The scenario reminds me of the story of Joseph as pharaoh's Vizier in the Bible, and how pharaoh ended up owning all of the land of Egypt (except for that of the priests) because The People had to sell it to him for food to survive, and in the process became his slaves.
(Genesis 47:13-26 https://ref.ly/Gen47.13-26 )
Not gonna lie, that story has always kind of bothered me...
#nostrconfessions
When I first realized that was what was going on I was flabbergasted. It's interesting, because obviously pharoah became a tyrant — but if the famine was as bad as Genesis says (7 years is a long time to be unable to harvest anything), everyone would have died without a strong king to coerce them into saving.
It is true that this divinely inspired plan was in order to save lives. I just don't like that it increased the power of the pharaoh like it did. But even in this case, he only took 20% of the people's income, unlike our our modern governments that exact even moore...
It was not the pharoah at the time, but Joseph that introduced the tyranny once the famine started in chapter 47.
