Dominic Cummings has written a modest blog inviting mathematicians, physicists, AI specialists and other experts to help him revolutionise the civil service with new standards of accurate, precision planning. Before he does so, perhaps he might reflect a little on the Ancient History side of the degree he studied at Oxford and the need for such precision.
Without any similar technology, but from experience alone, the Romans re-organised and raised tax revenues to run, for more than 500 years, a rather successful empire of 60 million people across most of Europe, north Africa and the near East. They covered it with infrastructure — 56,000 miles of roads, hundreds of harbours (built with concrete that set under water: Rome’s main harbour at Ostia occupied nearly 500 acres) and thousands of miles of aqueducts (300 in Gaul alone).
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