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A comment on The Most Notorious Towing Company in Chicago Gets the Boot. Parent comment

Re:The Most Notorious Towing Company in Chicago Gets the Boot by ubernostrum on Friday September 14, 2018 @02:21AM (#17985086)
In ancient Rome, the right to collect taxes in some provinces was contracted out. If you won the contract, you had to provide Rome with at least the amount you bid for the contract, but anything you could manage to collect beyond that was yours to keep. And if people failed to pay their taxes to you, you often had the right to enslave them in order to collect.
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Re:The Most Notorious Towing Company in Chicago Gets the Boot by cdoxsey on Friday September 14, 2018 @05:01AM (#17985742)
Hence why they were so despised at the time of the New Testament.

If anyone is interested in some of the roman dynamics of the time I highly recommend Paul Maier's historical fiction on Pontius Pilate: https://www.amazon.com/Pontius-Pilate-Paul-L-Maier/dp/082544.... (his book on Nero is great too)

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Re:The Most Notorious Towing Company in Chicago Gets the Boot by telchar on Friday September 14, 2018 @02:58PM (#17989879)
Further, to progress beyond quaestor (tax collector) in Roman politics a politician had to put on public games and such to win popularity (as an aedile). Where did those funds come from? Yep, excess taxes collected.

It's not unlike winning friends and donors for campaign funds by playing nice with wealthy special interests as a modern politician in order to progress up the ladder to national office and then continue to win re-election.

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Re:The Most Notorious Towing Company in Chicago Gets the Boot by dredmorbius on Friday September 14, 2018 @03:17AM (#17985300)
Do you have any (quick, readily accessible) references on this?

Thanks.

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Re:The Most Notorious Towing Company in Chicago Gets the Boot by ubernostrum on Friday September 14, 2018 @03:27AM (#17985346)
Wikipedia is a decent starting place:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publican

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