But probably a good future

now she's telling me about how my cousin is trying to go to MIT

interesting

@Jacob lots of people *try* to go to MIT

that guy has an insane resume

Insane resume plus perfect SAT score?

well uh

he never lived in the US so no SAT

There's actually calculators online now where you can put in your attributes and see your acceptance chance

but ya he would do well on the SAT

@Jacob for undergrad he will need an SAT or ACT

Perfect score on either

oh he's trying to get a PhD

@Jacob perfect GREs I expect? That's kind of a bare minimum for any top 20 grad school

my mom doesn't know the difference between bachelor's and master's so she's having trouble explaining lol

The specialized GRE for his discipline I mean

@ThisIsChris @Nemets It depends on which era were talking about. The early Roman empire was both very centralized in somethings and very decentralized in others.

@ThisIsChris idk probably

@Jacob yeah it's easier to get a perfect GRE score if you did that major. Easier than getting a perfect SAT schore

Tax collection was decentralized at first, the Emperor would essentially deputize tax collectors to tax a province with little oversite so abuse and corruption was rampant, they moved away from that eventually.

@Jacob still he should apply to a very large range of grad schools

I applied to 37

wow

Were tax collectors ever killed by people?

Although not ideal, Rome breaking into 3 parts during the crisis of the third century allowed the central roman empire's retarded politics of come and go emperors to not affect the Gaulic or Palmynran Empires, in fact the Palmyran Empire slapped Parthia hard

Was that a common occurrence?

@Jacob I'll be honest with my concern: when I hear someone saying they're applying to MIT, I want to know that they're applying to at least 30 other schools. Saying "ah if I don't go to MIT then I won't get a phd" is a bit silly. If that is someone's attitude then they probably should be going for a PhD anyway

@Selma I'm not sure but in the bible they were spoken of as hated, hence people asking Jesus what he was doing hanging out with one of them

At church they equate tax collectors with prostitutes in a manner of speaking.

Aquaducts and roads were centralized

@ThisIsChris that makes sense

Tax collection in Rome was very interesting process.

What you would have is Tax Collection agencies would bid for the right from Rome to be the tax collector in a certain region.

@Nemets Just roman rebel states, their local identities had been displaced much earlier.

The winning bid would become Rome's tax collection for itself

Then the tax collectors would try to profit by collecting more taxes from the inhabitants than they had paid to rome

That was the business model

During late antiquities they always seemed to be making new offices and titles while simultaneously making both the Eastern and Western emperors more high and mighty

@Nemets interesting, I didn't know that

I wonder if that's been a norm for a long time

@Nemets how did tax farming lead to opium growing?