20210119

Tue Jan 19 06:00:01 EST 2021 ======================================== Slept from ten-thirty to six. Cloudy. A 30 percent chance of snow, possibly mixed with freezing drizzle early in the morning. Near steady temperature in the upper 20s. West winds 10 to 20 mph. Work ---------------------------------------- - Review Entrata tickets Done. - Order printer/scanner for Carolyn Done. - Think about VPN architecture Done. - 2:30 PM weekly Entrata call Done. - Call Bill Sharp back Done. - Work on VS NVR No. - Change backup media tonight before 9PM? Fifteen-minute walk at lunch. Overcast and cool. Worked late. Went into the office after eight to change the backup media. Home ---------------------------------------- Vacuumed. https://www.tested.com/making/tools/adam-savages-favorite-tools-blundstone-work-boots/ https://www.themetasophist.com/notes/how-inequality-killed-the-roman-republic > First, the high degree of social cohesion in early Roman Republic — the critical advantage that helped them defeat their rivals — was the result of the main source of prestige being not wealth but honours, which were completely controlled by the Republic. Elites competed for such honours by providing services to the state, thereby channelling ambition into pro-social causes. Such a system was probably possible for two reasons. First, the elite was generally small and completely based in the city of Rome. Second, it was composed of wealthy landowners among whom there was little variation in wealth. These two factors taken together probably meant that the only way to rise in status was to obtain the honours granted by state service. > Second, once Rome began to expand, wealth began to increase due to the spoils of foreign conquest and later the gains from trade. Such wealth began to make the honours bestowed by the state seem somewhat quaint. But aspirant politicians also began to use this wealth to promote themselves, such as by hosting larger gladiator games. Such self-promotion was then leveraged to win offices. This new channel of self-promotion reduced the ability of the state to first require some pro-social efforts in order to obtain an honour. Before, you could only acquire honours by doing the state some service. Later, you could really only acquire honours by first acquiring wealth. > Once wealth was used to lock-in power, power was used to lock-in wealth. This positive feedback loop eventually incurred a populist backlash, the energies of which were used by successive politicians to undermine the system, to introduce dynastic politics, and eventually to establish an autocracy. > In 280 BC, after the collapse of Alexander the Great’s empire, mainland Italy was invaded by Pyrrhus, a Greek king who aimed to conquer. He won his first encounter with the Romans but at a cost of between one-sixth and one-half of his most highly trained soldiers. Despite being victorious, he could not continue to sustain such losses. Even worse for Pyrrhus, he couldn’t win the allegiance of any significant Roman allies in the south of Italy, and the Romans had no difficulty in replacing any killed or injured soldiers. He therefore needed to negotiate with the Romans. > His strategy for this negotiation included lenient terms and expensive presents. The Romans were initially close to accepting this offer but ultimately rejected it as the humiliation of defeat could have put Roman hegemony over Italy at risk, resulting in more threats in the future. > The formidability of the Romans became more apparent in the course of a negotiation over the exchange of prisoners. Noting that the Roman interlocutor, Fabricius, was relatively poor, Pyrrhus decided to offer Fabricius “so much silver and gold that he would be able to surpass all the Romans who are said to be most wealthy.” Fabricius refused the offer and Watts recounts his reply as follows: > > Fabricius, we are told, responded to Pyrrhus by informing him that his assumption was incorrect. Though he did not possess great material wealth, Fabricius told Pyrrhus, he did hold the highest offices in the state, he was sent on the most distinguished embassies, he was called upon to publicly express his opinions on the most important issues, and he was praised, envied, and honored for his uprightness. The Roman Republic, he continued, provided everyone who goes into public service with honors more splendid than any possession. It also regularly made an account of the property of Romans and could easily find anyone who had become wealthy dishonorably. What good would it do, Fabricius supposedly concluded, for him to accept gold and silver when this would cost him his honor and reputation? How could he endure a life in which he and his descendants were wealthy but disgraced? > Because honour could only be attained by public service, the energies of the most ambitious Romans were channelled towards the common good. According to Watt, “Romans of the third century instead judged each man’s merit by the offices he held, the honors he earned, and whether his achievements equaled those of his ancestors.” This meant that the “Republic dictated what sort of service an individual gave, it determined what sorts of rewards he would receive, and it paid these rewards out in a form of social currency that it alone controlled.” > The system of honour included a series of offices known as the cursus honorum, where at a given age one was eligible to be elected to a certain post only if one had completed a previous position. The first step involved serving 10 years in the military. After this position and on becoming 30 years of age, one was eligible to run for the position of quaestor (thereby becoming deputy to a provincial governor or a financial administrator). This would last for one year. After this and on reaching 36, one could have served as an aedile. After being an aedile or a quaestor, and being at least 39 years old, one could have run to be a praetor. > Quaestors, aediles, and tribunes were all elected by the popular assembly and the concilium plebis. After being a praetor and attaining the age of 42 years old, one could have run for the consul position which was perceived as the peak of a career. Again, this position lasted for one year. Consuls and praetors were both elected by the comitia centuriata, which in practice was dominated by the wealthy. > This system lay within a constitution that seemed to balance the influence of the plebeians and the patricians. Interestingly, it was one where the Senate, made up of former high office holders, only had advisory power in theory but in reality exercised a great deal of informal influence and deference such that little happened without their approval. In a similar discordant fashion, the concilium plebis where the plebeians were represented had a great deal of power in theory — after 287 BC it could unilaterally make laws which bound all Romans — but it rarely exercised this prerogative, partly due to influence from wealthy plebeians. > This divergence between theory and practise would prove to be a vulnerability later on. But initially, the pro-social nature of the elites along with a system that helped build consensus resulted in a constitution which Polybius deemed “irresistible and certain of obtaining whatever it determines to attempt.” > Carthage finally surrendered in 202 BC, but the war deeply changed Roman politics. > Second, wealth began to rush into the Republic but was concentrated in the hands of a few. > The wealthiest Romans started to invest in land, industrial properties, money-lending, and trade syndicates. > > The ancestral honors and public offices that a man like Fabricius could proudly claim mattered more than private wealth seemed quaint in this sparkling new Roman world of seaside villas, bronze couches, and overseas conquests. The political structure of the Republic still managed to channel the ambitions of elite Roman men toward offices and honors that only the state could offer. But second-century elites were also becoming increasingly enamored with advertising their wealth and business acumen, areas of achievement over which the Republic had much less control. The Republic’s monopoly on the rewards that leading Romans sought was beginning to loosen. > … > Once the Gracchi brothers were dead, Roman elites thought that they could keep the population quiet by providing them with the benefits that the Gracchi promised. However, as Watt notes, the appeal of the Gracchi lay in the fact that they were against that establishment — they identified a politically profitable approach of railing against corruption and Senatorial arrogance. This was not something the establishment could co-opt. > … > At around this time Julius Caesar was elected consul. He saw that enough people had been estranged by the gridlock there was an appetite to build a broad coalition of supporters to overcome it — an insight that gave rise to the first triumvirate of Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar. > The way was now free for Caesar to establish his dominance. This he did through making himself indispensable to his supporters. For example, he promised to partly compensate his veterans with land that he himself would purchase, meaning that he would need to be alive for them to receive recompense. > … > After a series of five civil wars, the Roman population were ready to purchase order at the expense of autocracy, a point well understood by Octavian. Now, he was the source of “freedom from fear, freedom from famine, and freedom from danger.” Unrivalled, he designed a new order in which he was central, but which retained a patina of republicanism. Feeling like I have much better grasp of C stuff. Now, mainly, I'm frustrated that C libraries often just aren't as well documented as Go libraries. A culture of documentation is one of the biggest things Go got right. Oh, shit, `whereis` doesn't just find binaries — it also finds C header files. Handy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUUPw8MOV_A Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment: Week 02, Segment 3 - read(2), write(2), lseek(2) Servings: grains 8/6, fruit 1/4, vegetables 4/4, dairy 3/2, meat 1/3, nuts 0.5/0.5 Breakfast: nachos Brunch: banana, cucumber, coffee Lunch: wrap with egg and avocado Dinner: cheese curls, ramen 121/74

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