WEST COMES EAST 225could be had for cash paid under the table. The very trends undermining
Ottoman ability to manufacture goods were providing a market for Euro-
pean industry and incidentally draining the gold back to Europe.
Outside cash coming into the Ottoman system just as production was
falling generated inflation: that's what happens when you have more
money chasing fewer goods. I've seen the same pattern in certain rural
counties in northern California, where a few people are getting fabu-
lously rich from growing marijuana. In an area with no apparent econ-
omy, you see people driving BMWs, ordinary houses start selling for a
million dollars, and even bread finally costs more in suddenly gentrified
grocery stores.
Whom does inflation hurt? It hurts people on fixed incomes. These
days, we tend to equate "fixed income" with "small income"; we think of
pensioners living on social security or welfare. In Ottoman society, there
was no welfare system. Families and communities took care of their own
elderly and sick. No, in Ottoman society, the people on "fixed incomes"
were the salaried government bureaucrats and more particularly the
salaried officials of the court-that bloated, wholly nonproductive upper
class. Those "fixed income" folks were rich beyond the dreams of Croesus,
but even the richest of the rich somehow feel threatened when their buy-
ing power goes down. In 1929, when the U.S. stock market crashed,
some of those bankers who famously jumped out of high-rise windows
were still worth a million dollars when they hit the sidewalk. How much
they had didn't matter: it was how much less they had that got to them.
Similarly, in Ottoman society, inflation made rich courtiers living on
fixed salaries feel like they had to tighten their belts and this they didn't
like. They began to supplement their incomes by wielding the only in-
strument they controlled.
What do courtiers (and bureaucrats) control? Access to the administra-
tive and legal workings of the state. When people have no role except to
provide access, however, they have no power except to deny access.
Courtiers and bureaucrats in the Ottoman Empire began to prevent in-
stead of facilitate-unless they were given bribes. The Ottoman Empire
became a paperwork nightmare. To negotiate one's way through it, a per-
son needed to bribe people who knew people who knew people who could
bribe people who could bribe other people who knew people.