clovis_227 t1_it52048 wrote on October 21, 2022 at 12:05 AM

Reply to comment by MoreanSwordsman in Was there mass migration of Roman citizens from Western Empire to Eastern Empire during degredation and after fall of Western part of empire. by [deleted]

The new barbarian kingdom let taxation slip, since their armies were mostly landed now, not paid. Moreover, the aristocracy in the west became much more rural. Finally, there was a greater focus on churches and monasteries instead of the usual civil infrastructure.

aphilsphan t1_it563u8 wrote on October 21, 2022 at 12:35 AM

They didn’t so much let taxation slip as they inherited a system of taxes in kind. The money economy was going away. It becomes much harder to rebuild a needed aqueduct for a city 500 miles away when you can’t pay the workers from the surplus you’ve got elsewhere. All you can do are smaller projects using your local surpluses.