[amitport]

You don't pay them to have safe passage through their territory.

It's not their territory, similarly to how guerrilla groups in Columbia/Nepal do not own the Jungle/Himalaya/etc, and you don't get a choice whether you want their protection. If you brought your own armed man with you, you will get fired upon.

There where/are rubbers in Europe and in the USA, and we call them "rubbers"/"criminals". Why all of a sudden when we're discussing an "exotic" tribe we can't call it what it is? and again I'm emphasizing that not all Bedouin tribes practic(ed) violent rubbery, but some really did(do), and it was/is really nothing like taxation.

If we want to discuss a general claim that rubbery is the same as taxation, that's fine (and I disagree), but there is no reason to drag a specific type of rubbers into focus.

[hutzlibu]

"It's not their territory"

Who decides that?

They lived there since generations. They had weapons. They controlled who goes in their land.

I think that mattered more in reality, than some arbitary lines drawn on some map far away, by people never been close to the land in the first place.

And taxation in its oldest shape was indeed just protection money.

You had to pay your lord/king for safety. Otherwise the noble knights came to your farm and took what they wanted and might have burned it down, if they felt like it. And if you passed through foreign land, you had to pay hundreds of local lords for safe passage.

Same here. You pay the nomads for safety - they keep other tribes/rubbers away from their territory, providing you safety.

So you can claim, they did provide a "service".

But sure, you cannot really compare it to the taxation and services of the modern national states.

And sure, for the caravans it would be better, if just no one was around they needed to pay for protection of someone else.

It is parasitism. But this is how most states started. By preying on the weak for the benefit of a ruling class.

[throwawaylinux]

> Who decides that?

> They lived there since generations. They had weapons. They controlled who goes in their land.

A bit like the Israeli settlers in the West Bank then.

[throwaway0a5e]

These people were the government. If it's robbery when they do it it's robbery when the government does it.

Until the governments in question were able and willing to project the power necessary to take the Bedouin controlled territory by force it was their state. Regardless of what the .gov claimed on paper. The Bedouins were the government there in practice.

[jazzyjackson]

Honestly it just kind of sounds like a toll road to me.

[amitport]

Except they didn't build the road or own it or live in it. They go over a vast land, attack caravans, do some damage, and then approach a day later and ask for money for "protection". Exactly what everyone called a gang or bandits in the Americas.

For crying out loud "raiding" is listed in the Bedouin Wikipedia page under "traditions". (Again not the only practice, but it is what it is).

Also note that raiders are not generally also herders or traders and don't act in some common good and share their loot with the formers. (they share with their own close family) (most Bedouin families suffer from the raiders)

If you still have issues with seeing this as bandits also note that these tribes come with child abuse and women slavery bundled, but hey who are we to judge.

This all thread now reminds me of the movie Dogville. Highly recommend.

And don't get me wrong. They could have easily formed an autonomous territory and collect passage taxes. They didn't. The raiders, "protectors", were exactly, literally what we call gang or bandits anywhere else. Now you can go philosophical about how raiders and gang families are just tiny states, but use general terms please, these raiders are generally not different than others