The Roman emperors had a very simple way of keeping the ragged, simple, non-wealthy Roman citizens calm and avoiding rebellion among the masses. They gave them cheap bread and provided lots of shows and festivals in their colossae (plural of colosseum, in English colosseums for those of you who are not from the generation that learnt Latin at school or at the university) and in their amphitheatres. The French King Louis the 16th and his wife Marie Antoinette came to a bloody end during the French Revolution because when the queen was told that the people were hungry, while the royal family and all the aristocracy and business oligarchs of the time lived a life of extreme luxury, she told her major-domo “if they are hungry give them cake” when the granaries were empty. Arrogant as she was, she met a bloody end and so did most of the aristocrats of the time. In Russia, the czar, who also lived a life of luxury with the nobles in their palaces and dachas while the common Russia peasant was tied to the earth in a form of eternal slavery called serfdom, had nothing to eat and had no shoes on their feet in the bitter cold Russian winters, was overthrown and killed when the people...
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