(06-01-2020, 12:13 PM)2006alum Wrote: I mean, if the story isn't factually true, what is the significance of it? Anyone could make up anything and attach the significance of hundreds of years, of Czars, of grand themes and sweeping metaphors. But if it's not in fact the case that an institution ran on auto-pilot for 100 years, then it's using fiction to make an argument seem far more salient and relevant than it is.
Does there have to have been a specific naked emperor for the story of the Emperor's New Clothes to be useful? Did there have to be a specific prodigal son? Or a good Samaritan? When those laborers got paid the same wage, in that story, did it have to be true to have meaning? Or if you don't relate to those, how about the famous stories that Buddha or Confucius told?
GR's story makes sense to me, and has a point, irregardless of whether it's factually true. What matters is that it could have been true, and it sheds light on its subject matter. Because I do see that kind of behavior in the world today, regulations that live on long after the problem was solved. Look at blue laws, for example.