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Understanding Double Taxation: A Methodology To Think About What It Is
Introduction: I received the following message from: Dr. Suzanne de Treville Swiss Finance Institute Professor of Operations Management, Emeritus University of Lausanne Faculty of Business and Economics 1015 Lausanne-Dorigny Switzerland A very interesting analysis of double taxation indeed. I am reproducing this as a blog post with her kind permission. Suzanne has kindly agreed to participate in…
#citizenship taxation#double taxation#residence taxation#source taxation#Suzanne de Treville#worldwide taxation
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Changes to the Tax Collection System in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France
My translation from Le prix de la gloire: Napoléon et l’argent by Pierre Branda.
This part is specifically about the reforms made to the tax collection system. Problems with taxation had been the source of many woes, so it went through major changes.
“The [tax] work of the Consulate mainly concerned the reorganization of tax collection. Until now, this essential element was not administered directly by the Ministry of Finance. The Constituent Assembly had wanted the tax rolls for direct contributions, that is to say the ‘tax slips’, to be established by municipal administrations. Their work was complex, because each year it was necessary to draw up a list of taxpayers, determine each person’s share of tax and send them the amount of the contribution to pay. Poorly motivated (or even corrupt), the municipalities had put little care in the execution of their mission since a large part of the taxpayers had not yet received anything for their taxes of year VIII, or even of year VII or year VI. Also, with two or three years of delay in preparing the rolls, it was not surprising that tax revenues were low (nearly 400 million francs were thus left outstanding). If the sending of tax matrices left something to be desired, the collection of direct contributions was hardly better. The tax collector was also not an agent of the administration: this function was assigned to any person who agreed to collect taxes with the lowest possible commission (otherwise called ‘collecte à la moins-dite’). With such a system, there were numerous inadequacies, often due to incompetence, but also due to the prevailing spirit of fraud. However, in their defense, the profits of the collectors were most of the time too low to provide such a service; also, to compensate for their losses, they were ‘forced’ to multiply small and big cheats. In any case, in such a troubled period, letting simple individuals carry out such a delicate mission could only be dangerous for the regularity of public accounts. In short, the mode of operation of taxation that Bonaparte and Gaudin inherited was failing on all sides and threatened to sink the State.”
“One month after Gaudin’s appointment, on December 13, 1799, the Directorate of Direct Contributions was created with the mission of establishing and sending tax matrices. This administration, dependent on the Ministry of Finance, was made up of a general director, 99 departmental directors and 840 inspectors and controllers. The organization of direct contributions became both centralized and pyramidal, the opposite of the previous system, decentralized and with a confused hierarchy. The work of preparing the rolls, for so long entrusted to local authorities, passed entirely ‘in the hands of the Minister of Finance’ and in this way the taxpayer found himself in direct contact with the administration. The tax system no longer having any obstacles, the beneficial effects of such a measure did not take long to be felt. With ardor, the agents of this new administration carried out considerable work: three series of rolls, that is to say more than one hundred thousand tax slips, were established in a single year. It must be said that the ministry had not skimped on their pay (6,000 francs per year for a director, 4,000 for an inspector and 1,800 for a controller), which was undoubtedly not unrelated to such success.”
“Tax reform was slower. It was not until 1804 that all tax collectors were civil servants. The consular system gradually replaced the collectors of the departments, then of the main cities and finally of all the municipalities whose tax rolls exceeded 15,000 francs. At the end of the Consulate, the entire tax administration was thus entirely dependent on the central government. Subsequently, the one in charge of indirect contributions (taxes on tobacco, alcohol or salt) created on February 25, 1804 and called the Régie des droits réunis was built on the same pyramidal and centralized model. It was the same later for customs.”
“According to Michel Bruguière, historian of public finances, ‘Napoleon and Gaudin can be considered the builders of the French tax administration. [...] They had also developed and codified the essential principles of our tax law, so profoundly derogatory from the rules of French law, since the taxpayer has nothing to do with it, while the administration has all the powers’. Basically, after having clearly understood the true cause of the ‘financial wound’, Bonaparte wanted an effective, almost ‘despotic’ instrument to avoid experiencing the unfortunate fate of his predecessors. As a good soldier, he created a fiscal ‘army’ responsible for providing the regime with the sinews of war. It was also necessary to definitively break the link between private interests and state service in everything that concerned public revenue. The time of the farmer generals of the Ancien Régime or the ‘second-hand’ collectors of the Directory was well and truly over. Napoleon Bonaparte, with his fierce desire to centralize power in this area as in many others, undoubtedly gave his regime the means to last.”
French:
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#Le prix de la gloire: Napoléon et l’argent#Le prix de la gloire#Napoléon et l’argent#napoleon#napoleonic era#napoleonic#napoleon bonaparte#19th century#first french empire#1800s#french empire#france#history#reforms#finance#economics#french revolution#frev#la révolution française#révolution française#Gaudin#tax#tax collection system#taxation#law#napoleonic code#source#french history#branda#Pierre branda
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The thing that confuses me the most about the American healthcare system is that it goes against American culture as I understand it.
Capitalism says you want maximum consumption, sustained as close to indefinitely as you can.
You don't want people dying early, or too broke to afford your product. You don't want the system designed to pay when they can't to not pay up. You want people to access your product from the second they have any need for it, until they die of old age, or as close as they can get to it. If it's a temporary issue, you want them to return to your brand. You want people to go see providers who give access to it without second thought and with as few barriers as possible. Expensive medication makes no sense for the promised infinite growth under capitalism.
Even the insurance companies have a vested interest in people accessing and affording healthcare: healthy, financially stable people generate profit. Dying kids don't become premium paying adults, and very definitely not top notch cover premium paying adults. Even if an adult requires a 2 dollar a day levothyroxine dose (which is a ludicrous markup still), their premium will still outweigh the cost of that illness, even with an annual checkup. A client who isn't frantically hoarding pennies to afford their $17,000 deductible will splurge on stuff like extra cover, or travel insurance. Someone who regularly gets checkups catches and can get treatment for illnesses in early stages (yes, you can motivate that behavior as an insurance company) when they are least expensive to fix.
There's no sense to the current system. The companies in charge of it have made their own growth finite, and are trying to fix it by narrowing their sources of income and expanding their incidences of expense.
#rant#health insurance#devil's advocate#source: a decade spent training and working in insurance#our area has two major generic pharmaceutical companies who have charmed local pharmacies#my wife is deeply unhappy if the packaging doesn't have the branding of the companies she knows work well#the ones that work--and don't charge weird prices for it#first rule of any insurance is to keep the client a paying client as long as possible#yeah they might generate costs#which can earn you more clients if they pass on that insurance was unproblematic and fixed the issue#or they have offspring they teach brand loyalty to#the number of people who insist on getting their (grand)kids ludicrous cover because we're not dicks on the phone is shocking#same with the number of people who want to buy life insurance after I'm normal levels polite about their parent dying of cancer#I'm all for a single payer system through taxation#but if you must privatize for profit at least show more foresight than a 4-year old swinging a hammer towards a piggy bank
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Denise Hearn and Vass Bednar’s “The Big Fix”
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/05/ted-rogers-is-a-dope/#galen-weston-is-even-worse
The Canadian national identity involves a lot of sneering at the US, but when it comes to oligarchy, Canada makes America look positively amateurish.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/05/ted-rogers-is-a-dope/#galen-weston-is-even-worse
Canada's monopolists may be big fish in a small pond, but holy moly are they big, compared to the size of that pond. In their new book, The Big Fix: How Companies Capture Markets and Harm Canadians, Denise Hearn and Vass Bednar lay bare the price-gouging, policy-corrupting ripoff machines that run the Great White North:
https://sutherlandhousebooks.com/product/the-big-fix/
From telecoms to groceries to pharmacies to the resource sector, Canada is a playground for a handful of supremely powerful men from dynastic families, who have bought their way to dominance, consuming small businesses by the hundreds and periodically merging with one another.
Hearn and Bednar tell this story and explain all the ways that Canadian firms use their market power to reduce quality, raise prices, abuse workers and starve suppliers, even as they capture the government and the regulators who are supposed to be overseeing them.
The odd thing is that Canada has been in the antitrust game for a long time: Canada passed its first antitrust law in 1889, a year before the USA got around to inaugurating its trustbusting era with the passage of the Sherman Act. But despite this early start, Canada's ultra-rich have successfully used the threat of American corporate juggernauts to defend the idea of Made-in-Canada monopolies, as homegrown King Kongs that will keep the nation safe from Yankee Godzillas.
Canada's Competition Bureau is underfunded and underpowered. In its entire history, the agency has never prevented a merger – not even once. This set the stage for Canada's dominant businesses to become many-tentacled conglomerates, like Canadian Tire, which owns Mark's Work Warehouse, Helly Hansen, SportChek, Nevada Bob's Golf, The Fitness Source, Party City, and, of course, a bank.
A surprising number of Canadian conglomerates end up turning into banks: Loblaw has a bank. So does Rogers. Why do these corrupt, price-gouging companies all go into "financial services?" As Hearn and Bednar explain, owning a bank is the key to financialization, with the company's finances disappearing into a black box that absorbs taxation attempts and liabilities like a black hole eating a solar system.
Of course, the neat packaging up of vast swathes of Canada's economy into these financialized and inscrutable mega-firms makes them awfully convenient acquisition targets for US and offshore private equity firms. When the Competition Bureau (inevitably) fails to block those acquisitions, whole chunks of the Canadian economy disappear into foreign hands.
This is a short book, but it's packed with a lot of easily digested detail about how these scams work: how monopolies use cross-subsidies (when one profitable business is used to prop up an unprofitable business in order to kill potential competitors) and market power to rip Canadians off and screw workers.
But the title of the book is The Big Fix, so it's not all doom and gloom. Hearn and Bednar note that Canadians and their elected reps are getting sick of this shit, and a bill to substantially beefed up Canadian competition law passed Parliament unanimously last year.
This is part of a wave of antitrust fever that's sweeping the world's governments, notably the US under Biden, where antitrust enforcers did more in the past four years than their predecessors accomplished over the previous 40 years.
Hearn and Bednar propose a follow-on agenda for Canadian lawmakers and bureaucrats: they call for a "whole of government" approach to dismantling Canada's monopolies, whereby each ministry would be charged with combing through its enabling legislation to find latent powers that could be mobilized against monopolies, and then using those powers.
The authors freely admit that this is an American import, modeled on Biden's July 2021 Executive Order on monopolies, which set out 72 action items for different parts of the administration, virtually all of which were accomplished:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/party-its-1979-og-antitrust-back-baby
What the authors don't mention is that this plan was actually cooked up by a Canadian: Columbia law professor Tim Wu, who served in the White House as Biden's tech antitrust czar, and who grew up in Toronto (we've known each other since elementary school!).
Wu's plan has been field tested. It worked. It was exciting and effective. There's something weirdly fitting about finding the answer to Canada's monopoly problems coming from America, but only because a Canadian had to go there to find a receptive audience for it.
The Big Fix is a fantastic primer on the uniquely Canadian monopoly problem, a fast read that transcends being a mere economics primer or history lesson. It's a book that will fire you up, make you angry, make you determined, and explain what comes next.
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From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire
"From Cyrus to Alexander" by Pierre Briant offers a detailed history of the Persian Empire, focusing on its administration, culture, and military. Briant highlights Persia’s innovations in governance and its tolerant, multicultural approach. The book challenges traditional Greek-centric views, presenting Persia as a complex and influential empire with a lasting historical legacy.
Pierre Briant’s From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire is widely considered the definitive modern history of the Persian Empire. The book covers its origins under Cyrus the Great through its conquest by Alexander the Great. Originally published in French as Histoire de l’Empire Perse in 1996, the English translation made this monumental work accessible to a wider audience, expanding its influence in Near Eastern studies, ancient history, and comparative empires.
Briant’s book stands out for its focus on presenting the Persian Empire as an autonomous civilization rather than through the perspective of its Greek rivals. Historically, much of what Western scholars knew about the Persian Empire came from Greek sources like Herodotus, who often cast Persia as a monolithic enemy. By situating Persia at the center of its own narrative and making extensive use of archaeological findings, inscriptions, and administrative records, Briant counters this Eurocentric bias and offers a view of Persia as a sophisticated, multiethnic empire that left a significant legacy of governance, culture, and trade.
Briant structures the book in a way that mirrors the breadth of the Persian Empire, dedicating each section to a different aspect of the empire’s history, politics, economy, society, and culture. The organisation of the book reflects his emphasis on a systemic, comprehensive examination of the empire.
The early chapters detail Cyrus the Great’s conquests and policies of tolerance, which established a stable, expansive empire. Briant also examines governance, highlighting the balance between central control and local autonomy, the role of satraps, and the unifying use of Aramaic as an administrative lingua franca. Moreover, he analyses the Persian military apparatus, from its elite units like the Immortals to the logistical organisation enabling vast mobilizations by the Persians. He contextualises major conflicts, including the Persian Wars as part of a strategy to stabilize borders and secure valuable territories, rather than dominate all of Greece.
The book also dedicates significant attention to the Persian economy, exploring the empire’s agrarian base, trade networks, and taxation system. He shows how Persia’s economic policies were designed to support both the imperial treasury and local economies, creating a sustainable model that contributed to the empire’s longevity. The culture and religion section highlights Persia’s promotion of cultural integration and religious diversity. Briant shows how Persian art blended regional styles to symbolize royal authority and examines how Zoroastrian traditions coexisted with support for local religions, fostering loyalty among subjects.
One of Briant’s central arguments is that the Persian Empire’s strength lay in its policy of tolerance and inclusion. By allowing conquered peoples to retain their religious practices, local laws, and leaders, the Persians created a sense of allegiance that went beyond military domination. He also highlights the Persian administrative system as a model for later empires, like the Roman and Islamic. Innovations such as standardized taxation, the Royal Road, and an organised postal system enabled centralised yet flexible governance. His analysis of satrapies shows how Persia balanced regional autonomy with loyalty to central authority.
The book repositions the Persian Empire within a global context, highlighting its role in economic and cultural exchange across Asia and the Mediterranean. Through trade and diplomacy with regions like Egypt and Greece, Persia facilitated the flow of ideas and technologies, serving as a prototype for managing diverse populations and complex trade networks.
From Cyrus to Alexander is widely praised for its depth but critiqued for its daunting length and scholarly density. While excelling in its analysis of Persian administration and politics, it offers limited insight into the daily lives of ordinary Persians, focusing more on imperial strategies than social and cultural history.
This monumental work offers a detailed and balanced account of the Persian Empire, redefining its role in world history. Briant’s focus on understanding Persia on its own terms provides valuable insights into its governance, economy, and cultural integration, making it an essential resource for ancient Near Eastern studies.
Continue reading...
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Washington state Democrats accidentally leaked a document entitled “2025 Revenue Options” describing how they plan to hunt down citizens for additional taxes. An email containing the document and an accompanying PowerPoint presentation was sent to everyone in the Senate and entail exactly how they will wordsmith their way into extorting the people. “Do say: ‘Pay what they owe’ — but Don’t say: “Tax the rich” or “pay their fair share” because “taxes aren’t a punishment,” the graph read.
The proposal includes an 11% tax on firearms and ammunition. Storage units would be reclassified as RENTALS and seen as retail transactions. Amid the cost of living crisis exacerbated by shelter costs, these politicians believe that citizens should pay more in property taxes.
“Avoid centering the tax or talking in vague terms about ‘the economy’ or ‘education,’” the document states, instead opting to use positive connotations such as “providing,” “ensuring,” and “funding.” These lawmakers note that they must “identify the villain” who is preventing “progress.” That villain is the government, but the government needs to pin your woes on another source to create division. “We can ensure that extremely wealthy Washingtonians are taxed on their assets just like middle-class families are already taxed on theirs,” the slide reads.
The leaked document assures that this common rhetoric is intended to blind the masses into believing that tax hikes will not affect them but the dreaded “rich” who do not pay their “fair share.” In truth, no amount of taxation could ever be enough for the government as it spends perpetually with no plan to “pay their fair share” of debt.
Smart money has been fleeing blue states for this precise reason. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos notably fled Washington state for Florida, reportedly saving $1 billion on taxes alone. He moved his parents out of the state as well to avoid the death tax, which is among the highest in the nation at 20%. Governor Jay Inslee is wrapping up his term by insisting on a “wealth tax.”
The state is expected to face a $16 billion revenue deficit over the next four years and believes a 1% levy on the wealthiest residents could generate $3.4 billion over that time period. Businesses generating over $1 million annually would be in a new tax category called “service and other activities” and would be required to pay a 20% surcharge from October 2025 to December 2026. Come January 2027, successful businesses would be punished with a 10% tax. Why would anyone choose to conduct business in a state that punishes success? Innovators are not going to begin their businesses under these conditions and established companies will simply leave.
“Let’s be clear: there is a deficit ahead, but it’s caused by overspending, not by a recession or a drop in revenue,” Gildon said in a statement. “When the cost of doing business goes up, consumers feel it too. His budget would make living in Washington even less affordable.”
The state failed to manage its finances properly, and that burden now falls on the people. We see the same problem emerge at the local and federal levels. Governments feel entitled to YOUR money. Rather than correcting the root issue of spending and misallocated funds, governments believe the people they govern will foot the bill. The rhetoric is always the same as they insist they are “progressing” society by punishing the greedy and vilified rich. In truth, everyone suffers as a result of government mismanagement.
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Sorry if this is not the kind of ask you want to get but several people in this post argued about the benefit of legalizing prostitution and it sounds very convincing? What do you think? https://www.tumblr.com/prismatic-bell/757101438415601664/i-still-remember-learning-the-following-factoid?source=share
Hi! This is exactly the sort of ask I like to get!
So, I think the reason why this sounds convincing is because they are partially correct. However, the third individual is wrong on a very crucial part, which I will explain.
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Policies regarding prostitution range from full legalization (all related activities are legal and incorporated into the legitimate economy) to full criminalization (all related activities are illegal and exist only in an underground economy).
The first thing to understand – and what the individuals in that post got right – is that full criminalization does not help the people trapped in either "voluntary" prostitution or sex trafficking victims. This stakeholder report [1] discusses various issues that result for human trafficking victims (including children) as a result of full criminalization. This is focused on trafficking victims, rather than all prostitutes, but in truth, the line between these categories is blurry at best. (There certainly isn't a reliable way for the legal system to differentiate between them.)
So, in this way, the first two individuals are correct. Arresting women and children for "selling sex" does significant harm. It also doesn't appear to be effective at reducing trafficking, child sexual exploitation, or exploitation by pimps.
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However, each poster appears to be making the leap that because full criminalization is harmful to the vulnerable women and children in prostitution, the best alternative is full legalization or decriminalization. (To clarify between these two, consider the case of marijuana: legalized marijuana often entails taxation and other governmental involvement in the industry whereas decriminalization means it is still illegal remains but the government doesn't actively pursue people involved with marijuana.)
This assumption is erroneous.
There is well documented evidence that full legalization/decriminalization does not significantly reduce (and may increase) harm to prostituted women and children.
The alternative option, is a partial decriminalization. Specifically, decriminalizing the "supply" ("selling sex"), while maintaining criminalization of the demand ("buying sex") and third-party organization (pimps, traffickers, etc.). This option results in the most harm reduction (as endorsed by those posters!). This option is often referred to as the "Nordic Model" (as it originated in a Nordic country).
I'll expand on these points below.
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Innumerable studies have shown that full legalization results in an increase in sex trafficking. Here is a selection:
These comparisons on several European countries find that full legalization leads to an increase in trafficking, in comparison to both full criminalization and the Nordic model. [2, 3]
This review discusses how "evidence supports the theory that legal prostitution is associated with increased trafficking." When the article was written (2009) an estimated "80% of all women in German and Dutch prostitution are trafficked". In New Zealand's largest city, "A 200-400% increase in street prostitution has been reported since prostitution was decriminalized in 2003." and "25% of those interviewed said that they entered the sex industry because it had been decriminalized". [4]
This paper highlights how "fighting sex trafficking using the criminal justice system may even be harder in the legalized prostitution sector". [5]
This EU commissioned study found that both full legalization and full decriminalization was associated with twice the number of trafficking victims as full criminalization or the Nordic model. [6]
This article discusses how legalization promotes trafficking, expands demand, increases the illegal market, increases child prostitution/trafficking, and doesn't protect the women/children in prostitution [7].
In addition:
This paper provides a thorough debunking of Amnesty International's support for decriminalization. They discuss how "the best available evidence indicates that decriminalization of prostitution would: increase sex trafficking, leave prostituted women or 'sex workers' more vulnerable to violence, and reduce access to healthcare, protection, and services." [8]
This paper's title is particularly apt: "Prostitution, Trafficking, and Cultural Amnesia: What We Must Not Know in Order To Keep the Business of Sexual Exploitation Running Smoothly". In particular, it discusses how prostitution is extremely violent, linked to prejudice, linked to trafficking, and harmful to women and society at large. [9]
This study of 150 countries finds legalization "does not help liberate victims of human trafficking" and doesn't protect victims. [10]
I have searched for any evidence that (as claimed by the third poster) that the "growth rate of trafficking in [Germany, following legalization] went down" and found ... nothing. I can't actually find any sources about the "growth rate" of trafficking in either direction. That being said, the above sources all clearly indicate that traffickers find Germany (and other countries with legalized prostitution) to be profitable (i.e., people are still being trafficked through and into Germany).
Further, while it is likely that victims find it easier to escape under a fully legalized than a fully criminalized model (as discussed above), that doesn't change the fact that more women are being trafficked in the first place. It also doesn't change the fact that there is a better alternative (i.e, the Nordic model, which retains the ability for women to escape trafficking while also reducing trafficking and the overall demand for prostitution).
To expand, many papers have provided empirical support for the Nordic model. These papers [11-15] all discuss the various advantages and disadvantageous of the different systems. Papers [13-15] all explicitly recommend the Nordic model as the best (if still flawed) option.
And here [16] is an additional discussion of both the benefits and issues (primarily implementation problems) with the Nordic model. They describe the reduction in prostitution and trafficking and positive change sin public opinion, but also discuss the additional services and protections needed to realize the full potential of this policy.
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All in all, I actually agree that "harm reduction is always good". However, the greatest amount of harm reduction is afforded by the Nordic model. This model legalizes/decriminalizes "selling sex" while criminalizing "buying sex" and "organization" (e.g., pimps, brothels). It results in reduced demand, reduced trafficking, and reduced overall harm. Simply legalizing "sex work" is not harm reduction; on the contrary, it causes significant harm.
References under the cut:
International Women’s Human Rights Clinic, et al. Criminalization of Trafficking Victims. 2015, https://www.law.cuny.edu/wp-content/uploads/page-assets/academics/clinics/hrgj/publications/Criminalization-of-Trafficking-Victims.pdf.
Marinova, Nadejda K., and Patrick James. “The Tragedy of Human Trafficking: Competing Theories and European Evidence1: The Tragedy of Human Trafficking.” Foreign Policy Analysis, vol. 8, no. 3, July 2012, pp. 231–53. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1743-8594.2011.00162.x.
Osmanaj, Egzone. “The Impact of Legalized Prostitution on Human Trafficking.” Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, June 2014. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.5901/ajis.2014.v3n2p103.
Farley, Melissa. “Theory versus Reality: Commentary on Four Articles about Trafficking for Prostitution.” Women’s Studies International Forum, vol. 32, no. 4, July 2009, pp. 311–15. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2009.07.001.
Huisman, Wim, and Edward R. Kleemans. “The Challenges of Fighting Sex Trafficking in the Legalized Prostitution Market of the Netherlands.” Crime, Law and Social Change, vol. 61, no. 2, Mar. 2014, pp. 215–28. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-013-9512-4.
Di Nicola, Andrea. The differing EU Member States’ regulations on prostitution and their cross-border implications on women’s rights. European Union, 2021.
Raymond, Janice G. "Ten reasons for not legalizing prostitution and a legal response to the demand for prostitution." Journal of Trauma Practice 2.3-4 (2004): 315-332.
Geist, Darren. (2016). Dignity: A Journal on Sexual Exploitation and Violence. Vol. 1, Issue 1, Article 6. DOI:10.23860/dignity.2016.01.01.06. Available at http://digitalcommons.uri.edu/dignity/Vol1/Iss1/6.
Farley, Melissa. "Prostitution, trafficking, and cultural amnesia: What we must not know in order to keep the business of sexual exploitation running smoothly." Yale JL & Feminism 18 (2006): 109.
Cho, Seo-young (2013) : Liberal coercion? Prostitution, human trafficking and policy, MAGKS Joint Discussion Paper Series in Economics, No. 44-2013, Philipps-University Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Marburg
Curiel, Angelica. Informing United States Sex Trafficking Policies: A Comparative Analysis of Sweden, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Chile, and South Korea. Diss. California State University San Marcos, 2016.
Tomlinson, Alexia, Mary Haggerty, and Caroline Rini. "A global study of prostitution policy." Wis. JL Gender, & Soc'y 37 (2022): 23.
Rowe, Kathryn, "Regulating Sex Work: United States' Policy and International Comparisons" (2018). Honors Theses. 522. https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis/522
Tate Santana, Madison. "Trafficked in Texas: Combatting the sex-trafficking epidemic through prostitution law and sentencing reform in the lone star state." Vand. L. Rev. 71 (2018): 1739.
Joulaei, Hassan, et al. "Legalization, Decriminalization or Criminalization; Could We Introduce a Global Prescription for Prostitution (Sex Work)?." International Journal of High Risk Behaviors and Addiction 10.3 (2021).
Waltman, Max. "Sweden's prohibition of purchase of sex: The law's reasons, impact, and potential." Women's Studies International Forum. Vol. 34. No. 5. Pergamon, 2011.
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In terms of looking for horses in art history depictions of the Anglo-Saxon noblewoman Lady Godiva are a good place to start. The legend that she is known for tells of her riding naked - only covered by her long hair - through the streets of Coventry in a stand against the oppressive taxation her husband Leofric had imposed on his tenants.
Lady Godiva statue by John Thomas (1813 – 1862), Maidstone Museum, Kent, England.
(Picture source for Lady Godiva statue)
#john Thomas#art#horses#art history#horse#horse art#horse sculptures#lady godiva#statue#Statues#history#anglo saxon#horses in art history
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Brazil rolls out minimum tax on profits of multinational firms
Brazil's government late on Thursday published an executive order that effectively rolls out a minimum 15% tax on profits of multinational corporations, a publication in the country's official gazette showed.
Brazil's government has been seeking new sources of revenue to meet fiscal targets that include reducing its fiscal deficit to zero, while being loath to adopt broad spending cuts. It says the new move is in line with global efforts to combat tax evasion.
The executive order sets an additional levy on Brazil's social contribution tax on corporate income (CSLL) to make sure the minimum taxation stands at 15%, according to the publication.
Continue reading.
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by Sophie Kalmin
The Roman period left various indelible marks on the Jewish psyche, further exhibited by the remains of the Masada fortress. Excavated in the 1960s, King Herod’s first-century BCE stronghold serves as a powerful symbol of Jewish resilience. It was at Masada that Jewish rebels stood firmly against the Romans before the fortress was destroyed, and the Romans marked another victory over the land’s people. Today, Masada serves as one of the most popular tourist sites in Israel, in which visitors can interact with ancient cisterns, pottery, and engineering feats completed by Jewish architects. With areas of the fortress still yearning to be excavated, Masada prevails as one of the most poignant reminders of the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel — Jewish people died defending it thousands of years ago.
Historians say…
Beyond archaeology, the writings of Flavius Josephus, a first-century Jewish historian, provide an insider experience of Jewish life and Roman governance in Judea. In his work Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus details the Roman administrative presence in the region, including the taxation policies implemented by the governor of Syria, Cyrenius. Flavius notes, “Moreover Cyrenius came himself into Judea, which was now added to the province of Syria, to take an account of their substance, and to dispose of Archelaus’s money.” This account emphasizes both Jewish property and economic activities in Roman Judea. Josephus’s comprehensive records serve as a critical source, underscoring the continuous Jewish involvement in this land across millennia.
Benjamin Tudela, the 12th-century author of The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela, records Jewish activity at the Cave of Machpelah. Tudela, a Jew living in the Middle Ages, describes the religious practices being exercised distinctly at this place. He writes that casks of generations of Israelites are buried within the cave and that our forefathers constructed “a gate of iron” to protect those visiting their loved ones’ remains. Because of Tudela, the stories of connection between Jewish people and their ancestors buried in the Land of Israel resonate more deeply.
Lasting Jewish Practice
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the early 20th century provides arguably the most compelling evidence of the Jewish people’s enduring connection to their land and heritage. These ancient manuscripts, which date back to the last three centuries BCE and the first century CE, include the earliest known copies of the Hebrew Bible, providing invaluable insights into Jewish life, law, and beliefs during the Second Temple period. Written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, these scrolls are a powerful symbol of Jewish spiritual and intellectual resilience. Their survival over two millennia affirms the enduring legacy of Jewish scholarship and the community’s unwavering commitment to preserving their sacred texts.
Israel is the Jewish Homeland
When British ships landed in North America in the late 16th century, they didn’t dig up Shakespeare plays and find ancient coins minted in English. By definition, colonial powers are not indigenous to the places they colonize. Jews have maintained a continuous presence in Israel since Judaism’s inception, despite numerous conquerors that have come along and expelled the Jews from their land. These exiles are not only thoroughly documented in Jewish literature and cultural evolution, but in continuous archaeological findings. Failed attempts to eradicate the Jewish people from their land have reinforced the urgency of the lasting existence of a Jewish country.
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US Tax Season
Hi everyone!! Idk how many people this will reach, but I wanna post some resources for US residents since tax season is here. I’m a graduate taxation student who intends to work in family/small business/non profit tax.
If taxes are really intimidating to you I don’t blame you, they’ve been made super inaccessible and hard to learn about. There are some resources out there that are really worth looking into, which I would highly recommend!
If you want to file your taxes from home and made less than $73,000 from all sources of income this year, check out the IRS Free File page. There are options to fill out all tax forms yourself without auto calculations OR an even better option which is self guided free filing platforms with auto calculations. There are multiple services that can help with the self guided forms, I’d suggest finding the best fit for you. Some may offer free federal tax returns but need payment for state tax returns.
I’d also highly recommend checking out the IRS VITA (Volunteer Income Tax Assistance) program which I will be volunteering with starting next week. It’s a program ran by volunteers who have to get certified and take tests to be able to file basic/slightly advanced tax returns for individuals who made under $60,000 from all sources of income in the previous year. It’s an in person program where you’d bring all your tax forms and sit down with a volunteer who would help you file your tax return. The website linked above has another link to look for volunteer centers in your area. Some locations may need an appointment, but as far as I know most accept walk ins.
For both of these you’ll need all tax forms from the previous year (W2s, 1099s, 1098Ts, etc). If you don’t know if you’ll need it, I’d bring it as opposed to not. I don’t know how many questions I can answer because I’m still fairly new to this, but I am certified to prepare tax returns for US residents. If you have any questions feel free to ask!
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2024 Book Review #39 – Inglorious Empire: What the British Did To India by Shashi Tharoor
I honestly forget who first recommended this book to me – quite possible I just googled ‘good indian history books’ and found it that way? - but it’s been on my TBR list for functionally forever at this point. Which meant I went into it essentially blind, with no memory of what if any details I’d been given with the recommendation. Which meant I had a moderately disappointing reading experience just because I was hoping for a narrative history and not an explicit polemical/persuasive text. Still, taken on its own merits as one of those, it’s really quite a good one.
The book is an adaptation and expansion of a performance the author gave at an Oxford debate (arguing against the notion that the British Empire was a good thing) which was recorded and went viral enough to make it a commercially viable prospect. The origin story shines through in the form – aside from an introduction and conclusion, each chapter is a clear and specific argument against some specific justification offered for the British conquest and colonization of India, full to bursting with statistics and quotations buttressing every point.
I would very much like to say that most of it is devoted to stuff the average reader will know anyway (if illustrated with clear and affecting examples), but, going by the apparent public response to the original debate and some polling cited in the conclusion, apparently not! The YouGov polls about the English public’s knowledge and opinion of the Empire are bleak enough that yeah this probably is a direly needed work of public education, if mostly for people who will not at any point read it.
Still, the fact that the British Raj was explicitly and institutionally racist and reserved functionally all positions of real power and authority for white men shouldn’t be much of a surprise, nor the fact that the ‘rule of law’ was basically a sick joke as far as crimes across the colour line went, nor the fact that the extraction of wealth from India to make fortunes in Britain was the explicit goal of policy, nor the fact that resistance (especially resistance successful enough to spook the authorities) was responded to with utter and excessive brutality. All that is basically the meat of what having been a colony means.
That said, I was taken a bit aback by the sheer rapaciousness of early Company government – it’s one thing to hear about oppressive taxation, another to get quoted the census figures of how they were so extreme that enough peasants fleeing their land and homes to look for greener pastures to show up as overall population decline in the areas under HEIC control. Similarly, my understanding of how India was turned into a captive market for British goods was much more subtle and indirect than the outright smashing of looms and legal prohibition of any attempts to compete with British industries that were actually used.
Whereas I did know about the deadly famines that kept occurring throughout the Raj, but the sheer cartoonish malevolence of colonial authorities when faced with them always manages to shock me a bit. ‘Nature’s solution to overpopulation’ was a really horrifyingly opinion at the time.
The audience of the debate performance the book’s based on definitely shines through in the choice of sources – wherever possible, Tharoor quotes from or cites western (Anglo-American, generally) sources for his eye-witness accounts and always takes care to introduce and ground them in terms of western governments or academia. The quotes themselves are all helpful illustrations, though there’s probably slightly more than are really strictly necessary – I’m pretty sure by wordcount at least a chapter of the book was actually written by Will Durant.
I’m not sure if it’s because of the original format or just how Tharoor writes, but the book also just has a great love of adjectives. Seemingly every source referenced is ‘historic’ or ‘path-breaking’ unless it is merely ‘compendious’ or outright ‘invidious’. Not a bad thing, but once I noticed it I was totally unable to stop doing so.
The book is straightforward polemic and Tharoor makes no bones about his position, so I take his verging-on-idyllic descriptions of pre-colonial Indian governance (especially regarding land tenure and caste) and the probability that India would have unified into a modern nation state without colonialism a dose pour of salt. There’s a few other inaccuracies I noticed (referring to the East India Company’s theft of Chinese tea plans as the ‘birth of agricultural espionage), for example), but it was all in the realm of little asides or colourful anecdotes rather than anything load-bearing.
It is rather funny that the book repeatedly draws comparisons with French colonies to argue that India was worst off, on the grounds that Paris at least made gestures towards integrating Indochina or Algeria and their peoples into France (however inadequate and hypocritical those efforts were), whereas in India the maintenance of total domination and the clear policy that India and Indians were things to be exploited for the benefit of England never changed. Funny, because from the book of Vietnamese history I read a few months ago the perspective of nationalists in Indochina was quite the reverse, seeing the English as at least somewhat honest brokers who were willing to grant some level of (limited and inadequate) self-government, compared to the French. Grass is always greener, I guess.
Though that does get at Tharoor’s argument as to why the British were worse not just in degree but in kind to the Mughals and any other empire-builders from outside South Asia who had come before them. The Mughals became Indian, both in the simple material sense that all their taxes didn’t end up back in Samarkand and Indian merchants were intentionally ruined for the benefit of traditional central asia trade routes, and in the more cultural sense that the ruling class set down roots and intermarried with their subjects rather than establishing a cloistered ruling class. Instead, the Raj was more akin to Tamerlane’s sack of Delhi, extended across 200 years. (One gets the sense Tharoor thinks a permanent settler population moving into stolen palaces would have been preferable to the rotation of soldiers and officials arriving from the metropole for long enough to get rich before heading back to build mansions in the Home Counties.)
Also, speaking of Vietnamese history, I only have a sample size of two but it’s interesting how in both cases a class of liberal (in the western sense) intellectuals and bourgeois emerged who tried to take the colonial propaganda at its word and enter some sustainable partnership with the imperial power – and in both cases got at best ignored and at worst imprisoned, tortured and executed for their trouble.
Anyways, interesting read, if one that makes me want something more specific and rigorous about basically any specific section of it (though, not to jump up and yell ‘Canada Mentioned!’ but every time Trudeau was used as an example of a colonial power’s leader handling the apologizing and acknowledging stuff gracefully and well I had to really try not to laugh).
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Ptolemaic economic policy
Maintaining the Ptolemaic regime was an expensive endeavor. Enormous funds were required to sustain the Ptolemies' luxurious lifestyle in their palace at Alexandria and to pay the wages of their large army, which protected Egypt and its dependencies. The drive to maximize state income became one of the defining features of the Ptolemaic empire, and various papyrus finds across Egypt provide valuable insights into this aspect of their administration. Since the reign of Ptolemy I Soter, the kings regarded the entirety of Egypt as their personal property. The majority of the land was leased to locals, while the rest was directly exploited as "crown land." Evidence suggests that the kings even considered the lands of the powerful temples as their own and sought ways to extract significant resources from them. However, by the 2nd century BCE, as Ptolemaic power waned, local temple complexes regained much of their lost influence. Additionally, various forms of taxation were introduced to further enrich the monarchy.
The Ptolemaic monarchs viewed the economy in a mercantile manner, believing that the state’s wealth was directly tied to the amount of precious metals circulating within the country. To maximize the gold present in their kingdom, the rulers tightly controlled the economy and trade.
They were supported by an elaborate bureaucracy headed by the dioiketes, the financial minister, who resided in the capital, Alexandria. Valuable insights into the operations and responsibilities of this government official come from the archive of Zenon, an agent of Apollonios, the dioiketes of Ptolemy II (r. 284–246 BCE).
The dioiketes was supported by various oikonomoi, who were responsible for collecting taxes and rents from the population. Interestingly, one of their tasks was to improve relations with peasants, who often fled their farms due to mounting taxation pressures. The oikonomoi employed various methods to ensure that no potential source of revenue escaped the state’s coffers. For instance, during the Nile floods, they counted farmers’ livestock, which had gathered on higher ground to escape the rising waters. This made it easier to account for the animals. The oikonomoi had an entire army of minor officials at their disposal, most of whom were Egyptians. These officials, who spoke Egyptian, were tasked with communicating and enforcing the government’s directives among the local population. Olivier Goossens
#ancient egypt#archaeology#art history#ancient history#ancient greece#artifacts#classical history#classical literature
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American education has all the downsides of standardization, none of the upsides
Catch me in Miami! I'll be at Books and Books in Coral Gables on Jan 22 at 8PM.
We moved to America in 2015, in time for my kid to start third grade. Now she's a year away from graduating high school (!) and I've had a front-row seat for the US K-12 system in a district rated as one of the best in the country. There were ups and downs, but high school has been a monster.
We're a decade and a half into the "common core" experiment in educational standardization. The majority of the country has now signed up to a standardized and rigid curriculum that treats overworked teachers as untrustworthy slackers who need to be disciplined by measuring their output through standard lessons and evaluations:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Core
This system is rigid enough, but it gets even worse at the secondary level, especially when combined with the Advanced Placement (AP) courses, which adds another layer of inflexible benchmarks to the highest-stakes, most anxiety-provoking classes in the system:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Placement
It is a system singularly lacking in grace. Ironically, this unforgiving system was sold as a way of correcting the injustice at the heart of the US public education system, which funds schools based on local taxation. That means that rich neighborhoods have better funded schools. Rather than equalizing public educational funding, the standardizers promised to ensure the quality of instruction at the worst-funded schools by measuring the educational outcomes with standard tools.
But the joke's on the middle-class families who backed standardized instruction over standardized funding. Their own kids need slack as much as anyone's, and a system that promises to put the nation's kids through the same benchmarks on the same timetable is bad for everyone:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/28/give-me-slack-2/
Undoing this is above my pay-grade. I've already got more causes to crusade on than I have time for. But there is a piece of tantalyzingly low-hanging fruit that is dangling right there, and even though I'm not gonna pick it, I can't get it out of my head, so I figured I'd write about it and hope I can lazyweb it into existence.
The thing is, there's a reason that standardization takes hold in so many domains. Agreeing on a common standard enables collaboration by many entities without any need for explicit agreements or coordination. The existence of the ANSI/SAE J563 standard automobile auxiliary power outlet (AKA "car cigarette lighter") didn't just allow many manufacturers to make replacement lighter plugs. The existence of a standardized receptacle delivering standardized voltage to standardized contacts let all kinds of gadgets be designed to fit in that socket.
Standards crystallize the space of all possible ways of solving a problem into a range of solutions. This inevitably has a downside, because the standardized range might not be optimal for all applications. Think of the EU's requirement for USB-C charger tips on all devices. There's a lot of reasons that manufacturers prefer different charger tips for different gadgets. Some of those reasons are bad (gouging you on replacement chargers), but some are good (unique form-factor, specific smart-charging needs). USB-C is a very flexible standard (indeed, it's so flexible that some people complain that it's not a standard at all!) but there are some applications where the optimal solution is outside its parameters.
And still, I think that the standardization on USB-C is a force for good. I have drawers full of gadgets that need proprietary charger tips, and other drawers full of chargers with proprietary tips, and damned if I can make half of them match up. We've continued our pandemic lockdown tradition of my wife cutting my hair in the back yard, and just tracking the three different charger tips for the three clippers she uses is an ongoing source of frustration. I'd happily trade slightly sub-optimal charging for just being able to plug any of those clippers into the same cable I charge my headphones, phone, tablet and laptop on.
The standardization of American education has produced all the downsides of standardization – a rigid, often suboptimal, one-size-fits-all system – without the benefits. With teachers across America teaching in lockstep, often from the same set texts (especially in the AP courses), there's a massive opportunity for a commons to go with the common core.
For example, the AP English and History classes my kid takes use standard texts that are often centuries old and hard to puzzle out. I watched my kid struggle with texts for learning about "persuasive rhetoric" like 17th century pamphlets that inspired anti-indigenous pogroms with fictional accounts of "Indian atrocities."
It's good for American schoolkids to learn about the use of these blood libels to excuse genocide, but these pamphlets are a slog. Even with glossaries in the textbooks, it's a slow, word-by-word matter to parse these out. I can't imagine anyone learning a single thing about how speech persuades people just by reading that text.
But there's nothing in the standardized curriculum that prevents teachers from adding more texts to the unit. We live in an unfortunate golden age for persuasive texts that inspire terrible deeds – for example, kids could also read core Pizzagate texts and connect the guy who shot up the pizza parlor to the racists who formed a 17th century lynchmob.
But teachers are incredibly time-constrained. For one thing, at least a third of the AP classroom time seems to be taken up with detailed instructions for writing stilted, stylized "essays" for the AP tests (these are terrible writing, but they're easy to grade in a standardized way).
That's where standardization could actually deliver some benefits. If just one teacher could produce some supplemental materials and accompanying curriculum, the existence of standards means that every other teacher could use it. What's more, any adaptations that teachers make to that unit to make them suited to their kids would also work for the other teachers in the USA. And because the instruction is so rigidly standardized, all of these materials could be keyed to metadata that precisely identified the units they belonged to.
The closest thing we have to this are "marketplaces" where teachers can sell each other their supplementary materials. As far as I can tell, the only people making real money from these marketplaces are the grifters who built them and convinced teachers to paywall the instructional materials that could otherwise form a commons.
Like I said, I've got a completely overfull plate, but if I found myself at loose ends, trying to find a project to devote the rest of my life to, I'd be pitching funders on building a national, open access portal to build an educational commons.
It may be a lot to expect teachers to master the intricacies of peer-based co-production tools like Git, but there's already a system like this that K-8 teachers across the country have mastered: Scratch. Scratch is a graphic programming environment for kids, and starting with 2019's Scratch 3.0, the primary way to access it is via an in-browser version that's hosted at scratch.mit.edu.
Scratch's online version is basically a kid- (and teacher-)friendly version of Github. Find a project you like, make a copy in your own workspace, and then mod it to suit your own needs. The system keeps track of the lineage of different projects and makes it easy for Scratch users to find, adapt, and share their own projects. The wild popularity of this system tells us that this model for a managed digital commons for an educational audience is eminently achievable.
So when students are being asked to study the rhythm of text by counting the numbers of words in the sentences of important speeches, they could supplement that very boring exercise by listening to and analyzing contemporary election speeches, or rap lyrics, or viral influencer videos. Different teachers could fork these units to swap in locally appropriate comparitors – and so could students!
Students could be given extra credit for identifying additional materials that slot into existing curricular projects – Tiktok videos, new chart-topping songs, passages from hot YA novels. These, too, could go into the commons.
This would enlist students in developing and thinking critically about their curriculum, whereas today, these activities are often off-limits to students. For example, my kid's math teachers don't hand back their quizzes after they're graded. The teachers only have one set of quizzes per unit, and letting the kids hold onto them would leak an answer-key for the next batch of test-takers.
I can't imagine learning math this way. "You got three questions wrong but I won't let you see them" is no way to help a student focus on the right areas to improve their understanding.
But there's no reason that math teachers in a commons built around the (unfortunately) rigid procession of concepts and testing couldn't generate procedural quizzes, specified with a simple programming language. These tests could even be automatically graded, and produce classroom stats on which concepts the whole class is struggling with. Each quiz would be different, but cover the same ground.
When I help my kid with her homework, we often find disorganized and scattered elements of this system – a teacher might post extensive notes on teaching a specific unit. A publisher might produce a classroom guide that connects a book to specific parts of the common core. But these are scattered across the web, and they aren't keyed to the specific, standard components of common core and AP.
This is a standardized system that is all costs, no benefits. It has no "architecture of participation" that lets teachers, students, parents, practitioners and even commercial publishers collaborate to produce a commons that all may share and improve upon.
In an ideal world, we'd get rid of standardization in education, pay teachers well, give them the additional time they needed to prepare exciting and relevant curriculum, and fund all our schools based on need, not parents' income.
But in the meanwhile, we could be making lemonade of out lemons. If we're going to have standardization, we should at least have the collaboration standards enable.
I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/16/flexibility-in-the-margins/#a-commons
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A little update about Robespierre
Since 1794, reactionary memory has made Robespierre a monster, a bloodthirsty dictator, who wanted to destroy the Old Order, Catholic traditions. Until the Restoration of the monarchy, very few sources are accessible to better understand the character, so demonized is he... It is from the Restoration that writings are rediscovered about him. Under the July Monarchy (1830-1848), the image of Robespierre becomes a model for a democratic and social Republic; an image taken up for the Revolution of 1848. Under the Second Empire, moderate republicans reject the image of Robespierre like that of all the Montagnards; for these republicans, heirs of the Girondins, the French Revolution is limited to 1789, and nothing else!
Since the beginning of the 20th century, in particular thanks to the work of the historian Albert Mathiez, Robespierre appears as an indisputable model of a democratic and social Republic. Jean Jaurès paints a glowing portrait of him in his Socialist History of the French Revolution. Then, in 1920, the communists of the French Communist Party made Robespierre a great revolutionary model, the most important figure of the French Revolution and the First Republic. Moreover, in 1936, the Popular Front, whether it was the communists or the socialists, did not hesitate to glorify the character. In this post, I want to deconstruct in my own way the heroic image of Robespierre.
My post consists to explain why Robespierre did not go far enough in the essential fights to overthrow the old order and traditions, and for an egalitarian, democratic, social and secular republic. I will also take a position for some of my "favorite" revolutionaries, among them Jacques Roux and the "Enragés", Babeuf, Jean-Baptiste Carrier, Antoine-François and Sophie Momoro... I will establish a comparison between the characters cited and Robespierre. If you dislike or are bothered by this post, feel free to leave a critical comment...
At the beginning of 1793, Robespierre was already showing himself to be far too moderate, even indifferent, to the demands of the popular Sans-Culottes movement. At the end of 1792, Jacques Roux (for whom I have a lot of admiration, I will explain why in a future post) had acquired great popularity among the Sans-Culottes, due to his brilliant interventions at the Granvilliers section, and especially thanks to his Speech on the judgment of Louis the Last, on the pursuit of speculators, hoarders and traitors. In this speech, Jacques Roux defends a truly egalitarian program, which is not the case for Robespierre! Jacques Roux notably called for the general taxation and requisition of commodities, the guillotine for hoarders and manufacturers of counterfeit assignats, a ban on exporting grain, etc...
In February 1793, when the radical sans-culotte petitioners, supported by Jacques Roux (and other "ultra-revolutionaries", of course), decided to disrupt the session of the Convention by demanding in particular the general taxation of commodities, Robespierre refused this economic program, considering it absurd and unrealistic.
Robespierre, attached to the right of property and economic liberalism, was against the abolition of private property. In April 1793, he even declared that "equality of property is a chimera". Unlike Babeuf or Jacques Roux, Robespierre opposed the agrarian law, which he considered a counter-revolutionary tool, going as far as the right of property; he was therefore against the fair sharing of property and land! The "ultra-revolutionaries" demanded the guillotine for the hoarders and speculators, which was not the case for Robespierre...
Following the riots of May 31 to June 2, 1793, Robespierre even defended 75 moderates accused of supporting the Girondins. He hoped to limit the scale of the Sans-Culottes movement, whose "radicalization" he feared (he allowed himself to use this word). Fortunately, in June 1793, Jacques Roux presented his brilliant Manifesto of the Enragés, in which he criticized the deputies for being too conciliatory with the hoarders, the speculators, and for maintaining economic liberalism. Robespierre refused to listen to the reproaches made by the most faithful representatives of the sans-culottes, and he expelled Jacques Roux from the Convention ! Robespierre thus launched a fight against the Enragés. The Enragés continued to demand a freeze on prices (the Convention was satisfied with the law of the Maximum), the raising of a revolutionary army to requisition wheat in the countryside, the arrest of all enemies of the people, the purge of the general staff, the dismissal of the nobles. In August 1793, Jacques Roux was arrested, followed by Varlet. This is what happened when one was too radical, much more revolutionary than Robespierre :)
From September 1793, Hébert and especially the brilliant Antoine-François Momoro, now asserted themselves as spokesmen for the sans-culottes. Robespierre was therefore far from controlling everything.
The supporters of reactionary memory who demonize Robespierre (and even some admirers of Robespierre who, in truth, know him very little) equate the character with dechristianization (or worse, with atheism - which makes me laugh so much!). This is not the case at all, quite the contrary, Robespierre is categorically against it !
When he was a member of the Constituent Assembly (from 1789 to 1791), Robespierre spoke in favor of religious freedoms. In 1791, he stated that Catholicism and its practices did not disturb public order, so he was in favor of letting clergy preach, and against touching churches. He found it absurd to eradicate all belief. For Robespierre, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy was enough, no need to go further.
It was the members of the insurrectional Commune of Paris (with Chaumette as public prosecutor and Hébert as substitute), who, from August 1792, decided on the first measures of dechristianization. Chaumette was the main instigator (without forgetting Momoro, whom I adore, let's not lie to ourselves). Robespierre rejected this anticlerical program...
We can say that Joseph Fouché got involved in the work, he took the initiative to destroy churches, break crosses, and burn texts that were sacred only to these Catholic enemies. When he went to Burgundy, Fouché was quite benevolent towards the clergy, since he forced the boarding priests to marry. Collot d'Herbois continued the work in Lyon, by pillaging churches and Catholic icons.
In Nantes, from November 1793 to January 1794, Carrier showed a courage showed a certain "courage"... While he did "the bulk of the work" (attention, provocation!) for the Vendéens, he gets rid of 58 harmful and counter-revolutionary priests, in the "pretty national bathtub" (it's him who says that)... Robespierre condemned this act, which is understandable, since Carrier also drowned innocents. Moreover, even Babeuf disapproved of the drownings in the Loire.
Robespierre lacked courage in the face of counter-revolutionary Catholics. He simply stuck to the Republican calendar and renamed the communes. Another commendable action of dechristianization is of course the celebration of the Cult of Reason, at the initiative of Chaumette and Momoro at the Temple of Reason, where Sophie Founier (wife of Momoro) plays the role of the Goddess-Reason. As a reminder, in Brumaire Year II, Archbishop Gobel agreed to renounce his functions and abjure his religion, wearing the red cap. Shortly after the Festival of Reason, Robespierre gave a speech at the Jacobin Club, attacking atheism by considering it "aristocratic" (which is highly questionable). Then, from March 28, 1794, it was the end of the story for the 19 greatest revolutionaries (from my point of view) called "Hébertists" (the name is in my opinion inappropriate, knowing the different characters well) who had fought to the end against the influence of religion contrary to reason, atheism being proof of rationalism (later, perhaps I will offer you a philosophical post on this subject...).
Robespierre deemed it necessary to introduce a new god, thus preferring virtue and morality, rather than reason which was dear to the ultra-revolutionaries defenders of atheism. On 18 Floréal Year II, Robespierre established the Cult of the Supreme Being. The attributes symbolizing atheism, used during the Cult of Reason, were forbidden. Robespierre burned a statue representing atheism. In his Decree Establishing the Cult of the Supreme Being, he behaves like a priest, preaching the belief in the immortality of the human soul. In some conservative regions, Catholics who are still alive do not hesitate to celebrate mass! I dare say that Robespierre did nothing to prevent this (without casting too many stones at him) !
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Trade in the Roman World
Regional, inter-regional and international trade was a common feature of the Roman world. A mix of state control and a free market approach ensured goods produced in one location could be exported far and wide. Cereals, wine and olive oil, in particular, were exported in huge quantities whilst in the other direction came significant imports of precious metals, marble, and spices.
Factors Driving Trade
Generally speaking, as with earlier and contemporary civilizations, the Romans gradually developed a more sophisticated economy following the creation of an agricultural surplus, population movement and urban growth, territorial expansion, technology innovation, taxation, the spread of coinage, and not insignificantly, the need to feed the great city of Rome itself and supply its huge army wherever it might be on campaign.
The economy in the Roman world displayed features of both underdevelopment and high achievement. Elements of the former, some historians have argued (notably M.I.Finley), are:
an over-dependence on agriculture
a slow diffusion of technology
the high level of local town consumption rather than regional trade
a low level of investment in industry.
However, there is also evidence that from the 2nd century BCE to the 2nd century CE there was a significant rise in the proportion of workers involved in the production and services industries and greater trade between regions in essential commodities and manufactured goods. In the later empire period, although trade in the east increased - stimulated by the founding of Constantinople - trade in the western empire declined.
The Roman attitude to trade was somewhat negative, at least from the higher classes. Land ownership and agriculture were highly regarded as a source of wealth and status but commerce and manufacturing were seen as a less noble pursuit for the well-off. However, those rich enough to invest often overcame their scruples and employed slaves, freedmen, and agents (negotiatores) to manage their business affairs and reap the often vast rewards of commercial activity.
Continue reading...
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