As the holiday long weekend comes to a close, one can be assured that not all celebrations went off as planned. Family get-togethers can be precarious. The long histories, the past grievances, the careless gestures or phrases can all contribute to a combustible mix. Sometimes tensions bubble up simply because people’s lives are busy, or a shift in circumstance generates unexpected demands. And then sometimes there is a troublemaker in the crowd.
Unhappy people want to drag every one around them into the muck. And a common strategy is to fabricate irrelevant procedures, standards, or hoops to impose on others, then criticize them for not meeting those arbitrary demands. This tactic shifts focus from substantive issues to compliance with a contrived process. Itโs like building up a whole hoopla by setting up hurdles.
Some of these tactics are well known and used through many facets of life. Take moving the goal posts. As soon as someone deserves congratulations, some new expectation is placed upon them diminishing their accomplishment. Thereโs gatekeeping. A self appointed czar controls access to a group, idea or status. Bureaucratic tyranny causes delays and the classic red herring gets everyone off the topic and into some other pernicious yet irrelevant topic.
To sum it all up in a definition:
Hoopla Hurdles (n): The tactic of fabricating irrelevant procedures, rules, or requirements to avoid addressing real issues, maintain control, and generate conflict. Named for the endless, pointless hoops troublemakers make others jump through.
If you are curious as to whether the obstacles at hand are legit or Hoopla Hurdles, consider these diagnostic questions:
1. Was this rule just invented?
2. Does it solve the actual problem?
3. Would a reasonable person demand this?
4. Does it create more conflict than it resolves?
If 3+ yes โ Hoopla Hurdles detected!
What you can do to placate the beast in the damaged person who would prefer to fight rather than befriend.
How to Counter Hoopla Hurdles
1. Reframe
Response: Return to the original issue
“Let’s focus on whether the policy works, not the paperwork.”
2. Expose Absurdity
Response: Highlight the irrationality
“Why does a 2-sentence petition require a PhD?”
3. Set Boundaries
Response: Refuse to play
“I’ll discuss the idea, not your 17 rules.”
4. Mirror
Response: Apply their logic back
“If I make you read 50 articles first, will you?”
5. Humor
Response: Deflate with ridicule
“Should I also sacrifice a goat under a full moon?”
The phrase โthe mainspring of the storyโ is a metaphorical expression that refers to the central driving force or primary motivation that propels the narrative forward. Just as a mainspring in a mechanical watch provides the energy to keep it running, the mainspring of a story is the core element that gives it momentum, purpose, and cohesion.
In life, there are often several intermingled motivations pulsing through the engine for action. But usually there is a mainspring– one impulse pulling in the lead. You would skip going to the grocery except for the turkey for Thanksgiving. And since you are there, another couple of dozen food items also end up on the metal grid at the bottom of the cart. The supermarkets have gotten wise to such things and tempt shoppers into their aisles by advertising the big bird at 77 cents a pound.
Sometimes the mainspring is a different type of impulse. Instead of competing for the lowest price, this mainspring is about giving to the most significant number. A mainspring may drive a young guy to work as a manager at a supersized grocery for a quarter century. But then things change. And the same individual, with the same set of skills, might be driven to help others by working as the manager of a food shelf.
Sometimes people hide their mainspring. They don’t want to be judged by the we they find themselves amongst. Sometimes this subversion is enacted through substitution โno, I’m not buying it for prestige; I’m buying it to make my wife happy. Ok. Right.
Some mainsprings are treacherous. Fear, for instance. Fear as a mainspring can drive all sorts of damaging or wasteful actions. Fear of running out of food means you bring home too much, and it spoils. Fear of buying too much means you can’t quite complete your menu and are always falling short of a satisfying meal. And of course, fear instigated by others is ultimately responsible for some type of corruption in the system.
When trying to put a model around our messy world, first find the locus of action. Who exactly is the source of the analysis? Then find their mainspring, whether hidden or out in plain sight for all to see. Otherwise, you are just another jammerer floating all sorts of ‘we’s’ that bob on the waves of idle conversation with no direction at all.
No one in the western world really questions whether water provision is best suited to the public or private spheres. Being hooked up to city water and sewer is unanimously considered a good thing. Was it always that way? Well- no. Londoners purchased water from private suppliers through the end of the nineteenth century.
John Broich gives an excellent history of how the desire for water provision shaped London.
His account tells how secondary cities in the British Isles adopted a municipal water system decades before the great capital on the Thames. In fact, the continued delays in accomplishing this civic feat help exemplify the many facets of interests and the levers in play. There are issues of pollution and health concerns, there are networks of private providers, and the wealthy who buy their way to what they want. There is petty jealousy and the pride of belonging to an international city. And most astonishing, there is no government structure to handle such infrastructure outside of the walls of ancient London.
For provincial water reformers, the principles on which the administration of water was based-as well as the engineering principles on which water provision was based-were meant to make their cities more modern in the sense expressed by Avery, the Birmingham councilor.
“When water is under the control of private companies, the chief desire of the directors is to obtain good dividends,” said a Bradford town councilor in 1852. “When the Town Council possesses the works,” he continued, “their chief object is to make the works instrumental to the promotion of cleanliness, the health, and the comfort of all classes of citizens.”57
Water administration by a directly representative body was to provide an obvious contrast to the commercial companies that made independent decisions about water quality, abundance, and price based on the profit motive.
It is an excellent story depicting the nature of what is public and what is private. For a literary companion piece, consider reading Dickens’s Bleak House.
There is no blob of โgovernmentโ money, or โpolicyโ that can make something affordable for one without making something else less affordable for another.
So if tenants get immediate relief from a rent freeze, where does that money come from?
Those outside the business may think that this will trigger a direct transfer from a wealthy landowner. Structurally this is an impractical notion. Even for those who have equity, it is just that: wealth tied up in the value of the property. It is not cash that can circulate and pay bills.
But in most all cases, the funds that come in from rent are pegged to go out to another obligation. This might be property taxes which are known to increase every year. This might be to a bank that financed the purchase of the property. And the insurance company which provides property isurance as required. This might be to a utility company. Each of these obligations have recourse for non-payment which ultimately leads to their making first claims on the income.
The funds which subsidize the rent freeze are most likely to come from monies intended for repairs and maintenance of the property. These vary from tasks that are good to do but not urgent, to things that if defrayed cause additional costs, to things that need immediate attention like a leaky pipe or a furnace outage. To give an idea of the number of routine items involved in the care of real estate, consider this post.
Over time, two things tend to occur. First, the new landlords with all their positive energy and desires to get ahead can’t maintain a financial foothold and leave. Other longer term owners prioritizes the most important fixes but let the cosemetic upgrades go. Over time more and more of the longer term components age, yards get overgrown, appliances become run down. The housing stock deteriorates.
The neighborhood at large is depreciated by blight, taking a little chunk of equity from every property owner nearby.
The biggest losers of rent control are the young, the mobile, the ambitious, immigrants, and people without a lot of cash. If you want to move from Fresno to take a job in San Francisco and move up, and you donโt have millions lying around to buy, you need rentals. Rent control means they are not available. Income inequality, opportunity, equity, all get worse.
In this paragraph, John Cochrane begins to draw lines around groups of people who will lose out under a rent-control, a policy that favors those who have established leases with landlords.
The reader can quickly imagine a young person being squeezed out of houisng by the combination of entry-level pay and bulked-up rent. The surcharge is necessary to balance out the rent-controled units. That’s the persona that comes to mind and it is the one the author intends to convey. But wait. What about the just-out-of-school coders and engineers that are swooped up by the tech companies?
These kids are paid a lot money. They are can choose where to live without much concern as, most often, they have no other attachments. They all live together in some big tech hub, often times leaving their childhood communties behind. They no longer have other points of reference like a brother who took up plumbing, or grandparents on fixed income. Not only do the have the cash flow to spend they are not being reminded that others do not.
One descriptor is not enough to form a group. To say the population of Minnesota has remained constant is light on details. Susan Bower, the state demographer, explains some of the demographic breaks down in Eden Prairie, a SW suburb of the Twin Cities. At the presentation she notes the the state loses 5,000-10,000 people a year but it is made up through international immigration. In other words, the people who leave have no concerns regarding rent control are replaced by a group who are disadvantaged by rent control.
To be efficient, matching people in consideration of their stage in life with their housing needs is best. Policies which keep people in place or discourages them from moving up, moving closer to employment, moving to a stronger school district, moving closer to support systems and so on are detrimental.
The Grumpy Economist has another great post, this time about rent control. For those of us in real estate, it’s an irritating topic. The errors in the use of price controls are numerous. Using John Cochrane’s article as a road map might be interesting to illustrate this point. Let’s start with this paragraph.
Sure, โsharply rising rents and utility bills wreak havoc on family budgets,โ if the families donโt follow the screaming market signal to move. (Which is not painless, for sure. Incentives never are.) But the money comes from somewhere. Rent controls and energy price caps wreak havoc on landlord end electric utility budgets.ย The money must come from somewhere.
The claim is that rents are rising sharply. The reader pictures a Scrooge-like figure pounding on the door of a cowering family of four, announcing a ‘sharp’ rent increase (extra dollar symbols for emphasis), while behind this embodiment of the typical landlord stands an eviction notice ready to be served. I’d love to see numbers to this effect. I challenge that the ‘sharp’ rent increases are occurring at lease renewals.
Large corporate landlords might have a set policy of annual increases, but they account for only 3-4% of proprietors. Landlords must juggle the cost-benefit of increasing rent. As 80% own and manage the units, they calculate the costs, time, and uncertainty of a new tenant. This is weighed against a 3% increase on $1,100 or $33/mo in additional income. Needless to say, many landlords will forego a rent increase to keep a good tenant.
These subtleties are lost in real estate analysis, where all the numbers are averaged as if there were one typical renter, one typical landlord, and one typical property. This couldn’t be further from the truth. There are whole economies of renter groups. There are students who will have negative income before they join the workforce; there are singles with high-fluting jobs and no other responsibilities; there are single parents; there are couples with kids in a city just for a bit; there are elderly on fixed income with low mobility; there are recently divorcees looking for a glamorous downtown lifestyle.
Are all these groups to receive the same treatment? The same concern for their monthly budgets?Rent controls are initiated at the city level. Every group of renters would receive the benefit of a market-restrained obligation. Is that the intention?
Landlords are also assumed to be a certain type. The persona has tremendous equity in their property, no debt, and other cash they are stashing like squirrels do with acorns in the fall. And certainly some landlords fit this description. But more likely than not, the landlord has a mortgage and obligations against their time. The new entrants to the field, those trying to get ahead by getting a foothold in real estate, are undoubtedly the ones who need to make the cash flow.
When property taxes, utilities, or the cost of hiring labor rise, a landlord has no way to respond until a lease comes up for renewal. Rent control tightens this squeeze, leaving property owners caught between increasing public demands funded through taxation and their limited ability to recover those costs through rent. The first to be pushed out are often the newcomersโthe small, aspiring owners who bring fresh energy and ambition to the market, but lack the cushion to absorb sustained losses.
Lesson number one. Averaging is a mistake. Assuming there is only one type of each actor in this economic trade of money for lodging makes for an impossible conversation.
I find an extra element of enthusiasm in Victoria Wyeth’s examinations of her famous grandfather’s paintings. She has many more posts on her FB page (which I could not figure out how to embed!)
One of my favorite Andrew Wyeth paintings has a post of its own.
Iโm quite enjoying Allison Schragerโs accounts of how people navigate risk in their lives. The book is full of stories about poker players and surfers, as well as bankers and bond traders.
Although the framework follows the model of an individual making a decision, in the background there are many communal references. This passage is about the paparazzi partnerships.
Since the best shots come down to being in the right place at the right time, photogs often form teams or alliances to share tips and sometimes royalties to increase the odds or payoffs they’ll be in that place. In 2003, Baez founded a group called PACO, “like the jeans,” combining the words “paparazzi” and “company.”
PACO consisted of ten experienced photographers. They traded tips on where certain celebrities hung out and when. So if Baez spotted a celebrity eating lunch at a trendy restaurant, he would alert the other PACO members. He says, beaming with pride, “Back in the day when we’d show up, the other guys would say, ‘Oh no, here comes PACO, because we were the best.”
Family ties show up in several of the vignettes. Somehow the prospects of his first love trump a degree from Stanford. When talking about the business executive Arnold Donald, she recounts.
It was a way to get both worlds: the liberal arts experience he wanted and the Stanford engineering degree.
During his sophomore year at Carleton, Donald married his college sweetheart, who also received a place at Stanford’s engineering school but no scholarship. Rather than take on the financial risk of student loans, they went to Washington University in St. Louis, where they both had scholarships.
And background players can even accumulate into a whole world of their own. For the poker player, thereโs a benefit to syncing with the subculture.
The world of professional poker is a unique subculture-complete with special outfits and lingo-that appears foreign to outsiders. Its obsessive fan base watches games on television or in person for hours, is preoccupied with stats, and gambles on the players and games. Winning at poker comes down to luck and skill. Luck is being dealt a winning hand. Skill is knowing how and when to bet, and having the discipline and ability to infer what other players are doing.
Although not explicitly described or measured in terms of their influence, social relations, network effects, family ties, and workplace mechanics are ever-present in Schrager’s stories on risk.
There are laws about such things. The authority to take a cut off a sale or charge or demand an annual fee for property, whether homes or cars, needs to be officially granted. The funds travel from individuals to a fund for government officials to distribute out for public commitments.
But there are other things local governments do that act as a tax. There are all sorts of city permits required to replace a hot water heater or install a deck. When a builder applies for approval of a subdivision, the city council may say that is all fine and good as long as a sliver of the land is threaded through as a trail and a chunk of green space in the middle is spun up into a playground. The release of land is a tax on the developer. A good one mind you but still a relinquishing of an asset.
What would be the difference between a favorable tax and a verging-on-illegal tax?
Having a developer build in parks and trails at the time of development leaves an asset for the new owners directly, and for the city at large for those who travel further for recreation. This flow of money from a private company back to the community, for the use of all residents, seems to fall in the spirit of the arrangement. It is a particularly timely ask since retrofitting older neighborhoods with parks and trails is difficult and impractical.
Consider another example. A builder wants to convert a five-story building in a historic district in a significant US city. There are extensive regulations associated with the age and history of the area. There are also regulations in place to meet current environmental concerns. Without spending the time to delve into every detail, the end result is that the builder must install solar panels on the roof of the building, which cannot be serviced by the building due to its age and preservation requirements. The building’s infrastructure cannot effectively utilize the energy output from the solar panels.
The final agreement is to hand over ownership of the panels to the utility company. Their maintenance and output will now be maintained by a completely separate entity, even though they sit atop the developer’s project and the developer’s bottom line had to muscle in their expense.
Doesn’t this seem like a direct transfer of funds from the builder to another semi-private company? Doesn’t it seem like a redistributive tax or at least a subsidy? Does the municipality this type of taxing authority?
May the wind be at your back And the world sit at your feet May you waltz across Wyoming With a rose clutched in your teeth May the answers to your questions Fall like raindrops right on cue May you set up shop in heaven Before the devil knows you’re due
I’ve been following John Cochrane’s blog, “A Grumpy Economist,” for a while now. I love the self-depricating title and, of course, the material. In a recent Substack post, he tackles the question of climate change, government subsidies, and the groups of people who win and lose.
In short, he is saying that the massive subsidies that all US taxpayers have been funneling into electric vehicles are not generating the intended return. Not at all. They are bills being scattered in the wind.
OK– but how? and why? And what else should be considered? In short, what is the new framing that would better capture the intentions, levers, and incentives to address this issue?
Consider first the who. There are the EV activists. They have provided voice to the issue of climate change. And have been successful in securing financial subsidies from US citizens at large. The population of the US is the greater group. They too care enough to syphon off funds for the cause. But John Cochrane points out that the who is really the global population. Climate change flows over political boundaries. Reductions of pollutants in California can easily be negated by activity elsewhere on the globe.
The implication here is that to solve the issue of climate change, the anchor of discretion lies in with global population. To have an impact, activity across this group must have a measurable effect. Otherwise, a small group of earnest adjusters will work and sacrifice (in the EV example, US taxpayer dollars) to no beneficial ends. Lots of effort. Lots of signaling. No results.
Lastly, Cochraine mentions time. The time frame over which the analysis is best observed is one hundred years. To bully and berate neighbors into small gestures in the name of climate change is counterproductive, he says. The perspective is global, marked over centuries, and thus requires intentions and drive measurable within that framework.
If you follow this site, you know that it proposes activities that enhance and advance humans, fall into two buckets. There is private, unfettered activity that severs at time of transaction, free of social encumbrances or infringements. Then there is activity which supports the welfare of groups of people amongst whom there are typically numerous overlapping objectives. There is the private sphere where much of commerce lives, and there is the public sphere, kind to the nurturing of children, the prevention of crime, and the enforcement of norms sometimes formalized in into laws.
In the private sphere, people sell their time and talents. This is called labor. The public sphere is often dependent on what is termed volunteerism or unpaid labor. But I like to call it work. Below is a post from The Marginal Revolution site, which confirms that unpaid labor is more than helping an elderly person across the street or reporting a suspicious person in the alley. The number of hours contributed by this couple in civic engage prompted putting new technology to the task.
We are just beginning to think these issues through:
The governmentโs plan to use artificial intelligence to accelerate planning for new homes may be about to hit an unexpected roadblock: AI-powered nimbyism.
A new service called Objector is offering โpolicy-backed objections in minutesโ to people who are upset about planning applications near their homes.
It uses generative AI to scan planning applications and check for grounds for objection, ranking these as โhighโ, โmediumโ or โlowโ impact. It then automatically creates objection letters, AI-written speeches to deliver to the planning committees, and even AI-generated videos to โinfluence councillorsโ.
Kent residents Hannah and Paul George designed the system after estimating they spent hundreds of hours attempting to navigate the planning process when they opposed plans to convert a building near their home into a mosque.
Me again: The comments section is replete with the potential downside for using technology in this manner. But I say the powerful leverage lies in understanding how people work in their communities. Consider how many hours are required for all the multiple support programming in play, every day, in the USA.
A proposal for a 50-year amortization mortgage aims to make homeownership more affordable by spreading payments over a longer period, thereby reducing monthly costs. However, the trade-off is that borrowers would pay substantially more interest over the life of the loan and build equity more slowly. Advocates argue it could ease housing affordability pressures, especially in high-cost markets, and improve access for younger or first-time buyers. Critics counter that such loans may inflate housing prices further, extend household debt burdens, and delay financial stability. Overall, a 50-year amortization reflects a policy tension between affordability and long-term economic prudence.
Hereโs a clear example comparing 30-year vs. 50-year amortization on a $350,000 home, assuming a fixed interest rate of 6% and no down payment (to isolate the amortization effect):
Loan Term
Monthly Payment (Principal + Interest)
Total Paid Over Term
Total Interest Paid
30 years @ 6%
$2,098
$755,280
$405,280
50 years @ 6%
$1,870
$1,122,000
$772,000
The 50-year loan lowers the monthly payment by about $228, but total interest nearly doubles over the life of the loan โ a very expensive trade-off for the borrower in the long run.
Adjustable-rate mortgages offer another way to reduce payments, at least initially. ARMs typically begin with a lower introductory interest rate (for example, 5% for the first five years on a 5/1 ARM) before adjusting annually based on market conditions.
While ARMs can make early payments comparable to or even lower than a 50-year fixed loan, they carry rate-reset risk โ payments can rise sharply if interest rates increase. Currently, availability is moderate: most lenders still offer ARMs (3/1, 5/1, 7/1 terms), but after the 2008 crisis, underwriting standards became stricter, and long-term fixed loans remain more common.
I’m all for offering a wide variety of financial instruments for consumers to use in the purchase of a home. However, over the long run, I don’t feel that the 50-year amortization allows for a sufficient paydown. As people navigate their lives, they count on the equity that accumulates through price appreciation and mortgage debt reduction. A healthy market is fluid, where people can buy and sell without being constrained by excessive debt.
I’ll make the claim that people find the market unaffordable because they don’t want to buy what is affordable to them. This is difficult to demonstrate without specifics. But each housing market has a range of price points. If folks are paying rent, then they are more likely to be able to acquire a property with a similar payment. They simply don’t want to live in that particular spot, or do the repairs necessary to improve it, or view it as a starter home from which they will move on someday.
First, a medical procedure’s success depends heavily on patient participation. The outcome hinges on whether patients follow their physician’s instructions, avoid harmful foods or activities, commit to their rehabilitation, and make necessary sacrifices for optimal recovery. A car, by contrast, operates on a predictable maintenance scheduleโoil changes every 7,000 miles, new tires at 50,000 milesโand doesn’t require active participation each time you get behind the wheel to function properly.
Second, evaluating medical outcomes is inherently subjective, shaped by individual expectations and varying standards of success. A tangible good like a car, however, has objective, measurable qualities that remain consistent regardless of who’s assessing it or observing it.
Finally, medical procedures carry inherent risk. Unlike most purchases, where you start at a baseline and gain utility, healthcare interventions don’t guarantee positive outcomes. A procedure can result in complications requiring additional interventions, meaning you could begin at zero and end up worse off. There’s always the possibility of a negative outcome, which fundamentally distinguishes healthcare from consumer goods.
For these reasons, healthcare tends to be heavily influenced by social groups. Peer pressure encourages people to take care of themselves. Role models who demonstrate how to go the extra mile can influence and encourage patients to do the same. The extent of care may be directed in part by group expectations. But, the most significant risk with this over a car or other tangible goods, is that lack of care or poor care can cause the patient to go backwards and incur even more costs both to the body and the pocketbook.
But it required more than an annual tour to administer and exert royal power throughout Scotland. The size and geography of the kingdom required the representation of royal authority at both regional and local levels. This was carried out by two tiers of royal officials.
MORMAERS
Mormaers were powerful territorial magnates and their extensive provinces were the primary level of royal administration in eleventh-century Scotland. Mแปrmaer means ‘great steward’ and this Gaelic title is first recorded in 918, although its origins are unclear. The absence of mormaers in Ireland indicates that this office was not introduced with the migration of the Dรกl Riata or from Ireland at a later date. Instead, the predominantly north-eastern distribution of the Scottish provinces recorded as having mormaers suggests that this office had Pictish origins. It may have originated in the provincial kingships that lost their royal status as the kingship of the Picts became increasingly centralised.
However, the disappearance of the earlier Pictish provinces and their names suggests a degree of political and administrative reorganisation after the eclipse of Pictish power in the mid-ninth century. Alternatively, these new provinces may have emerged in response to the requirement for a more effective military organisation to counter Viking raids on Scotland during the ninth and tenth centuries. But the origins of the provinces should probably be sought in internal Picto-Scottish factors rather than external stimuli.
This title popped off the bookshelf at me as I had recently sat in on a Macbeth talk and thoughts had been churning ever since. Intrigued by the play I sought to learn more. And this slim book offered that. And, unexpectedly, the text veered into the social structures of the day. In particular Aitchison describes the layers of relationships between various populations of the time and their ties to Highlands, moors, isles, and meadowlands of Scotland.
Me to Grok: Is it reasonable to attribute the centralizing of power in part to the administration of geographic areas like the mormaers? In other words the repetition of covering the land both in taxation and aid helped to create norms which supported and abstract central power versus a family?
Grok: Yes โ absolutely reasonable, and youโve just named the single most powerful engine that turned Anglo-Saxon (and Scottish) society from โfamily-firstโ to โking-firstโ.
The short answer is:
Every time a kingโs officer walked the same geographical circuit to collect tax, raise troops, or hold court, he taught the locals a new reflex: โMy duty runs to the shire, not to my cousin.โ
Below are the four concrete mechanisms that made repetitive geographic administration the killer app of centralisation. Iโll keep it crisp, with one Anglo-Saxon and one Scottish example for each.
1. The map replaced the family tree
โข Mechanism: The same official (reeve / mormaer) visited the same villages every year on a fixed route.
โข Anglo-Saxon: The shire-reeve rode the hundred circuit at Michaelmas to collect the farm of one night (food-rent). Villagers saw the same face, carrying the same rod of office.
โข Scottish: The mormaer of Moray toured the same thanages every spring to count ploughs for the cain (render in cattle). After three generations the route was more famous than any genealogy.
2. Tax created a shared calendar
โข Mechanism: Everyone paid on the same day โ everyone felt the same obligation.
โข Anglo-Saxon: Domesday Book (1086) records hide assessments that had been frozen for 150 years. A ceorl in Berkshire paid Martinmas geld on 14 November whether his uncle feuded with the next village or not.
โข Scottish: The Conveth payments (barley + cheese) were due on Lammas (1 Aug) across the whole mormaerdom of Buchan. The date glued together men who had never met.
3. Military service was territorial, not kin-based
โข Mechanism: One man per 5 hides (or one per davoch in Scotland) turned up with spear and 40 daysโ food.
โข Anglo-Saxon: The trimoda necessitas (bridge, fortress, fyrd) was owed by the land, not the bloodline. If your cousin dodged, the reeve fined the whole vill.
โข Scottish: David Iโs charters (1124โ53) demand Scottish service from every davoch in Moray. A mormaer who tried to raise only his own cousins was laughed at.
4. Courts met in the same place on the same day
โข Mechanism: Predictable geography โ predictable law โ abstract king.
โข Anglo-Saxon: Hundred court under the holy oak every four weeks; shire court at the kingโs hall twice a year. Suits were โshire vs. shireโ, not โclan vs. clanโ.
โข Scottish: The mormaerโs airidh court at the stone of Forglen sat every Beltane. A theft in Cullen was judged by Buchan law, not by the thiefโs great-grandmotherโs kin.
Mini-experiment you can run in your head
Imagine two villages 20 miles apart:
โข Year 750: Each is run by its own kindred; feuds last decades.
โข Year 950: Both send 1 man per 5 hides to the same shire-reeve at Reading; both pay geld on Martinmas; both attend the same hundred court under the oak. โ By 950 the shire is a louder identity than the kindred.
One-sentence summary
The kingโs tax-collector and war-reeve walked the same roads so often that the roads themselves became the new skeleton of loyalty, and the family tree withered to a decorative twig.
Scottish post-script
The mormaers are the perfect bridge case.
โข 9th century: they were super-chiefs of giant kindreds.
โข 12th century: they are earls who hold regalities by royal charter and collect the kingโs cain in coin. The turning point? The annual ride around the thanages, repeated for five generations.
So yes โ geography, drilled into muscle memory by taxation and aid, was the quiet solvent that dissolved tribal solidarity and built the abstract state.
Me again. Whatโs important about the details written here in the backdrop of Shakespeareโs famous villain, is it demonstrates how many generations or hundreds of years it took to disengage a population from clan ties to administrative loyalties.
Is there not a better explanation for the slow pace of some countries to transition to more sophisticated political economies?
On Fareed Zakariaโs show, GPS, this morning, guest Mai Hassan throws down a Trumpian challenge.
Finally, hundreds of civilians were massacred this week in Sudan’s Darfur region, a brutal escalation of the ongoing war in that country. Mai Hassan, a political science professor at MIT, sat down with Fareed to discuss how it got to this point.
She suggests that the US president has the power and influence to bring a peaceful solution in Sudan. At the margin, this conflict offers a better chance at that elusive Scandinavian prize.
This catalogue arrived in my mailbox today. Are algorithms not enough for the massive online store? Amazon is using print marketing materials and supporting the United State Post Office to reach customers. Oh my!
Or what about the demise of the bookstore, so hardily predicted fifteen or more years ago?
Barnes & Noble opened more new bookstores in a single year than it had in the whole decade from 2009 to 2019. The bookseller expects to open over 60 new bookstores in 2025.
Bigger is better.
The new Minnetonka Barnes & Noble will cover over 18,000 square feet, including a B&N Cafรฉ, and carry all the best books, as well as a wide range of toys, games and the usual paper and gifting items found at Barnes & Noble.
Home Economics 