Various elites also opposed political centralization, for example, preferring oral to written interaction with citizens, because this allowed them maximum discretion. Written laws or orders could not be taken back or denied and were harder to change; they set benchmarks that governing elites might want to reverse. So neither the ruled nor the rulers of Taqali saw the introduction of writing to be to their advantage. The ruled feared how the rulers would use it, and the rulers themselves saw the absence of writing as aiding their quite precarious grip on power. It was the politics of Taqali
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