Me>>Why have state employees when you can levy corvee (labour in
>>lieu of taxation)? That is how most construction was done in
>>the ancient world instead of a massive army of construction
>>workers.
> Sure. Still amounts to a large state apparatus, though.
No, it doesn't. Otherwise an anarchist commune could said to be a state if everybody gathers together to plant the fields.
>>When I see eight exarchs, being dragon kings in their own
>>right, governing the provinces, centralization is not exactly the
>>word that springs to mind.
> That some power is devolved doesn't mean its not a large
>centralised state.
But _quite_ _a_ _lot_ of power is devolved.
>The provinces do not control the armies or navies directly,
Neither does the Emperor for that matter. And the provincial exarchs probably have more control over the army operations than Godunya these days.
>the Emperor has enough power at his command to perform great
>works like the Bridges, and so on.
The Bridges were built under the supervision of various exarchs.
>In any case, it wasn't really the degree of
>centralisation but the size of the state - that there are both central and
>provincial layers of government implies rather that the state as a whole is
>large and complex.
Methinks that you are using Kralorela's large population to infer that the state is large. Per capita, and I've made this comparison before, the Orlanthi are more governed than the Kralori are.
>> And a large centralized state would
>>have reacted far more swiftly than the five years that Godunya
>>took to the crisis of Sheng Seleris's second invasion.
> I didn't say an efficient responsive large centralised state. There
>can be all sorts of reasons for it to fail to respond (and centralisation
>doesn't always help, if you have to keep sending messages back and forth,
>and communicate the urgency of your situation to officials a long way away
>with their own unrelated agendas).
Nevertheless the fall of the Iron Forts which had never fallen before would have been a powerful kick up the backside to spur any other state into action. Hence the assumption that Kralorela is a state in the conventional sense IMO is misleading.
>>But Sha Ming has _never_ paid its taxes on time which at last
>>reckoning means that there have been at least 1,621 such late
>>payments since Yanoor was enthroned (or multiples thereof
>>depending on how often tax is paid during the year). For late
>>payments to be a cause of sackings,
> Some years its just late, some years its so late or has run up a
>huge accumulated debt, and with so little excuse or real intention to pay,
>that the Emperor doubts it ever intends to pay them, and acts to enforce
>it. And some years, the whole situation escalates somewhat, and ends up in
>violence. Non-payment of taxes is a straight out challenge to the power of
>the state.
But nonpayment of taxes is not what we are debating. What we are debating is whether Sha Ming gets sacked for the _late_ payment of taxes (which is the stronger sense of the statement in question) and that this is what Kralorela metes out to all such cities.
>>I see no reason to assume the stronger sense, given that it
>>leads to an absurd conclusion.
> What absurd conclusion? That non-payment of taxes is on occasion
>punishable with armed force?
That the Kralori have a tradition of punishing _late_ payment of taxes by the sacking of cities, yet only have exercised this tradition in a mere handful out of the sixteen hundred odd occasions where they could have exercised it and the two occasions where Sha Ming was known to have been sacked, it was sacked for rebellion and not the late payment of taxes.
>>But you are positing the ITC as an official punishment. Which
>>means that _all_ Mandarins are tarred by its awfulness whether
>>they like it or not.
> I thought that there was a genuine mystical path of reform there?
For the umpteenth time, I do not believe the ITCs are penal institutions of reform. The Gerran pyramid is not.
>The good mandarins can say that they send only those who they know will be
>genuinely reformed there, and decry its use by others.
But the Good Mandarins are sending people to what, in your opinion, is a brutal tool of repression. Hence they are not really good, are they?
>>Mikaday wrote down laws rather than made them and his laws were
>>positive principles to follow rather than a list of actions that
>>were forbidden.
> So the maker of laws is really the writer down of suggestions?
Put it that way, yup. I want to get away from the concept that Kralorela is a conventional empire.
>>I would be very hardpressed to describe Immanent Mastery as a mere
>>thoughtcrime
> Why? Perhaps we differ from each other in what I mean by
>thoughtcrime. At worst its guilt by association.
The practice of Immanent Mastery causes the practitioner to manifest draconic attributes. It would be difficult to describe this as thoughtcrime, which is be definition what you are only thinking.
>>So why did you feel the need to call me mistaken then?
> Because you insisted that that was the only level in which they
>could be understood.
Which doesn't allow you to call people mistaken merely because their PoV differs from yours.
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