The Silk Roads Practice Test

Predictable, standardized regulation tended to promote trade by reducing uncertainty, while arbitrary exactions increased risk and could discourage merchants or shift routes.

Corruption always increased trade by lowering prices, since bribes replaced taxes and eliminated all costs of transport, guards, and caravan animals.

Officials controlled trade only through industrial patents, since Silk Road governments focused on factory regulation rather than checkpoints, tolls, or receipts.

Governance never mattered, because merchants could not change routes and therefore paid identical costs regardless of corruption, war, or administrative efficiency.

Standardized tariffs ended trade, because merchants refused predictable rules and preferred uncertainty, making arbitrary taxation essential for commerce to function.