Theme: Civilization

—-“Where do you stand on imperialism?”—

I stand as always on empirical evidence and operational possibility.

Depends on what we define as imperial. The holy roman empire or the han chinese empire, or the roman empire or the middle eastern empires?

DIMENSION ONE – HOMOGENEITY VS HETEROGENEITY

The holy roman (german continental) was homogenous; the chinese made theirs homogenous through slow forcible integration; the roman empire failed when insufficiently homogenous; the greek empire never could consilidate becasue it was heterogeneous; and the middle eastern empires were pretty totalitarian and continuously in termoil because they existed to resist heterogeneity.

Now what about an empire of rule of law over teh english speaking or germanic speaking peoples? Well that is just a federation with a judge of last resort between that resolves differences between the princes (monarchs) of different poliites.

What about an empire of rule by degree over a forcibly integrated and relatively homogenous empire of limited mobility like china? Well, that is just a way to manage primitive people by bureaucratic corporatism and corporate accountability(via positiva) rather than european sovereignty and rule of law (via negativa).

What about the roman empire under roman law? Well, that is a way of suppressing parasitism and facilitating trade so that the upper classes can profit and the lower classes live better than they would otherwise.

What about the middle eastern empires? Well that is little more than preventing any of the other tribes from rising up and profiting at the expense of the suppressed tribes.

DIMENSION TWO – RULE VS REPLACEMENT

Now, let’s ask about conquest and rule (europe); vs conquest, colonization and rule (africa); vs conquest, colonization, and integration; vs conquest, colonization and replacement? (Americas).

DIMENSION THREE – INCENTIVES

And whether you’re doing so in defense or for assets or for taxation and plunder.

ANSWER

We can make a table of what works and does’t work.

………….Homogenous —–Limited—-> Heterogeneous

Rule

|…………….Yes…………………..No………………..No

|…………….Yes…………………..Yes……………….No

|…………….N/A…………………..Yes……………….Yes

v

Replacement

And we can make a simple statement out of incentives.

Defense : Yes regardless

Markets : Yes and integrate

Assets:….Yes and only if you Rule

Plunder:…No … only to raid to conquer. malincentives build.

So that is my answer on Imperialism.

Homogeneous populations only.

Rule only in exchange for returns.

Exploit only to further replacement.

Conquest and Genocide are the most consequential and successful entrepreneurial ventures in human history.