ClippingKK

这是因为与朝官相比，他更是名副其实的受宠奴才。取得皇帝的宠信是他唯一的目标。如果说朝官还略微顾及考虑一些别的因素，宦官因自身的条件限制除了“争宠”没有其他了

The essence of the iron law of oligarchy, this particular facet of the vicious circle, is that new leaders overthrowing old ones with promises of radical change bring nothing but more of the same.

Extractive institutions then not only pave the way for the next regime, which will be even more extractive, but they also engender continuous infighting and civil wars. These civil wars then cause more human suffering and also destroy even what little state centralization these societies have achieved. This also often starts a process of descent into lawlessness, state failure, and political chaos, crushing all hopes of economic prosperity,

这种争论说破天了，也没法变化为一种近代意义上对于国家权力和责任问题的真正意义上的左、右派之争。他们只是站在皇帝和官僚的角度阐发各自的立场并抢夺施政资源，每一方的每一次失败都会带来一轮清洗，这种反复震荡都没有跳出循环的“怪圈”

as long as the planter elite was in control of its huge landholdings and remained organized, it could structure a new set of institutions, Jim Crow instead of slavery, to achieve the same objective. The vicious circle turned out to be stronger than many, including Abraham Lincoln, had thought. The vicious circle is based on extractive political institutions creating extractive economic institutions, which in turn support the extractive political institutions, because economic wealth and power buy political power. When forty acres and a mule was off the table, the southern planter elite’s economic power remained untarnished. And, unsurprisingly and unfortunately, the implications for the black population of the South, and the South’s economic development, were the same.

Books also undermine the power of those who control oral knowledge, since they make that knowledge readily available to anyone who can master literacy. This threatened to undermine the existing status quo, where knowledge was controlled by elites. The Ottoman sultans and religious establishment feared the creative destruction that would result. Their solution was to forbid printing.

extractive institutions pave the way for complete state failure, destroying not only law and order but also even the most basic economic incentives.

我们通常从人之常情讲，受宠的奴才管理不受宠的奴才，往往要比主人亲自管理奴才更糟糕，对奴才的怜惜和照顾的程度恐怕要更差。因为道理很简单，就算奴才不具人格只被视为财产，而个人的奴才不管怎么样，“产权明晰”是你自己的，这个所有权是很清楚的。比如你有一匹马，这一匹马既然是你的，你总不会无缘无故把它虐待死，杀了它对你有什么好处？你的“财产”不就损失了吗？大家都知道“兔子不吃窝边草”这个道理，那是因为窝边草是它自己的，它更愿意去吃别人的草。 但是受宠的奴才不太可能对不受宠的奴才产生一种“己物”爱惜照顾之心。因为他们本来就是陌生人，没有什么依附关系，这些人不是他自己的人，而是皇帝的人，他本人也是皇帝的人。对于他来讲，最重要的是怎么能够巩固皇帝对自己的宠爱，而不是怎么争取更多的人依附于自己——像我们经常讲的招降纳叛，吸引更多的人来投奔自已——在秦制下这可是大忌，要杀头的