Anthony Kaldellis: belief

Transcript context

…And the real impact is what? The tax base shrinks? Oh. Oh, yeah. The tax base would shrink instantly. You wouldn’t be able to recruit armies. You know, there would be massive social dislocation. Like what happens in the Black Death in Europe in the 14th century. Like, we have very good records for what happened to those societies, and basically everything that they were doing stopped for a few years until they sort of tried to put things back together again. This does not happen in the 6th century. In fact, Justinian is at that time waging war on something like four or five different fronts. If you read the narratives of those wars, there’s no pause. There’s no impact from the plague on the conduct of those wars. They just continue on. Taxation continues. The courts continue. Like, you just don’t see it in the narrative, and so I think that there’s a much less impact than, certainly than 50%, yeah. So this sets the stage for a tumultuous 7th century.…

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