- [!] Status Log - created:: 2022-01-27 - status-updated: 2022-01-27 - status-updated:: 2022-01-30 shipped with [[2022-02-02 The Bitter Business of Sweetwater Beans (FF)]] - [[Against the Grain by James C. Scott]] p 241 & 242 - [[2021-10-18 Taxes#Land Tax]] I think it's fascinating how American pop culture society treats smugglers and pirates (and thieves, and hitmen...) as objects of romanticism. Criminals like the protagonist of Breaking Bad and the gang members featured in Sons of Anarchy represent objects of fascination and sometimes guilty pleasure, because even when they're presented as "bad guys" they're very rarely "villains." For every [Captain Phillips](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Phillips_(film)) there are five [Pirates of the Carribean](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirates_of_the_Caribbean). We present these characters as dashing heroes — if not exactly figures to emulate, then certainty hey aren't portrayed as objects of disdain, either. These aren't villains, they're _fantasies_ the same way the [cowboy cop trope](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CowboyCop) is a fantasy that speaks to the desire to cut thru bureaucracy and be a hero by following hunches instead of procedure and solve problems by giving into our impulses instead of controlling them. I think there is something very common, but perhaps also dysfunctional, about the propensity to, even in fantasy, laud and perhaps in some small way envy smugglers and thieves — people who get away with not "working," not paying their taxes, and not making nice with authority. There is something exciting — enticing, even — about a lifestyle that is so radically divorced from the social, legal, and economic rules that bind us. There is something exciting — enticing, even — about a lifestyle that is so radically divorced from the social, legal, and economic rules that bind us... even as we recognize that the ties that bind us into a society are vital to human success. The golden rule — do unto others as you would have them do unto you — suggests that stealing is bad. Most people don't like to be stolen from, and most of us are willing to go out of our way to help people, especially people who are connected to us. And yet, there's still something fascinating about thieves and smugglers. Many people give books about pirates to children without a second thought, then turn around and pour hours into teaching the importance of "please" and "thank you." One of the revelations I had while reading Against the Grain by James C. Scott was that to avoid killing "the goose that lays the golden egg," most raiders will "skim off the top" and then eventually metastasize into a protection racket that is basically the same as taxation from an early state. There were often face-saving measures like the state giving the raiders "gifts" in exchange for "submission" or "payments to a militia to ensure peace," but sometimes evolved into a raider's "protection zone" becoming a provincial, quasi-autonomous government in its own right. Historically, states often paid barbarians enormous sums not to raid, particularly in China. At one point, a third of China's annual budget went to paying off the Xiongnu, then later, the Tang sent the Uighurs half a million bolts of silk. On paper — papers mostly written by Chinese government officials — it looks like the Chinese are dominant. The actual economic flow suggests that they were basically paying huge bribes to avoid getting raided. If status in a social hierarchy increases the more wealth from producers is concentrated in the hands of those who do relatively little to earn it except demand — which is not true of all governments but is certainly true of some — then perhaps smugglers, thieves, and pirates, in some subtle but meaningful way, are the true beneficiaries of civilization and really are at the top of the types of social hierarchies that defines "civilization." The thought is pretty discomforting, until I remember that the whole point of Scott's book is to say: "Maybe civilization isn't so great after all."