Randland Failure Causes?

[siderespector]

It occurred to me that Daes Daemar is a heavily deteriorating force of most of Randland, and might be the reason many non-Borderland nations failed. Some logic (where by "==>" i mean "implies"):

 

1. Daes Daemar ==> intrigues stealing a lot of effort from building and consolidating a nation ==> cultural weakness.

2. Cultural weakness ==> economical weakness.

3. Cultural weakness ==> inability to adapt to changed trade and foreign relation conditions.

 

Personal reflection #1: 2. and 3. reminds me very much of a corporation in the catastrophic execution mode of "bancrupt aristocracy", which is the stage just before the execution mode of "death". I've experienced such a corporation ("bancrupt aristocracy") from the inside, and the two characteristic things about such a socio-cultural mode of execution are:

1. that you all time risk to be severely punished for

speaking up your mind, which makes it an extremely risky business to speak about production and problem solving;

2. psychic mobbing is made a systematic and explicit part of the system of "staff wellfare".

 

Now, continued logic:

 

4. Economical Weakness and Cultural Weakness ==> Randland is failing.

5. Randland is failing ==> there are many unoccupied patches of land in Randland.

 

Personal reflection #2: Rand & Co. explicitly rejects Daes Daemar, tells the harsh truth ("no time to schemes before Tarmon Gaiddon" and "better the shock comes now than during Tarmon Gaiddon!"), and therefore automatically gains a vast advantage before all other organizational groupings. Now this rejection of scheming seems very "sanish" (= empatho-sensible-reasonable-logical -- from "sane" ==> "sanish") in a situation before a huge dangerous threat coming: "now: no bullshit -- let's prepare to fight and survive!".

 

(Fantasy are simulations of worlds sharing some qualities of current human reality in distinctly different worlds from our one)

 

/ Rursus Siderespector qaþ.[/i]

[Kaznen]

The reason non borderland nations failed was due to a lack of suitble roads, mostly. In tGH Ingtar and was saying why one of the former kingdoms they passes through failed, there were still people living in those lands, but without suitable roads trade is strangles and the kind is not able to quickly dispatch troops to areas in the country that needed help.

 

After the War of a Hundred Years I got the impression the rulers didn't rebuild roads. Remember that Ingtar aslo said at another point the independent villages thought Sheinar should protect them, but becuase of the blight Shienar couldn't afford to do so.

 

If they had a decent system of roads that could have been different. The reason rome was so succeful was because they had roads to provide rapid dispatch to distant areas in the Empire.

 

And the Southern Areas of the Borderlands are name only areas. In tSR Faile talked about her father reminding some people they were still part of Saldean because the blight had quieted down and he could spend time on domestic issues.

[Luckers]

There has been indications that the decline in population is a result of intentional action on part of the Shadow. Ishmael has been ensuring that the nations are weak since the Breaking, and whenever they get too strong, he breaks them.

[hapazard]

Yeah,

Bad roads and leadership can't really axplain such an dramatic population decline. When the Roman empire fell in europe all the big cities lost huge parts of their population, Rome itself fell from one million inhabitants to below 15 000 in 300 years.

The roads detoriated and there were no centerilized government.

 

Still on average population the impact wasn't that big. Actually the population started to grow only a few centuries after the fall of Rome to max out in the 14th century.

[aznprince001]

rome fell because it didn't have enough reserves and legionaries. Also "All roads lead to Rome" mean that barbarians went on roads.