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Comment by manv1 | Hacker News Reader

That's not true, as evidenced by many, many empires, past and present (Spanish, British, Roman, American) that spanned more than a month of travel.

What they're trying to say is that the span of control is limited by the ability to project power/information to the extremities of the empire. That makes sense, but the way they measure the limits is wrong.

The way the empires get around this problem is by putting people who have drunk the kool-aid in positions of power. While this can lead to abuse (ie: the Spanish), it can also lead to surprising amounts of consistency (all of the above).

Empires that fail are empires that require centralized decision making...and that's due to the communication limits posited and the generally poor quality of the staff in those types of organizations.

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"Drunk the cool aid..." In the UK case I've heard the idea that the Publc School system emerged for exactly this reason. ('Public' schools being the most elite schools in the UK).

A relatively small number of schools shaped a class of people who all thought in exactly the same way, so they would behave predictably even when far away and in a new context.

Public schools, are not coincidentally noted for a focus on 'playing by the rules' and 'fair play', as inculcated through sport. Not to mention never breaking your word. All handy traits if your goal is breeding administrators you can trust without supervision.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSGWoXDFM64

Amazing reference!

I've never seen the source, but was reminded of this excellent homage: - https://youtu.be/BQXbbWVJ4sA?t=133

For another awesome rendition, try the Simon Gallagher production, with Derek Metzger as the Major-General; the entire show is (in my opinion) utterly fantastic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DJaNbD6R2s&list=PLXRhW-jVlF... (shame about the video quality, but it's still well worth watching)

Being trustworthy seems like an important trait in the older agrarian societies that depended on long-term planning and exchange, whether you were a farmer or an administrator.

Yes, although I'm not sure they had the capacity to institutionalise eduction to that end.

It seems very important if you are talking to me today. Why should I listen to you?

> Not to mention never breaking your word.

You surely jest. A substantial proportion of British politicians, on the right mostly, were educated at public schools. They don't all have a shining record when it comes to integrity and honesty.

Twenty one (I think) of Britain's prime ministers went to Eton including Johnson and Cameron. Are we to believe that those two scoundrels are exceptions?

I think they meant trustworthy to superiors and possibly peers. British populace are the subjects of their politicians, and thus no trust need be proffered.

Sometimes its i.protant to understand the culture correctly- perhaps the institution has degraded now. Or perhaps your word only matters if it was goben to an equal, and Joe the public doesn't count? I dont know

Johnson and Cameron hardly led the Empire.

Just because some public school graduates go on to become dishonest politicians, does not mean that the school itself isn't there to educate and select honest administrators of the state/etc.

The system doesn't work anymore. I don't think There is a country-specific elite culture now.

You can't give word to the public. It simply doesn't count. But you can give word to people that made the public vote for you and that's rarely broken.

There is lack of integrity and then there is lack of integrity. Like imagine a minister only hiring relatives, embezzling billions, taking bribes, extorting for bribes, selling information and influence to foreign adversaries. Imagine people that don't even pretend to care about their duties, to the point that are indifferent to their people starving (what's it to me, if they riot we can always shoot em dead?).

playing by the rules and fair play is good for society at large, not just prospective administrators lol

History of Empire, History of Travel Technology, and History of Communications Technology are huuuuge fields with tons of professionals working today. I'm a little concerned about huge claims being made about empire by a Stanford MBA and a community of people mostly experienced in software and tech.

The historians would love for you to read their books! AHA is literally happening right now! Go to bars in Philly and talk to them!

You don't even need to talk to someone. Pick up any book on European colonialism, the Roman Empire, Japanese imperialism, Chinese Imperial dynasties, medieval South Asia, pre-Islamic Persian empires, etc etc. Reddit's r/askhistorians is a great reference for sources on the more popular topics.

I always look first for the reason I should trust them (how frustrating to look after reading a long article!). Don't forget they are also a highly trained engineer in SV, and made products used by lots of people today. Why not collaborate with a historian?

> Go to bars in Philly and talk to them!

? What happens in bars in Philly? Nobody does it elsewhere?

The American Historical Association Annual Conference (colloquially, AHA) is happening in Philly this weekend. Academics like to go out to drink after a day of talks.

Mostly tongue-in-cheek. I don't actually think the best way to meet historians is to go to random bars in the cities hosting major conferences.

https://www.historians.org/annual-meeting

Yeah, but software engineers are better at many things than professionals in their fields. The classic example is Jeff Bezos and gang stopping their companies from flying people to/from China a month before US authorities reacted to COVID-19. They also cancelled conferences two weeks before shelter-in-place and asked people to work from home.

Tech professionals said that masks would help in the early stages while the US Surgeon General said "Masks don't work!" and Dr. Fauci said that you shouldn't be wearing any.

This is the magic of tech: the people there are there for comparative advantage. They would be better than epidemiologists at epidemiology and better than public health experts at public health. But they're much better at tech than epidemiologists and public health experts are at tech, and so they go to tech.

In a similar vein, I would be unsurprised to find that new insights about history come from technologists. Of course, I don't think this is one.

I....

Software Engineers are not better at making accurate historical claims than historians. I'd be fucking baffled if "new insights about history come from technologists" in any meaningful quantity. Like, it'd be among the most surprising thing involving human behavior I could imagine. Like, what software engineers do you know that have spent even a minute working in an archive?

I see no way that this comment could be made without just a complete ignorance of the profession of history.

I was assuming satire, but it really is hard to tell on the Internet...

I couldn't decide whether/how to vote as I couldn't work out if it was sarcasm. It seems like it must be, but it's written so earnestly.

> The way the empires get around this problem is by putting people who have drunk the kool-aid in positions of power.

I always understood the aphorism as taking delegation of power into account — it's "one month of travel" not because of the needs of top-down command-and-control, but rather because delegated power that's more than a month away falls past some threshold of latency required to "keep them in hand."

The aphorism might make more sense flipped in perspective and inverted: as a magistrate/governor, if you see your colonists suffering under the tyranny of a remote power, you'd better be at least a month away from that power to be able to quietly rebel under the nose of that remote power. Otherwise a quiet rebellion will never work — any closer, and they'll be constantly watching/auditing you. At a closer distance, if you want to rebel, the only option is an active, bloody rebellion — and if that's unpalatable to you, then you'd better just not rebel!

There’s an old Chinese proverb for this that’s pretty succinct:

“The mountains are tall and the emperor is far away.”

Empires that expand beyond the 30 day travel limit tend to fizzle out and crumble.

Today, of course, we travel the whole planet roughly 30 times in that time frame. So it's not a limit on Earth anymore. But it was definitely a problem for all previous empires. The ones you listed prove the point. They all crumbled when they expanded too far.

The reason is kinda obvious: If it takes 30 days to travel, it takes 60 days to travel there and back. Which means there is, at minimum, a 60 day delay between the start of a rebellion or war and your ability to respond to it. That's assuming you were ready for the news the moment you got it. Good luck with that.

It's just one of many reasons why wars are won more by logistics than bullets.

So I think it raises two really interesting questions:

(1) Here on Earth, the elimination of this limit is pretty recent. Should we anticipate an empire that spans the globe truly taking over? (No need to sarcastically comment about America today.)

(2) How does this impact space travel? Based on current and foreseeable technology, there's no planet we can regularly reach in that amount of time, because at any given time, the other planet could be on the other side of the solar system. Can we really colonize new areas if we can't reach them faster than 30 days? Maybe we can. Communication is nearly instant (relatively speaking), and there are no enemy combatants to deal with. But they'll still be stuck on their own if any unforeseen emergencies arise. Those never happen, right? Would we most likely see the formation of a new nation on each planet we colonize?

Can I introduce you to the British Empire, pre-steamships: https://www.britishempire.co.uk/maproom/sailingtimes.htm

Or in 1914: https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter1/the-setting... (post-steamships)

The Spanish Empire was probably worse at its height.

All those areas beyond 1 month travel? No longer a part of the empire. They kicked off the American revolution and the Indian independence movement.

So yes, it's possible to create an empire beyond a month travel. But I maintain that no one has held onto one, which is the point the author was making I believe.

The North American colonies belonged to the British Empire from early 17th C. (1607-ish) to the late 18th C. (1783); nearly 200 years.

India was ruled by the British East India Company from 1760-ish to 1858 and by the British Crown directly until 1947; again, nearly 200 years. And by the time the British Empire started to collapse, travel time had been significantly reduced for something like 75 years.

It is for the Romans though, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2609654 as for the others I'm a bit sceptical but haven't to knowlegde about them either

>centralized decision making

Which bodes poorly for increasing federal power in the US.

What part of the US is more than a month's travel from Washington DC?

The GP already pointed out that the "month's travel" rule doesn't apply in all cases. The poster you're replying to does have a point about increasing amounts of decisions being made at the federal level in this country, as opposed to state or local levels closer to the people affected.

Hello? This is year 2023, not 1542. Communication happens at the speed of light and the only bottleneck is the human processing said communication. Obsessively devolving power to nesting lower levels of decision making bodies is just about the worst thing to do when technology has increasingly enabled organizations that are slim at the top to effectively manage complex systems at scale instead.

Can you explain why more local decision making must be the worst thing to do?

Humans are the biggest bottleneck in orgs. More devolved power = more orgs = more humans = more gridlock.

The local decision-makers know much better the local needs: Local people can communicate with local decision-makers, they have far more experience with local needs (lifetimes worth), and human cognitive capacity is limited - nobody single federal decision maker can learn and know what all the local mayors know. Nobody a thousand miles away can know my neighborhood the way I do.

That's a reason decision-making in business is often pushed to the lowest level - the central people can't know as much.

>The local decision-makers know much better the local needs

Do they really? Election voter turnout is absolutely abysmal and gets lower the lower the government level goes. This is a clear sign voters no longer believe in democracy at the local level because exercising democratic rights no longer has influence on the situation. Why? Because imbeciles have successfully embedded themselves in lower levels of governments and use the devolved power to keep the status quo in order to profit off of it.

Turnout was very high in 2016 and 2020 in the US.

Turnout was relatively very high in 2016 and 2020.

> exercising democratic rights no longer has influence on the situation.

Progressives and the radical right don't think so, and they've certainly had tons of influence on government.

> Because imbeciles have successfully embedded themselves in lower levels of governments and use the devolved power to keep the status quo in order to profit off of it.

Not my local government. It isn't perfect, but it gets a lot done. Same in NYC. I certainly wouldn't call them imbeciles.

What local government are you talking about? There are GOP people who, in the name of demonstrating their radicalism, act like imbeciles, but I think they know what they are doing.

>Turnout was relatively very high in 2016 and 2020.

And? The U.S. has countless local elections happening almost every year. The turnouts are abysmal.

>Progressives and the radical right don't think so, and they've certainly had tons of influence on government.

Those aren't 100% of the electorate. This loops back to the point that democracy is failing when the bulk of the electorate no longer bother to vote.

Only in a country with FPTP and distorted voter power distribution would a 60% turnout be considered "relatively very high". European elections regularly have turnouts in the high 80s. That's what normal democracies look like.

>> Progressives and the radical right don't think so, and they've certainly had tons of influence on government.

> Those aren't 100% of the electorate. This loops back to the point that democracy is failing when the bulk of the electorate no longer bother to vote.

You said voting has no influence; I gave evidence of people who vote and have changed things dramatically.

The thing is, sometimes, centralized decision makers take decisions that are bad because they are too far removed from the consequences of the decisions. For instance, decisions on, say, water rights, made by the federal government in the US. The federal and state governments have effectively collaborated to create a slow rolling disaster across the entire west.

(Of course, now I think about it, local and state governments also take terrible decisions. Slavery and Jim Crow spring to mind. So there really is no "good" way to solve the "decision making" problem. I guess you're basically screwed if you have to allow other people to make decisions for you.)

> So there really is no "good" way to solve the "decision making" problem.

Insofar as humanity hasn't yet figured out how to make good decisions all the time ;-) that's true. However, I posit that keeping decisions at as low a level as possible lets mistakes be more easily undone by higher levels in the hierarchy; hence Justice Brandeis's laboratories of democracy.

That might work, for everyone except the slave waiting for the central authority to come liberate them.

There really is no way around it, local, state, or federal power have all been shown by history to be guaranteed to screw people over.

> the only bottleneck is the human processing said communication

You said it yourself. I don't care if the ansible lets you communicate faster than the speed of light; the capacity of leaders at the top to understand lower-level facts and needs has not changed much from 1542 to 2023.

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