Tag Archives: Roman Empire

Decline of Empire: Parallels Between the U.S. and Rome, Part III, by Doug Casey

Posted on January 18, 2023 | Leave a comment

The third of Doug Casey’s examination of the Roman and the American empires. From Doug Casey at internationalman.com:

Wars made Rome. Wars expanded the country’s borders and brought it wealth, but they also sowed the seeds of its destruction, especially the three big wars against Carthage, 264-146 BCE.

Rome began as a republic of yeoman farmers, each with his own plot of land. You had to be a landowner to join the Roman army; it was a great honor, and it wouldn’t take the riffraff. When the Republic was threatened—and wars were constant and uninterrupted from the beginning—a legionary might be gone for five, ten, or more years. His wife and children back on the farm might have to borrow money to keep things going and then perhaps default, so soldiers’ farms would go back to bush or get taken over by creditors. And, if he survived the wars, an ex-legionary might be hard to keep down on the farm after years of looting, plundering, and enslaving the enemy. On top of that, tidal waves of slaves became available to work freshly confiscated properties. So, like America, Rome became more urban and less agrarian. Like America, there were fewer family farmers but more industrial-scale latifundia.

War turned the whole Mediterranean into a Roman lake. With the Punic wars, Spain and North Africa became provinces. Pompey the Great (106-48 BCE) conquered the Near East. Julius Caesar (100-44 BCE) conquered Gaul 20 years later. Then Augustus took Egypt.

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Decline of Empire: Parallels Between the U.S. and Rome, Part II, by Doug Casey (With Link to Part I)

Posted on January 12, 2023 | Leave a comment

The second part of Doug Casey’s excellent comparison between the Roman and American Empires. From Casey at internationalman.com:

See here for Part I

Like the Romans, we’re supposedly ruled by laws, not by men. In Rome, the law started with the 12 Tablets in 451 BCE, with few dictates and simple enough to be inscribed on bronze for all to see. A separate body of common law developed from trials, held sometimes in the Forum, sometimes in the Senate.

When the law was short and simple, the saying “Ignorantia juris non excusat” (ignorance of the law is no excuse) made sense. But as the government and its legislation became more ponderous, the saying became increasingly ridiculous. Eventually, under Diocletian, law became completely arbitrary, with everything done by the emperor’s decrees—we call them Executive Orders today.

I’ve mentioned Diocletian several times already. It’s true that his draconian measures held the Empire together, but it was a matter of destroying Rome in order to save it. As in the U.S., in Rome statute and common law gradually devolved into a maze of bureaucratic rules.

The trend accelerated under Constantine, the first Christian emperor, because Christianity is a top-down religion, reflecting a hierarchy where rulers were seen as licensed by God. The old Roman religion never tried to capture men’s minds this way. Before Christianity, violating the emperor’s laws wasn’t seen as also violating God’s laws.

The devolution is similar in the U.S. You’ll recall that only three crimes are mentioned in the U.S. Constitution—treason, counterfeiting, and piracy. Now you can read Harvey Silverglate’s book, Three Felonies a Day, which argues that the average modern-day American, mostly unwittingly, is running his own personal crime wave—because federal law has criminalized over 5,000 different acts.

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Decline of Empire: Parallels Between the U.S. and Rome, Part I, by Doug Casey

Posted on January 4, 2023 | Leave a comment

Doug Casey has his own take on the parallels between the U.S. and Roman empires, a subject that elicited a fair number of Internet articles. From Casey at internationalman.com:

rome

As some of you know, I’m an aficionado of ancient history. I thought it might be worthwhile to discuss what happened to Rome and based on that, what’s likely to happen to the U.S. Spoiler alert: There are some similarities between the U.S. and Rome.

But before continuing, please seat yourself comfortably. This article will necessarily cover exactly those things you’re never supposed to talk about—religion and politics—and do what you’re never supposed to do, namely, bad-mouth the military.

There are good reasons for looking to Rome rather than any other civilization when trying to see where the U.S. is headed. Everyone knows Rome declined, but few people understand why. And, I think, even fewer realize that the U.S. is now well along the same path for pretty much the same reasons, which I’ll explore shortly.

Rome reached its peak of military power around the year 107, when Trajan completed the conquest of Dacia (the territory of modern Romania). With Dacia, the empire peaked in size, but I’d argue it was already past its peak by almost every other measure.

The U.S. reached its peak relative to the world, and in some ways its absolute peak, as early as the 1950s. In 1950 this country produced 50% of the world’s GNP and 80% of its vehicles. Now it’s about 21% of world GNP and 5% of its vehicles. It owned two-thirds of the world’s gold reserves; now it holds one-fourth. It was, by a huge margin, the world’s biggest creditor, whereas now it’s the biggest debtor by a huge margin. The income of the average American was by far the highest in the world; today it ranks about eighth, and it’s slipping.

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The Decline and Fall of the American Empire, by Doug Casey

Posted on August 31, 2022 | 12 comments

A lot of people have compared the American and Roman empires, but Doug Casey puts the comparison in a new light. From Casey at internationalman.com:

As some of you know, I’m an aficionado of ancient history. I thought it might be worthwhile to discuss what happened to Rome and based on that, what’s likely to happen to the U.S. Spoiler alert: There are some similarities between the U.S. and Rome.

But before continuing, please seat yourself comfortably. This article will necessarily cover exactly those things you’re never supposed to talk about—religion and politics—and do what you’re never supposed to do, namely, bad-mouth the military.

There are good reasons for looking to Rome rather than any other civilization when trying to see where the U.S. is headed. Everyone knows Rome declined, but few people understand why. And, I think, even fewer realize that the U.S. is now well along the same path for pretty much the same reasons, which I’ll explore shortly.

Rome reached its peak of military power around the year 107, when Trajan completed the conquest of Dacia (the territory of modern Romania). With Dacia, the empire peaked in size, but I’d argue it was already past its peak by almost every other measure.

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Does the American State Deserve Collapse? By MN Gordon

Posted on July 8, 2022 | Leave a comment

Certainly millions of something-for-nothing Americans both inside and outside the government deserve the collapse that’s coming. From MN Gordon at economicprism.com:

“Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.”

– Marcus Aurelius

What Took So Long?

Monetary, fiscal, economic, political, and military affairs are tightly interwoven into the fabric of a nation.  The primary thread extending throughout is the state’s endless desire to dominate and centralize the supply of money.

Monetary policy, in this regard, always attends to the apparent wants of a country’s leaders and its ruling class.  Sometimes, over an extended period, it may appear to enrich the general population.  But that is merely the mirage of early stage inflation, when demand’s pulled forward and economic growth appears to be expanding.

Regardless, the primary intent of monetary policy is to support the rulers.  It’s table scraps for everyone else.

Nearly 250 years ago, in 1776, Edward Gibbon’s, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was first published in England.  Gibbon’s six-volume work offers an account of a state that survived for twelve centuries in the West and for another thousand years in the East, at Constantinople.

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A Roman lesson on inflation, by Alasdair Macleod

Posted on June 2, 2022 | Leave a comment

When it comes to monetary debasement, history has repeated itself over and over again. From Alasdair Macleod at goldmoney.com:

“While it is the duty of the citizen to support the state, it is not the duty of the state to support the citizen” – President Grover Cleveland

After two centuries of debasement the Roman denarius ended up with no silver content. The decline of the empire was accompanied by increasingly costly bureaucracy, stifling the economy. It was a template for today.

There are differences. But we share suffocating bureaucracy and the lack of specie in our currency systems. As Rome did from Nero onwards, we have lost the plot. A general deterioration in our sense of purpose is an additional factor.

Perhaps Diocletian was the Joe Biden of his day. He was infamous for his edict on maximum prices, which basically shut down the production of goods. Will Joe Biden introduce a similar edict? Don’t rule it out…

Intervention’s slippery slope

The point President Cleveland made back in the 1880s was that individuals and vested interests had no rights to preferential treatment by a government elected to represent everyone. For if preference is given, it is always at the expense of others.

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America’s Attila the Hun moment, by Simon Black

Posted on January 14, 2022 | Leave a comment

Empires are made to expire. From Simon Black at sovereignman.com:

In the year 435 AD, after several years of endless menacing from the nomadic Hun tribe, the Roman Empire was ready to make a deal.

The Huns were fairly new on the continent; they had originally come from central Eurasia as recently as 370 AD. Yet in the span of a few short decades, they quickly established themselves as the dominant tribe in Eastern Europe, conquering vast territories and threatening the Roman Empire.

The Empire was a pitiful shell of its former self at that point. So Emperor Theodosius II sent one of his generals to meet with the Huns in the city of Margus, now called Pozarevac in modern day Serbia.

The leader of the Huns was a short, flat-nosed warrior in his mid 30s named Attila who famously remained on his horse during the entire meeting with the Roman envoys.

Attila was cunning, and he knew the Romans were weak. So he intentionally made ridiculous demands.

Among them, he told the Romans he would leave them alone if they paid a tribute of 700 pounds of gold per year (worth about $13.3 million in today’s money).

This was a significant sum back then, especially given that the Roman Empire had lost its most productive gold mines in Hispania to the Visigoths and Vandals in the early 400s.

(The region of Andalusia in modern Spain is actually named for the Vandal tribe, derived from the Arabic word al-Andalus.)

In addition to the money, though, Attila also demanded that the Romans could not enter into any alliance with any other tribes if the Huns deemed them to be a threat.

In making this demand, Attila was essentially giving himself control of Rome’s foreign policy and military affairs.

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The American Empire In Retreat, by Ross Douthat

Posted on September 6, 2021 | Leave a comment

Empires often collapse from the outside and work in, which is one way to think of the American empire’s most recent failure in Afghanistan. From Ross Douthat of the New York Times via zerohedge.com:

America leaving Afghanistan memeA meme artist’s conception of of America’s retreat from Afghanistan. 

In one of the more arresting videos that circulated after the fall of Kabul, a journalist follows a collection of Taliban fighters into a hangar containing abandoned, disabled U.S. helicopters. Except that the fighters don’t look like our idea of the Taliban: In their gear and guns and helmets (presumably pilfered), they look exactly like the American soldiers their long insurgency defeated.

As someone swiftly pointed out on Twitter, the hangar scene had a strong end-of-the-Roman Empire vibe, with the Taliban fighters standing for the Visigoths or Vandals who adopted bits and pieces of Roman culture even as they overthrew the empire. For a moment, it offered a glimpse of what a world after the American imperium might look like: Not the disappearance of all our pomps and works, any more than Roman culture suddenly disappeared in 476 A.D., but a world of people confusedly playacting American-ness in the ruins of our major exports, the military base and the shopping mall.

But the glimpse provided in the video isn’t necessarily a foretaste of true imperial collapse. In other ways, our failure in Afghanistan more closely resembles Roman failures that took place far from Rome itself — the defeats that Roman generals suffered in the Mesopotamian deserts or the German forests, when the empire’s reach outstripped its grasp.

Or at least that’s how I suspect it will be seen in the cold light of hindsight, when some future Edward Gibbon sets out to tell the story of the American imperium in full.

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Doug Casey on Currency Debasement and Cultural Degradation

Posted on August 4, 2021 | Leave a comment

You can tell a lot about the quality of a country by the quality of its currency. From Doug Casey at internationalman.com:

International Man:  How instrumental do you think the debasement of their currency was to the eventual fall of the Roman Empire? How did it affect their culture?

Doug Casey: In ancient pre-industrial societies—just like today—you became wealthy by producing more than you consume and saving the difference.

One of the best things about money is that it allows an individual to set aside capital, the product of his labor, in a form that retains value. A farmer, for instance, can’t save fruit from year to year, nor can a baker save bread. Sound money is critical for lasting gains in wealth and economic progress. Sound money is why wealthy societies become dominant, and a reason other societies are poor and ripe for conquest and domination.

Rome provides a meaningful long-term template. The Roman government, in search of revenue, started debasing the denarius under Nero in the 1st century, taking it from 90% silver to 75%. As late as the reign of Marcus Aurelius, which ended in 180, the denarius was still about 75% silver. By the end of the 3rd century, it was pot metal that was simply plated with silver. The 3rd century was notable for numerous coups, civil wars, assassinations, and secessions. There are plenty of reasons political chaos goes hand in hand with economic chaos; they reinforce each other.

Roman coins weren’t worth saving by the middle of the 3rd century, and the collapse of the currency was a major cause of the collapse of the empire. In some ways, sound money was even more important in ancient times than it is today because they didn’t have sophisticated banking, financial markets, credit, accounting, or ways of measuring the rate of currency depreciation. Physical cash was king.

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The Brave New Cancel Culture World, by Pablo Escobar

Posted on May 5, 2021 | Leave a comment

There was a vigorous European cancel culture about fifteen centuries ago, a predecessor to our own. From Pablo Escobar at zerohedge.com:

If we need a date when the West started to go seriously wrong, let’s start with Rome in the early 5th century…

In 2020, we saw the enshrinement of techno-feudalism – one of the overarching themes of my latest book, Raging Twenties.

In lightning speed, the techno-feudalism virus is metastasizing into an even more lethal, wilderness of mirrors variant, where cancel culture is enforced by Big Tech all across the spectrum, science is routinely debased as fake news in social media, and the average citizen is discombobulated to the point of lobotomy.

Giorgio Agamben has defined it as a new totalitarianism.

Top political analyst Alastair Crooke has attempted a sharp breakdown of the broader configuration.

Geopolitically, the Hegemon would even resort to 5G war to maintain its primacy, while seeking moral legitimization via the woke revolution, duly exported to its Western satrapies.

The woke revolution is a culture war – in symbiosis with Big Tech and Big Business – that has smashed the real thing: class war. The atomized working classes, struggling to barely survive, have been left to wallow in anomie.

The great panacea, actually the ultimate “opportunity” offered by Covid-19, is the Great Reset advanced by Herr Schwab of Davos: essentially the replacement of a dwindling manufacturing base by automation, in tandem with a reset of the financial system.

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