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Entry: Ozymandias Airlines Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/ozymandias_airlines#16349 Post contents: 'Peasants toiling on a Latifundia at the borders of the late Roman Empire, should they have been overrun by the "barbarians," actually found the tribute exacted by the wild barbarian tribes lower than that mulcted by their erstwhile Roman imperial masters. The sustainment costs of the empire, its sybaritic court, and its hideously expensive military, were simply too high by that point.' Just one minor point: even the "sustainment costs of the empire, its sybaritic court, and its hideously expensive military" weren't too much for the peasantry to carry; it was the bureaucracy in between that blew the costs out. The thing is, all those other things amounted to costs proportional to the peasant base, or even a fixed cost that was naturally self limiting - but bureaucracy grows exponentionally, feeding on itself win or lose, as C. Northote Parkinson and Gibbon both knew. Sent at: 2008 07 09