Saturday, January 5, 2013

The Dictator's handbook

When debt exceeds the ability to pay, the problem for a leader is not so much that good public works must be cut back, but rather that the incumbent doesn't have the resources necessary to purchase political loyalty from key backers. 

A Y leader like with lions must get food for the team or be deposed.

Circumstances were ripe to prompt these politically crucial but fickle friends to seek someone better able to ensure their wealth and prestige.

Oy and Iv cronies on the fringes would become unstable, they can also be highly deceptive in undermining Y-V.

Meanwhile, Louis had to do something about the old aristocracy. He was deeply aware of their earlier disloyalty as instigators and backers of the antimonarchy Fronde (a mix of revolution and civil war) at the time of his regency. To neutralize the old aristocracy's potential threat, he attached them—literally—to his court, compelling them to be physically present in Versailles much of the time.

He made them more transparent and so they had to act as part of the Y-V team.

In place of the old guard he brought up and into the inner circle members of the noblesse de robe and even, in the bureaucracy and especially in the military, some commoners. By expanding the pool of people who could be in the inner circle, he made political survival for those already in that role more competitive. Those who were privileged to be in his winning coalition knew that under the enlarged pool of candidates for such positions, any one of them could easily be replaced if they did not prove sufficiently trustworthy and loyal to the king.

He made them compete more with each other as Iv and oy to get scraps of food from the Y-V table. So the king and his team got the lion's share of the domination of the Ro-R society and to get part of this Oy people had to be agents of this predation such as tax collectors and soldiers. For example people got paid to fight foreign wars to get enough booty to pay their wages.



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