The My guess would be that every single one of us in this conversation who's working a job right now

knows exactly what the things are that we could do if we wanted to get fired instantly and I don't just mean like

salacious crimey stuff obviously that's always gonna get you fired I mean

stuff that runs directly counter to the point and the purpose and the values of your business.

Pretty much everybody at any healthy business is going to know, hey, we exist to do this, and

there's a lot of things we can tolerate around here but if you do

this yeah we we can't tolerate that that's instantly fired I think that all of the

employees of the central Imperial government in all ancient

empires had a real clear sense of this as well. There's a lot of things you could

screw up and there might be a little bit of leeway or grace on that but there are a couple

things that look if you want to keep your job as a provincial administrator in an ancient

empire you better get these things right.

Thing number one, make sure the tax equation is right side up.

These ancient empires like Persia or Rome, they gave their regional governors a lot of authority to get

taxes every you need to get. Remember Matthew from the New Testament and what the

the kind of leash that he had to go and just make things up. Your taxes this year are 100. That's how much.

Wait, how did you come up with that number? Because I have this badge. It is 100. the central government they didn't care very much

about those kind of abuses as long as it didn't go so far that get people

riled up and violent I suppose that's the second thing.

So the first thing that you can't get wrong

if you're the governor of an ancient province

is you got to get more taxes than it takes to cover your costs.

...