History lessons

Lars Brownworth, the creator of the outstanding 12 Byzantine Rulers podcast, has a new podcast for history geeks: Norman Centuries. I listened to the most recent episode in the car today and one item in particular struck me. The policy of Britain under some of their early monarchs in the time of the Viking raids was simply to bribe the Vikings to stop. It was a disaster, at least for Britain. The Vikings would come in, burn and pillage a view villages, and a representative of the king would arrive posthaste with bags of gold in hand to buy them off. Not a lot of work for the Vikings, but they got what they wanted: loot.

Sound familiar? Those who would use political power to seize assets from one person to give to themselves (or to someone else) are the modern-day equivalent of the Vikings. Less violent, sure. But they want what belongs to someone else, and they will use force or the threat of force (see also: taxation) to achieve their ends. And we, the voters, are like the inept kings attempting to buy them off with our votes, barely realizing that all we're doing is prolonging the problem.