Worldbuilding Weekend Prompt #106 - Bread and Circuses

Welcome to the next in an ongoing series of writing prompts in the Worldbuilding community !

I'm aiming to post one of these each Sunday. They aren't a replacement for the excellent daily prompts from @worldbuilding they're just an extra opportunity if you have a writing itch you want to scratch. 😀

Image generated by AI in Wombo.art

The prompt this week is - Bread and Circuses

"Bread and Circuses" was a term coined during the Roman Empire. It was a shorthand way to explain how Emperors kept the large, often chronically under-employed, urban population under control. Providing bread helped to avoid food riots or discontent over the cost of living (and the rampant inflation experienced after the middle Imperial period, when the coinage became heavily debased). The circuses part was dealt with by putting on ever more extreme, bloodier, and longer lasting gladiatorial games. They entertained the common people, gave them something to talk about that wasn't politics, and kept them busy and off the streets.

A modern interpretation of the concept is employed today by most Western governments. Increasing numbers of people depend on state handouts or are directly employed by the state. In many Western countries, more than 50% of the adult population relies on the government for their money, either as welfare or as wages for state jobs. Then we have endless satellite TV channels, with most of the content being one form or another of increasingly bizarre reality TV.

How do governments keep the population under control in your setting ? Do they rely on brute force and fear, or do they have an equivalent of bread and circuses to keep people's bellies full and minds distracted ? Is it effective ? How long have they been doing it ? How long before the whole system collapses under it's own inconsistencies ?

Just to add a bit of spice to things, the two entries I most like (and are linked in comments to this post, so I can find them !) that are posted by midnight (GMT) next Saturday will each get a prize of one Hive SBI.

This link will take you to the FAQ where you can read more about Hive SBI - it's a project I thoroughly support because it gives both the donor and winner a steady trickle of passive income paid out in the form of upvotes on posts.

Guidelines

I stole these guidelines straight from @worldbuilding prompts (I hope that's okay !), I couldn't have written them any better myself....

• Prompt replies may be anything! Art, game assets, stories, worldbuilding details, fake wiki entries, maps... whatever you want to create!
• Please ensure you reply to this post with a link to your reply
• Posting in or cross-posting to the Worldbuilding community is highly encouraged
• Use the hashtag #worldbuilding
• Prompt replies can be any length.

Some other neat communities for writing that you might want to check out are:

• Freewriters
• Scholar and Scribe
• Tabletop / DND
• The Ink Well

It can be a lot of fun to mix and match our prompts with some of these other community prompts.