Dwarkesh Patel

Been looking forward.

Yeah.

One of the big reasons that the Italian city republics are clustered in Italy is that when the Roman Empire dissolved in the West—

Individual cities then needed to self-govern, and this is true all across Europe, right?

And those individual cities could no longer get the centralized Roman government to oversee supply routes, keep the roads free of bandits.

You could no longer import and export goods at scale.

You could no longer rely on central infrastructure.

You had to support things yourself.

Larger, wealthier towns were able to make this transition because they could support themselves from the local resources and the farms attached to them.

So the larger, wealthier towns surrounded by good agricultural land were more successful at converting over to, okay, let's have a Senate like the old Roman Senate.

Let's have our top families form a council.

They will rule.

We'll set up a republic.

A weaker town...

that can't support itself as well, is much more prone to one wealthy family realizes that they can get goons and take over and declare themselves the monarch of the area.

Or worse, this town cannot self-sustain.

It doesn't have enough.

People there can't get food.

They are scared.

They're afraid of being robbed by people who are desperate.