2minutebitcoin on Nostr: Everywhere you see a big city on earth, it was the center of an empire. ...

Everywhere you see a big city on earth, it was the center of an empire. Paris/London/Hong Kong/New York/Venice/Rome.

And everywhere you see a city that’s fallen on hard times, that’s been destroyed - its empire lapsed. Carthage, Troy. It’s because you can’t physically create this kind of economic density without a large source of revenue. The historical way to generate such a city is by taxing all the empire's commercial value.

Many great cities were a transportation hub - at the center of a railroad juncture, or a key port. In such places, you can tax all the trains/ships even if they aren’t arriving at your destination.

-- an excerpt from the Saylor Series Episode 2 - the Rise of Man through the Dark and Steel Ages, its 2-minute version can be found here https://www.2minutebitcoin.org/blog/saylor-series-episode-2-the-rise-of-man-through-the-dark-and-steel-ages-robert-breedlove