I don't know what state you're in, but here the state gov only cares about low taxes, and the local gov only cares about personally profiting off of zoning changes and "development" plans. (There are no insider trading rules for real estate, after all)
Federal government isn't much different. Notice how raising taxes - even just on the very wealthiest Americans - is completely out of the question for the Democratic party. So when the GOP is in power they slash taxes and when the Dems get control they refuse to even raise taxes back to what they were previously because a) they think they'll lose middle class whites and b) their donors don't like it.
Yep - in the late imperial period, Senators and other rich folks in Rome were all focused on how they could personally cash in on circumstances around them, rather than try and stem the tide of collapse.
Remember when all those Senators were told a pandemic was coming, and rather than warn anyone about it they sold off all their stocks to make a quick buck?
Because I can't afford to go get a degree in medieval studies I read a book, an introductory text to medieval history/anthropology, called A Medieval Life: Cecilia Penifader of Brigstock, c. 1295-1344 by Judith Bennett. I read the book because I'm interested in history and medievalism, but I also find myself endlessly fascinated with how ordinary premodern people lived. I can't imagine living in a time before modern medicine, air conditioning, super markets, etc. I recognize that many, probably billions of people living today don't have access to these things, but that's a failure in distribution and therefore a terrible tragedy that makes me angry to think about, whereas in premodern times none of these things existed.
But one thing I found fascinating about this book is that there is one way, and precisely one way, that I find the life of Cecilia Penifader, who lived through one of the worst famines in the history of England and the Black Death, to be enviable: the sense of community. It really throws into sharp relief what socialists mean when they talk about capitalist alienation/isolation when I barely know my neighbors who I've lived next to for years meanwhile I'm reading about a woman who died almost seven hundred years ago who lived in a village with 150-200 fellow peasant laborers who regularly attended feasts and dances and festivals attended by basically everyone she ever knew.
My grandfather, who was born in the early twentieth century, talked a lot about the small farming community he grew up in. Like Cecilia Penifader's village it was about 200 people, though more spread out thanks to land distribution schemes and advancements in agriculture. But to hear him talk about it it was a pretty tight-knit community. Maybe not on the same level as Brigstock in the fourteenth century, but more than anything I've ever known. And today that farming community is a ghost town. A few older people, pretty poor people still live there. The surrounding countryside that used to be dotted by small family farms and their 120 acres have been consolidated into what are, in effect, corporate farms. They're still family owned, technically, and many by families who have been in the region for many years, however those families have become corporations with farming equipment costing millions of dollars used to farm tens of thousands of acres.
deleted by creator
I don't know what state you're in, but here the state gov only cares about low taxes, and the local gov only cares about personally profiting off of zoning changes and "development" plans. (There are no insider trading rules for real estate, after all)
Federal government isn't much different. Notice how raising taxes - even just on the very wealthiest Americans - is completely out of the question for the Democratic party. So when the GOP is in power they slash taxes and when the Dems get control they refuse to even raise taxes back to what they were previously because a) they think they'll lose middle class whites and b) their donors don't like it.
deleted by creator
Yep - in the late imperial period, Senators and other rich folks in Rome were all focused on how they could personally cash in on circumstances around them, rather than try and stem the tide of collapse.
Remember when all those Senators were told a pandemic was coming, and rather than warn anyone about it they sold off all their stocks to make a quick buck?
Oh boy, time to start speaking Anglish while playing my hurdy gurdy wearing a flax tunic in my wattle and daub house
Because I can't afford to go get a degree in medieval studies I read a book, an introductory text to medieval history/anthropology, called A Medieval Life: Cecilia Penifader of Brigstock, c. 1295-1344 by Judith Bennett. I read the book because I'm interested in history and medievalism, but I also find myself endlessly fascinated with how ordinary premodern people lived. I can't imagine living in a time before modern medicine, air conditioning, super markets, etc. I recognize that many, probably billions of people living today don't have access to these things, but that's a failure in distribution and therefore a terrible tragedy that makes me angry to think about, whereas in premodern times none of these things existed.
But one thing I found fascinating about this book is that there is one way, and precisely one way, that I find the life of Cecilia Penifader, who lived through one of the worst famines in the history of England and the Black Death, to be enviable: the sense of community. It really throws into sharp relief what socialists mean when they talk about capitalist alienation/isolation when I barely know my neighbors who I've lived next to for years meanwhile I'm reading about a woman who died almost seven hundred years ago who lived in a village with 150-200 fellow peasant laborers who regularly attended feasts and dances and festivals attended by basically everyone she ever knew.
My grandfather, who was born in the early twentieth century, talked a lot about the small farming community he grew up in. Like Cecilia Penifader's village it was about 200 people, though more spread out thanks to land distribution schemes and advancements in agriculture. But to hear him talk about it it was a pretty tight-knit community. Maybe not on the same level as Brigstock in the fourteenth century, but more than anything I've ever known. And today that farming community is a ghost town. A few older people, pretty poor people still live there. The surrounding countryside that used to be dotted by small family farms and their 120 acres have been consolidated into what are, in effect, corporate farms. They're still family owned, technically, and many by families who have been in the region for many years, however those families have become corporations with farming equipment costing millions of dollars used to farm tens of thousands of acres.
You weren't speaking Anglish already? Fiend ye be, loath unto eow