"...the revenues to finance [Sandra's art-collecting] came out of the incomes of peasants and craft-folk and traders, eventually.
"When you were in a position to spend the fruits of other people's sweat, not to mention their blood, prudent thrift became a cardinal virtue."
-SM Stirling, The Given Sacrifice (New York, 2014), Chapter Five, pp. 101-102.
My sentiment, exactly. This issue has arisen before. See here.
Poul Anderson's Terran Empire raises the whole issue to a qualitatively different level. See Interstellar Wealth. Quantity affects quality. Taxes from the populations of a hundred thousand planets can be so small for each Imperial subject that no one notices it yet so vast in total that the wealth is incalculable. There need be no peasants. In fact, an entire planet would be able to run its own affairs on entirely communistic lines as long as it continued to hand over the minute surplus required by Imperial tax collectors.
Further, since a planetary economy can be as self-sufficient as its ecology, civilization is able to survive the breakdown of interstellar relations. We are told that, after the Fall of the Empire, the planet Atheia retains or regains most of what had been lost on Earth. Humanity no longer has its eggs in a single basket: a consumation devoutly to be wished.
2 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I agree, the sheer vastness of the Terran Empire, comprising as it did over 100,000 planets, meant that Imperial taxes per subject were so low that it could hardly be felt. In fact, some planets did not even pay a modest tax, only being required to contribute certain resources and labor in specified quantities should the Imperium ever have need of them.
Again, I agree, if an Imperial planet wanted to run itself along "communistic" lines, it could do so as long as it paid the agreed on tribute and remained at peace with its neighbors.
I have to mostly disagree with your last paragraph, however. The Fall of the Empire was a disaster for many, many worlds. Esp. if they had become dependent on trade with other planets for resources their worlds did not have or could not produce economically. The world named Nike, which we see in "A Tragedy Of Errors," was so poor in metals that a good farm could be purchased by a single 30 gram gold coin. Loss of trade and communications with other planets meant Nike could no longer sell agricultural produce to buy metals. And other worlds were even worse off after the Empire fell--such as Lokon, in "The Sharing Of Flesh."
Sean
Kaor, Paul!
This bit from the beginning of "A Tragedy Of Errors" about the situation many planets found themselves in after the Terran Empire fell seems appropriate for discussion. As Roan Tom says, hypothetically: "Society'd fallen. And havin' so far to fall, it hit bottom almighty hard. The ee-conomic basis for things like buildin' space ships wasn't there anymore. That meant little trade between planets. Which meant trouble on most of 'em. You let such go on for a century or two, snowballin', and what've you got? A kettle o' short lived dwarf nations, that's what--one planet, one continent, one island nations, all of 'em one-lung for sure, where they haven't collapsed even further. No more information collatin' services, so nobody can keep track of what's happenin' amongst those millions o' suns. What few space ships are left in workin' order are naturally the most valuable objects in sight. So they naturally get acquired by the toughest men around who, bein' what they are, are apt to use the ships for conquerin' or plunderin'...and complicate matters still worse."
In his Polesotechnic League and Terran Empire stories, Poul Anderson gives careful and detailed thought to how an interstellar society is possible (given a FTL drive). And here we see equally careful thought given to what is likely to happen once such a society has fallen. Which means I conclude the planet Atheia was a happy, rare exception amidst the chaos tormenting many worlds after the Empire fell.
Sean
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