Ultimately, for example, a state can’t just… kill the vast majority of its population. It would collapse. That creates a need for even the worst tyrannies to somewhat balance their excesses
Unless the economy of the tyranny is mostly based on extracting and selling natural resources, in which case everyone else can be killed without much impact on the economy.
Yeah, there are rather degenerate cases I guess. I was thinking of modern industrialised states with complex economies. Even feudal states with mostly near-subsistence level agriculture peasantry could take a lot of population loss without suffering much (the Black Death depopulated Europe to an insane degree, but society remained fairly functional), but in that case, what was missing was the capability to actually carry out slaughter on an industrial scale. Still, peasant revolt repression could get fairly bloody, and eventually as technology improved some really destructive wars were fought (e.g. the Thirty Years’ War).
Unless the economy of the tyranny is mostly based on extracting and selling natural resources, in which case everyone else can be killed without much impact on the economy.
Yeah, there are rather degenerate cases I guess. I was thinking of modern industrialised states with complex economies. Even feudal states with mostly near-subsistence level agriculture peasantry could take a lot of population loss without suffering much (the Black Death depopulated Europe to an insane degree, but society remained fairly functional), but in that case, what was missing was the capability to actually carry out slaughter on an industrial scale. Still, peasant revolt repression could get fairly bloody, and eventually as technology improved some really destructive wars were fought (e.g. the Thirty Years’ War).