Well, i wrote this about three months ago, inspired by a book on Roman history. It needs a lot of work and is definitely not amoral absolute (although i seem to imply that in some of the lines). Hope it helps someone. On the Importance of Infrastructure, Taxes, and Democracy Rome As my example, I will use the Roman Republic and Empire. The Romans had their hay day about two thousand years ago. Although the civilization as a whole lasted about two thousand years, their best times were during the Republic years and the Pax Romana – a period when, although decreasing in power, the senate still existed. Although other nations have had democratic governments –taxes have been around since there have been civilizations – and Infrastructure has been present in some form or another, it was the Romans who mastered them collectively. And boy, what a track record they had. In case you didn’t know, Ancient Rome is considered the most influential, successful, and (among) the most powerful empires to exist. Rome, which started out as a group of farmers on the bank of the Tiber and chose a divine king to lead them, became an empire that controlled the Mediterranean. They had an Empire from the Thames in England, to the Nile in Egypt, and all the way east to the Tigris in the Middle East. But Empires collapse. They have a short period where they expand and you can see them in one color pallet or another across the map of your history book but they vanish within a few generations. It happened to Alexander, Genghis Kahn, Napoleon, Xerxes, and Charlemagne. They come around, made hell, plundered, raped and stole but disappeared from earth with only an honorable mention in history books. Why is it, then, that such a large empire could exist for two millenniums while maintaining most of its lands? The Romans didn’t just create a large empire and give birth to great generals to have their fifteen minutes: they influenced art, poetry, politics, philosophy, engineering, and military theory. They did this while simultaneously bringing the world to their knees. “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” goes the saying. Romans did not do a lot of city planning until late in their empire. Rome was built with functionality in mind, something that Romans valued. Greek cities were beautiful and embellished but Rome seemed like a slum in comparison, something that the Greeks loved to make fun. Romans built the city by the river because they needed a body of water. They built Rome by the hills because they needed cover from enemy cities. So how could a city that did things just to get by become the quintessential civilization of human history? Well, it all seems to lie in their love for doing things methodically. Romans thought that building great temples and cities was excessive. They had they needed and they needed what they had. With this mentality they built their empire. This might sound familiar to modern Americans who know that the pioneer mentality of their ancestors is what helped them build, through hard work and perseverance, an empire. Romans weren’t always free to build a culture. They had - besides most of the problems that plagued ancient nations - great enemies and internal problems. Carthage at the time controlled the western Mediterranean. The Greeks controlled the east from Athens and Alexandria. Rome was definitely not the superpower of the area at the time, neither at sea or in the Italian peninsula. The Punic Wars, won with great ingenuity and bravery, were a defining moment in Roman history. Once free to move around the peninsula and the Mediterranean, they had time to look within and change the system. Redecoration was far from what they had in mind. They did not want a perfect government but a functioning senate. This might seem cynical but Romans did not occupy themselves with philosophy yet. The Senate, built simply as a reactionary government to the tyrant kings, did not come about from an idealistic dream of freedom and equality like Athens or America. The complex and expanding infrastructure of the thriving empire began the Rome that makes us remember who these Italian farmers were to this day. Roads, plumbing, aqueducts, schools, baths, publishing companies, trans-Mediterranean trading, and popular philosophy were all an effect of the slow-and-steady, functional, fanatical expansion of Rome through the western world. As a result we get the other things that remind us why Rome was great: the arts, sciences, and engineering. It’s what makes the study of the Empire worthwhile. Without it, Rome would get as much recognition in history as the little empires that exploded and immediately imploded. Infrastructure What makes a nation great? Is it its land mass? We established that if that were the case, any other empire might have more influence than Rome. Athens was single city. England a small island. Russia is huge yet has only held the title of superpower for a short period. Is it money that makes an empire great? Spain had all the gold of the Americas yet most of its population lived in poverty. The same was true for most empires in the ancient world. Only a small portion has been able to enjoy the dignity allowed to the higher castes. Then what does allow nations to become first-world countries, to allow not only freedom but dignity to most of its population? Rome was great because it could hold its empire. The roads connected everyone. Trading helped was convenient for the rich and poor. Aqueducts kept the city clean for as many people as it could. A prosperous nation can then go on to create proper medicinal techniques, allowing citizens to live better and longer. They can bring supplies that might not be available to a small town. It was its system, that self-sustaining infrastructure that made Rome great. Of course, a government that allowed for such a democratic system to exist (as in one that helps Plebeian and Patrician alike) is also central to the concept. In America, the idea that the government should serve the people and not the other way around was there since the beginning, inspired by the Romans. But for the Romans, it grew from necessity, until it became as natural as the idea of war to them. But these perks came at a price. Democracy is not a one way street (I’ll talk more about that later). A bureaucracy that is maintained by the state and there only to serve the people has to be maintained somehow, as in a world built around necessity (as democratic as it is) things cannot be done simply for altruistic reasons. Money is the natural incentive for magistracies. The system for paying state officials is as old as states themselves. They are called taxes. Taxes It’s said that only two things are certain: death and taxes. At first look, they seem like an atrocity. You work, get paid, then the state takes a chunk of it to use for god know what. In ancient times, before the idea of publicly funded institutions, taxes were used by kings and their courts to fund their palaces, workers, and armies…and sometimes for public works. Naturally, people grew resentful of giving Caesar his due. But with the enlightened ideal of democracy and institutions like public schools, libraries, medicine, roads, plumbing, and parks, the idea of giving your hardly earned money away seems less unfair. Still, people complain, not without reason, that taxes are an atrocity. That money could be used to pay privately owned institutions. Cut out the middle man, they say, and make sure the money won’t be used to fund something we don’t even know about. Social Security has recently come under fire because it has exhausted the funds of the state to preserve, as some think, the least productive members of our society. While the arguments are in no way that simple, it seems undemocratic to leave behind a member who has, most of his or her life, committed to the productivity of our nation. Taxes go against the libertarian ideals that what a man makes is a man’s, period. The idea that freedom is a self-sustaining state is partly responsible for the anti-tax stance. But freedom cannot stand without help in a civilized society. Not that virtue can; exist outside an organized society. It can. But when people come together to create a productive, intellectual, and aesthetic world, it is only possible to achieve our goals through cooperation. The theory that competition creates freedom logically defeats itself, as freedom is an end and a mean, the end being happiness or a state of harmony. Political talk aside: taxes have a very specific purpose, which is to provide a functional and clean space for society to continue pursuing its higher and lower needs. The weight of a culture should be based on both these ends: how it meets its people base needs and how it can perform in the higher callings of science, art, and ingenuity. But like Rome, busy trying to combat its basic needs and instincts, without some kind of a gentleman’s agreement, an unspoken constitution, and civilization would collapse. The Social contract stands at the center of all civilization, without it we would not have any of the terms above. Although it has gained a different connotation throughout history, this concept is called Democracy. Democracy What is democracy, then? Is it the vote? Is it freedom from oppression? The word comes from the Greek democratas, meaning “rule of the people.” The dispute of who these people are and what they are ruling has been a topic of discussion ever since Athens adopted its system. But one thing is clear, the word and the connotation it carries has incredible weight in the human mind. At the center of everything humans do are fear and yearning for freedom. Although one could argue that these desires cause more trouble than they’re worth, people have fought and died for the idea of democracy, even when they didn’t know the word. It is obviously, “self rule,” that’s why even in the most oppressive revolutions the battle cry is “freedom.” It’s at the center of all human interaction, the need to decide one’s own destiny. It comes from the world we live in. Alone, humans are pathetic little creatures and their lives are full of pain and frustration, we have naturally developed an obsession with the idea that we could be free from these trials. We have created religion to escape out of it in the afterlife, power to escape it on earth, and war to protect it from others. It truly is the moving force of all human motivation: freedom and fear that it will be taken away. Even in horror movies, the idea that our humanity is taken away is what causes anxiety. We are horrified that our selves can be lost in the grotesque: the shapes and symbols that stand for pain and death. Democracy then is the enlightened tangent of a struggle against death, pain, and slavery. As any other tool it has capacity to cause great things or horrible disasters. When generality of the universal law “Freedom for all” is diminished out of the fear that created the government, atrocities happen. Slavery is one of the first examples. This is the train of thought responsible for slavery from the very beginning: I am human. I am alive. I need to survive. I have to build shelter. I have to get food. I have to farm. I need to procreate. I need more food. I have to trade. I need a place to trade. Build city. I need safety from other traders. I need a weapon. I need blacksmith. I am safe. I have money. I have influence. I need bigger house for family. Others want what is mine. I am scared they will take it. Pay others to keep me safe. Others have done the same. If we fight we will destroy each other. We will band together. Marry sons and daughters. I have more farm lands. I want more. Other families band together and kill other village. We have two villages. We spent too much money. Take money from other villages. They won’t. Threaten them with war. They pay. Farms need workers. Hire them. They are expensive. Family has less to eat. I must protect them. Gather workers who won’t be paid. No one will do that. Make them. I am human. I am alive. I need to survive. I have been taken from my house. I need to be free. I need to get out. I can’t. I have children. They need to be free. They can’t. The cycle of slavery is ironically rooted in the need for humans to be free. The first man has a lot but is just as scared as the second of losing it. Extenuating circumstances have led the first to be the superior of the second, nothing else. They both want the same thing and in a world built around necessities, where the world is indifferent, one has to be just as cruel to maintain some sense of control. Cruelty from necessity is not morally right, though. If generality or universality of a principle are attacked, no matter the reason, one cannot claim the moral high ground. Exclusive freedom, therefore, is not democratic. I said before that it comes at a cost but the cost, like its main principle “freedom for all” should be equally inclusive or exclusive without creating a double standard. What does a society need for democracy? It seems impossible to reach a place where one can begin to think about democracy without first breaking its main principle. Rome became a democracy but not without killing its kings, killing its enemies, and enslaving workers to do the menial jobs. In fact, in the nineteenth century, Marx argued that democracy could ONLY exist in a state where everyone shared the responsibility. If everyone managed their own station, attributing in a small portion to the productivity of a nation, then we could all enjoy the privilege of a democracy without breaking its main principle. America, although many would detest it if they knew it, follows this tenet. Dignity for a majoriy of people is achieved through that most hated of acts: paying taxes. We don’t share the work and the riches in the sense that our work is chosen for us or the wealth is evenly spread but taxes have evened out the playing field to a livable state. The presence of public schools, to teach those who would otherwise go on uneducated; Medicare for those who would die without the help; and a state funded infrastructure all help us live above the line of pure necessity, with room to breathe and grow. Although it has recently stumbled across unforeseen obstacles, this “socialist-democratic” state has achieved great things. But it has a long way to go. Cruelty run rampant in the nation. Others have fixed these problems but we seem to be confused, preoccupied with trivial arguments. But reason has taken a hit and a country that has the capacity for harmony instead chooses to implode with frustration. Sisyphus is at work over our great nation. Pointless arguments over meaning and tradition will be our downfall. There is none in our time who could bring down this giant nation but if we trip over our own feet, we will fall immediately and ungracefully.
Posted on: Mon, 15 Jul 2013 03:46:05 +0000