On 2008-May-23, at 20:17, LuKreme wrote: > On 23-May-2008, at 05:47, Stefano Mori wrote: >> I wish I knew the history of the Roman empire, and how they managed >> to >> do it. > > The Romans were, mostly, very clever about it. They said, here you > are, you're part of Rome now, so you have a Roman Governor in some > city a long way away and the taxes will go to him. Other than that, > we're mostly<1> gonna leave you alone to do your own thing and we'll > be by building roads and aqueducts and stuff like that while we treble > your agricultural yields so you don't even notice the taxes we're > collecting. > > It worked for a thousand years. Then the temperatures started to drop > and the crop yields went down and the whole system fell apart. Those > fucking Christians didn't help either.
That is interesting. Here's a thought. According to Wikipedia, the great Ottoman Empire collapsed as it failed to industrialize. This leaves that part of the world without a strong unity, and without having really entered the modern age. Seeing as USA fancies itself as an empire builder, and the Middle East is in need of some "organising", perhaps the West could help them build their infrastructure, rather than bombing what little they have of it. Oh yeay? Stefano _______________________________________________ OSX-Nutters mailing list | [email protected] http://lists.tit-wank.com/mailman/listinfo/osx-nutters List hosted at http://cat5.org/
