasant class? If so then yes to all of the above.

I would also add that in a very eerily similar way to the medieval example, in the suburbs many veterans who are done with their tour of duty receive their pension and special benefits which allows them to easily settle down into and purchase single family homes for themselves and their families in such areas. Thus creating a reservist class of experienced soldiers who can be "back drafted" and called back into service in a very ironic homage to a superior lord or king re-levying his bondsmen to arms.
Absolutely.

And this middle class ideal is a seductive one. But it requires a wealthy economy with plenty of surplus for everyone to get a taste and stay up. I think things are changing from the bygone honeymoon days of American capitalism. It may still be a wealthy country, but nobody wants to fall behind.
 
I would also add that in a very eerily similar way to the medieval example, in the suburbs many veterans who are done with their tour of duty receive their pension and special benefits which allows them to easily settle down into and purchase single family homes for themselves and their families in such areas. Thus creating a reservist class of experienced soldiers who can be "back drafted" and called back into service in a very ironic homage to a superior lord or king re-levying his bondsmen to arms.
This also reminds me of victorious Roman generals in the late Roman Republic assigning land to their veterans to keep them together and cohesive as a reserve unit.
Oh my goodness, that is quite informative. I knew about the darn-near-approaching-hyper inflation, but was not aware of everything else that was going on in Argentina. Most of the press I see up here about South America is focused on Lula in Brazil, or occasionally the latest legal troubles Bolsonaro is running into (pawning off potential state gifts in Philadelphia for cash being one I read about within the past week). For whatever reason the English-language press doesn't write much about Argentina, but it sounds far worse than Brazil.

I see CFK is the current vice president; I did used to see her in press articles (probably when she was president), but it doesn't sound like her years of experience have translated into competence. Power corrupts, as they say?

No wonder you haven't been focusing on Civilization a whole lot.

Thanks for the replying and informing me better. Your post deserves more than a low-effort 'like' as acknowledgement.
She was always corrupt and incompetent, as was her husband. They were thieves and bullies since before they took political office, using crooked ‘decree-laws’ imposed by the junta government in order to expand the Kirchners family's original business (loan-sharking) into real estate (they took advantage of bankrupted people), and later took office and made a fortune selling state-owned land to themselves for peanuts and reselling it on the open market at a fair market price. Their catchphrase was ‘you need money to be in politics’ so in the 1990s Néstor was governor and he sent his wife to the federal congress to join as many anti-corruption committees as she could find and report back home.

Being thoroughly uncreative, the Kirchners' entire life strategy has been to throw other people's money at things. In the 1990s it was from petroleum royalties wich were somehow diverted into a private Swiss account instead of state ones (400 million USD at least). Kirchner devoted a large part of this fortune to simply buying the presidency after a couple of other administrations were toppled. Since then, they financed a spending spree by riding the commodities bubble in the '00s and, when even that wasn't enough, a mixture of a) raising taxation, b) printing several times' the money supply worth of billes, c) borrowing at usurious rates from ever-worse creditors.
There's been no such thing as maybe not trying to subsidise everything Venezuelan-style: a 4-kilometre bus ticket yesterday cost me 5 US dollar cents.

Their attempt to join BRICS is both a way to try to wiggle a last-gasp bit of funding to try and retain control of congress after the elections and also to just saddle the incoming government with the double trouble of having to pay extra for whatever short-term loans they might get and with having to extricate themselves from an alliance with the worst of the worst.
 
This also reminds me of victorious Roman generals in the late Roman Republic assigning land to their veterans to keep them together and cohesive as a reserve unit.

I mean that is what began the series of events that would lead to Europe during the middle ages to adopt feudalism.

Then came the end of the Republic and the imposition of the Empire which eliminated the final checks and balances of the Senate reducing it to a vestigial branch of government for ceremonial purposes.

With the rise of the Imperators came the overreliance of the Praetorian Guards which in turn became a highly corrupt paramilitary organization of kingmakers who future would be Imperators would have to bribe with more land tithes along with the regular legions.

The Crises of the Third Century kicking off endless endemic civil wars exacerbated and accelerated this back and forth method of bribery, followed with the migration era of barbarian incursions depleting most of the settled reservists.

Eventually the Empire had to rely on employing the barbarians as Foederati and settle them down on land tithes to became a new reservist class to fight other barbarians. However general lack of tolerance toward the barbarians in allowing all to settle within Roman borders & disrespect from the Roman governmental core towards it's barbarian reservists led many to rebel and let outside barbarians over the Rhine to join them in ransacking the countryside.

The loss of production and therefore logistical support to raise more legions finally began to stem from all the city sacking destroying various smiths to supply weapons and burning farms to the ground inducing a lack of rations. So Diocletian implemented his reforms of fixed prices with the addition of a forced caste system whereby the son's of smiths must always be smiths and the son's of farmers must always be farmers to solve this logistics conundrum for the military. The reforms would also require direct payment of grain and material to the state as taxation instead of coin due to the currency becoming worthless (essentially the true beginning of western feudalism's raw good tax structure).

Finally the barbarian Vandals would ransack and capture the province of Carthage cutting off the surplus grain shipments that were still feeding the urban areas of the Italian peninsula and remnants of the western empire, leading to famine, anarchy, and mass de-urbanization. Odavacer who was a barbarian Foederati would rebel not long after and depose the last western Imperator ironically named Romulus (after Rome's supposed legendary founder).

These barbarian kings in turn because they had previously served with Rome in it's final years as Foederati would continue to implement the Roman style system of governance over the Roman peoples they managed to conquer, meaning Diocletian's form of proto-feudalism combined with the already long held custom of giving loyal veterans who serve you land tithes as compensation eventually evolved to become the western medieval style of feudalism.
 
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joij I love your takes but I won't read them without paragraphs.
 
It was the Vandals who invaded Africa, but anyway, yes, I know that European feudalism developed out of the slow transformation of the Roman world.
 
In fact Duke comes from dux, general in the late Roman empire, while Count comed from comites, province governor.

Marquis and Baron otoh are medieval terms afaik.
 
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