
How to Build a State - tnorthcutt
https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/how-to-build-a-state/
======
motohagiography
The author doesn't appear to have read DeMesquita (summarized with lots of
gaps in the "rules for rulers" cartoon video), or about the Resource Curse
economy, which are both about how states operate without the popular tax
collection he refers to.

Monarchs just need to pay armies, and the easiest way to do that was to keep
them conquering new territory and paying them off with the spoils.

If I were to start a state today, I would bootstrap it by seizing a small,
resource rich area and use the money to subordinate other, remote and small
independent territories and then reform them into international financial
centres. You will need the tacit support of a super power, so finding a
powerful coalition in one of those countries and offering them secure offshore
holdings in exchange for political support and holding off competing powers
seems like a play. Becoming the offshore banker for the up and coming
opposition faction in a super power provides enough cover to continue to pay
your army with your natural resources cash. Opposition parties are a goldmine
that way, as they need to protect their assets and strategic funding from the
ruling party. And the populace? Well, surely there will be enough cash left
over for bread and circuses, and you can't underestimate how much loyalty a
lottery system that lifts some of them out of poverty will buy. With
sufficient randomness or at least a hidden mechanism, they'll keep each other
in line so long as they've got hope. Who knows, maybe they'll even make or
invent things that provide better income than the natural resources. If the
reptilian cynicism of this has given you a wave of nausea, good, you're human.
But probably not cut out for being an autocrat.

~~~
maest
> I would bootstrap it by seizing a small, resource rich area

That's probably a prerequisite, but the issue is, there is virtually 0
unclaimed land on Earth. You need to find some ways to avoid having larger
nations stiffle you during the early days. So your options would be:

1\. Use a remote island nobody cares about (or create an island in the middle
of the ocean). There was an idea to create such a nation for media piracy
reasons, I can't remember the name. An outlandish project where they'd buy an
island, declare themselves a new nation and have very lax IP laws.

2\. Find a political power void. Good candidates are places with little rule
of the law and/or weak governments. Ideally a place where there is no well
organised force maintaining peace. War-torn areas might seem to fit the bill,
but are probably to volatile to work.

3\. Go off-planet, if space colonisation becomes a thing during our lifetime.

Also, when it comes to creating a new nation, the CHAZ in Seattle is a great
example in what _not_ to do. CHAZ was never going to work, but execution was
so bad the problem basically took care of itself with virtually no involvement
from the US govt.

~~~
awinder
Was it the Pirate Bay?
[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thelocal.se/20070112/6076/a...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thelocal.se/20070112/6076/amp)
I remember this but I felt like there was a floating boat nation plan too.

~~~
maest
Yes, Sealand, that was the one.

------
madhadron
worksinprogress.co has shown up a couple times on Hacker News, and I haven't
been impressed with the level of thinking any time I've examined it.

The historical stuff in this is tripe. Rome taxed extensively. Tax exemption
was a thing tied up with military land grants in the last western empire. And
then general taxation and bureaucracy emerged again well before 1500. I have a
good book on this, but can't find it on my shelf right now...

Plus there are plenty of places where the governments are not as bureaucratic
as they are today. Just not in the developed world.

~~~
komali2
Rome also had grain dispersals, one of the things to go during a siege. This
is well recorded.

I, too, was surprised by the article's claim that it wasn't possible to have a
mechanism for organizing taxation. If sumerian priests could keep extensive
ledgers tracking debt some gajillion years ago, why would a renaissance french
king have any issues?

------
Apocryphon
From Byzantium to imperial China, there have been classical civilizations with
bureaucratic administrative states.

~~~
ksdale
But the question is how you make the jump from tiny warring fiefdoms to
bureaucratic administrative states. Neither Byzantium nor imperial China
sprang into existence as full fledged empires.

~~~
paganel
> warring fiefdoms to bureaucratic administrative states.

As a warrior at some point you realise that you need "learned men" that can
grant you legitimacy through their writings/sayings and who at the same time
can help you collect taxes from the masses.

For how things started in Western Europe during the Middle Ages see Adalberon,
bishop of Laon [1], and his "oratores, bellatores, laboratores" triad:

> He seems to be famous in French history because of a poem in which he made
> mention of (the) three orders in society : "oratores, bellatores,
> laboratores" : the clergy ("praying Church"), nobles and chivalry ("the
> fighting church"), and, third, the labouring people ("church of toiling"),
> the last one supporting the others, and all supporting the whole edifice of
> mankind. This idea was incorporated into the "three social orders" of the
> Ancien Régime in France.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adalberon_(bishop_of_Laon)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adalberon_\(bishop_of_Laon\))

------
jariel
It's odd how obvious much of this is, but the realisation I don't think hits
most people, and the consequences are not very well taught in school.

1984 and those kinds of publications were written in an era wherein we were
transitioning from 'small government' to 'large state entities'. Because we
don't have 'small government' as an example in living memory, it's easy to
believe, by default, that 'this is the way it always was'.

Particularly WW1 and WW2 which for the first time required 'the entire states
machinery' to be involved, we really started to see what the full capacity of
state coordination looked like.

The ultra authoritarian states of the last century - and some of this century,
particularly enabled by technology, really have no historical parallel.

Monarchs always had a tenuous position, the rate of taxation was relatively
low, mostly involving defence/offence and maybe a few castles here and there.

It should be added, that not until the Industrial Revolution were there enough
surpluses to really do that much anyhow.

~~~
canniballectern
> Monarchs always had a tenuous position

I wonder how much of our modern idea of kings as supremely powerful dictators
is just a result of posturing and good PR by past kings.

As a king, you'd be acutely aware of how tenuous your position was, and you'd
be doing as much mythmaking as you could to prevent people from questioning
your power.

~~~
Torwald
> I wonder how much of our modern idea of kings as supremely powerful
> dictators is just a result of posturing and good PR by past kings.

Depends on how you want to look at it. Kings of ancient times where often seen
as gods or god-like beings.

In the West and the Middle East these kings where well remembered through the
religious sacred texts. It was part of the common knowledge, much like today
Darth Vader.

A story like that of Jude would be known by virtually everyone and do much of
what you'd term "PR".

In the Far East however, these mighty kings or emperors where in power in some
countries up until very recent times.

------
Animats
OK, so how did the Romans do it?

~~~
jackcosgrove
Rome conquered most of its territory when it was a semi-democratic republic.
The Roman republican government was more popularly legitimate than many of its
contemporaries. Even the early Roman emperors were quite weak within Roman
society. It was not a dictatorship, although it became moreso over time.

The Roman tax system used delegation, where tax collectors were given a
territory and a target, and any revenue over the target could be kept by the
official.

And as motohagiography points out, the military as a bare-bones state can be
sustained with continuous conquest where the potential spoils of conquest are
used to gain military allegiance.

It's not a coincidence that the Roman Empire entered a period of crisis, that
proved terminal, after it stopped expanding.

~~~
entropicdrifter
It is notable, though, that the source of the word "dictator" did come from
the Roman Republic, which would have the senate appoint a dictator for a term
of 6 months during major war crises when they needed a unified front and
quicker decision-making.

In fact, Julius Caesar was "dictator in perpetuity" of Rome when he was
assassinated.

------
lifeisstillgood
tl;dr - Kings were like mob bosses, and ruled on their whim. Replacing them
with Paliaments meant that one could not rule on whim but were forced to come
to equilibriums (nash?) between many capos - and as they could not trust each
other they had to develop bureaucrats to monitor and report and trust on their
behalf.

In short design by committee might be bad but rule by committee helps.

The role of a merchant-friendly parliament is _associated_ with British
success in the 1700+ centuries - from hands-off rule of colonies that then can
stand alone, to courts that were less under the capricous whim of rulers than
many. It all seemed to have helped.

So I kind of disagree with the premise - a parliament based market and human
rights friendly nation could have been successful at almost any point post
1500. All it took was to wrench power away from the monarch...

~~~
acephal
> In short design by committee might be bad but rule by committee helps.

> So I kind of disagree with the premise - a parliament based market and human
> rights friendly nation could have been successful at almost any point post
> 1500. All it took was to wrench power away from the monarch...

Which is _exactly_ what Salvatore "Lucky" Luciano did in the early 30s when he
had Salvatore Maranzano, the Capo di Tutti Capi, "Boss of Bosses", assasinated
and proclaimed that La Cosa Nostra would be governed by a commission.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Yes ... absolutely

One other thing worth noting - the members of Murder Inc (Lucky's murder
squad) most of them rose to become head sof their own families. The lesson
being - the power resides not in the money but the killing

not sure where i am going with that but it's dark

~~~
acephal
Paul Castellano agrees

------
29athrowaway
In order for a state to succeed in the long term it needs diplomacy and
international recognition.

