On that note, I've seen recent comparisons of US these days to the fall of Ancient Rome. Do you see similarities between Rome then and current-day US given how things have degraded in the US economically?
I imagine there's way too many new, modern-day factors to predict US's economic future with just Ancient Rome history.
The social justice movement almost perfectly mirrors the eruption of the early, radical Christians in the late Western Roman Empire. They were pulling down statues, taking over all the institutions and barring the pagans from employment in them, pressuring hold-out pagans to convert to Christianity, etc.
There was large-scale out-migration from rural to urban areas. Ultimately the arable land of Rome was largely abandoned, as people fled to the cities to either move up in social rank or live on welfare. Late in the Roman Empire, 50% of the citizens of Rome (about 1 million people) lived on the government dole.
Rome experienced a massive refugee crisis, as the Goths, fleeing war in the East, begged for refuge on Roman territory. The Romans reluctantly allowed them in. The refugees felt like their living conditions were poor and they weren't being treated well by the Romans. So they began attacking the Romans, and the Romans mostly just retreated and ran away from them. It took some time, but ultimately the Goths took over Western Europe.
There were political back-and-forths where populist reformers like Marius, then representatives of the elite like Sulla, then populist reformers like Julius Caesar, then representatives of the elite like Augustus, vied back and forth for power. Ultimately the elites solidified their hold on power through Augustus. The process of election continued, but was purely a show so the people felt they had some say in things. They could vote for senators but the Senate had no actual legislative power anymore. Depending on how legitimate one views the American electoral process as being, we could say the US may have a similar phenomenon now, where elections are still held, but are mostly just for show.
There are plenty of other things, such as the citizens, once militaristic, no longer wishing to serve in the military, with Rome increasingly reliant on foreign mercenaries and peoples only recently made citizens of Rome...
we see similar things in the US today. Or disaffected citizens calling for the fall of their country -- Roman peasants in the countryside welcomed their Gothic invaders as liberators. These Romans wanted Rome to fall (due to feeling oppressed by the government). This seems to be a common sentiment among some Americans today (the black pill folks, enjoy-the-decline folks, accelerationists, etc.).
I suspect most late-stage empires go through similar phases. Confucius lived deep into the decline of the Zhou dynasty, and complains a lot about people in positions of authority in society twisting the meaning of words to serve their purposes, saying that if the people cannot call a thing by its name and meanings get detached from names, the people "cannot tell hand from foot." The first time I read it I thought of all the gender confusion stuff, the expansion of the definition of 'rape' to include almost anything, all the -isms of which anyone can be accused for nearly anything, with people living in constant fear of being accused of -isms, coaching their words all the time, "I'm not [blank]-ist, but have you noticed blah blah blah? Again, I'm not [blank]-ist, I just think that is weird."
Sir John Glubb showcases a bunch of good parallels between imperial life cycles and modern society (in his case, 1950s Britain) in his short, punchy book
The Fate of Empires. Joseph Tainter makes a pretty good argument that all the things above are mostly symptoms of what causes empires to flourish, then decline -- namely, the social system growing too costly and complex, and the economic basis of the society not being able to keep up.
His book's the best one for really understanding why societies follow the trajectories they do: "Too complicated a social system; not enough money," basically.
Ray Dalio, the self-made billionaire hedge fund manager, has a neat little video (with over 40 million views on YouTube) on imperial growth and decline
here.
I think the one thing to understand with imperial decline is the empires do not just one day vanish. Britain, the empire that preceded the US, is still here, and still reasonably powerful; it's just not a superpower anymore. The Dutch are still here. The one exception is with revolutions -- if there's a revolution, all bets are off. Then you can have total collapses, huge famines, people cannibalizing the dead or even hunting the living (especially children... read some survivor stories from the Holodomor; it's horrific), and all the real horrible stuff, because it turns out the old complex systems, as creaky and oppressive as they are, were keeping a bunch of things running that just up and stop running when new idealists get in and sweep it all away and try rebuilding things from scratch the way they think it should be.
Can't say if the state of the U.S will continue to degrade and decline but I'm certainly hoping, and rooting for it.
It is only just after all the exploitation they have done to latin and arab countries. The U.S is a country built on aggression and deceit, even extending this deceit towards it's own people. They are sociopaths on a country scale and karmic justice will come a knocking.
Even the British, frequently lied and propagandized against my Spanish ancestors out of jealousy... So yeah, I'm excited for the "best country in the world" to crumble for good.
Every superpower ends up doing horrible, terrible things.
The US has been absolutely horrific in Latin America and the Middle East. Most Americans don't know a fraction of the extent of it... I don't think they want to, honestly.
The British Empire did plenty of horrific things.
So did the Spanish Empire. The great cities of Latin America ran red with the blood of Spanish conquests.
It is the "absolute power corrupts absolutely" problem.
Once any one society secures a stranglehold on power, it starts doing whatever it needs to, including many awful things, to expand and keep that power... until it collapses from within or is dethroned by an up-and-coming power.
The interesting thing to me is how oblivious to what their empire is actually doing the citizens of that empire typically are.
They always get the propaganda about how they are spreading civilization and bringing enlightenment to the barbarian hordes.
They never get why they are so hated in these places where they are busily spreading all this civilization and enlightenment.
I don't think there's any way to stop this process.
It is simply always going to be the case that societies will compete for power, sooner or later there will be a winner, that winner will work to sweep the battlefield of any competitors, and then, once absolute power is secured, the real abuses on those outside its borders begin on any who are not strong enough to fend it off... until eventually the empire declines, a new competitor seizes the crown, and the process begins afresh.
...
Anyway, this is all pretty off topic from chicks being broke
Chase
