7 ms·

It's a pretty good book. Mike Duncan was asked constantly if the United States was Rome and is the American Empire about to fall. Mike's position is the late

by jdlyga 5y ago

It's a pretty good book. Mike Duncan was asked constantly if the United States was Rome and is the American Empire about to fall. Mike's position is the late Roman Republic, before Julius Caesar and the empire, is most similar to the present day US. Both countries had just seen their biggest rival Carthage/USSR fall, and so ambitious people started looking inward to gain power instead of outward. This led to a lot of political division and slow erosion of political norms.

ceeplusplus 5y ago
Ray Dalio seems to think the opposite: that the US is in the falling Empire stages (think 3rd-4th century AD) where there is a lot of internal strife and the economy is stumbling. A new enemy is rising to challenge the existing superpower and the will to expand and fight is no longer there (Germanic tribes and the Sassanids for Rome, China for the US). I think peak US ala the Roman Republic would've either been right after WW2 or right after the USSR fell (Gulf War era basically).
- burlesona 5y ago
  That's a popular take, but I don't know how much it holds water. What really does seem to be the sad, sad reality is that America needs external enemies or else it feeds on itself. Since the fall of the USSR politics have gotten steadily nastier, but all the sudden people are finding lots of common ground in solitary against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But will that solidarity last more than a few news cycles?
  - pfraze 5y ago
    We have a little bit of a self-vision problem. Historically, America focused on conquering new frontiers: manifest destiny (with all the nastiness that includes), industrialization, the space race, computing. It's not really clear what the next national frontier will be, and a lot of the domestic politics are anchored more around the allocation of resources from past frontiers rather than the establishment of a new frontier. This is all orthogonal to external enemies like the USSR, which I just see as a relatively generic phenomenon; countries frequently unify around external enemies, and you're probably right that the current situation with the USSR won't have a very long-lasting effect.
    - thehappypm 5y ago
      Wow. I hope we can galvanize around something that is a real enemy (climate change, disease) rather than made-up stuff.
      - seanw444 5y ago
        Wouldn't that be nice. Unfortunately we've got politicians with pockets to line. Progress would be antithetical!
  - drewcoo 5y ago
    After the cold war ended we had Iraq. And then the war on terror. War makes money. I hear people say that our response to 9/11 shows that the terrorists won. I think actually bin Laden did a huge favor to the military industrial complex - they won.
  - socksset 5y ago
    Dalio said without reservation or probability that at the start of COVID we were in a global depression. Oops, 100% wrong but no one cares. IMO the entire narrative that Americans are so divided is largely an illusion. People are highly divided over wedge issues in online arguments. If you turn off the internet, the phone and FOX/CNN/MSNBC people are pretty much the same. Sporting events are a good example of reality. If the media narratives were true getting a 100k people in a sports stadium would result in utter chaos. We are certainly not as divided as in the 60s. That is so apparent if you read any history from that time. Actually, if we suffer from anything it is exactly represented by Dalio. Conflating extreme wealth accumulation with extreme intelligence and wisdom. The ideas of billionaires are given far too much weight. Not based on the ideas themselves but on the size of their net worth. IMO if Feynman or Einstein were alive today no one would listen to them, "If you are so smart why don't you have a billion dollars???"
- pfraze 5y ago
  I remember reading this theory a bit ago and I thought it was one of the more compelling observations. It depends on whether you're focusing on foreign or domestic politics, because both fit in various ways. When the republic fell to an empire, it was due more to domestic issues: the agrarian middle class was displaced by slave labor and mostly forced into professional military careers, and the very rich infought into conquering the state. The the empire fell (at least, the Western empire) it was foreign issues: the central state was over-extended and unable to hold the full Pax Romana territory any longer. The useful lesson from the "falling Empire stages" is to gracefully cede influence without entering into counterproductive wars with new rising powers, as you mention with China.
_8j50 5y ago
USSR fell in 1989, the climate in the US is a post-iraq thing and China is fiercely rivaling and competing against the US in all fronts. Even America's reaction to Russia bs Ukraine is tailored to send a message to China. The Xenophobia in America is a walk in the park compared to any European country. Still the best place for immigrants. Income inequality is bad but povery has improved a lot and so has crime compared to previous decades. I mean, the great depression was literally before WW2 which is obviously a worse time than now (ask any black person or non-european immigrant how unequal or xenophobic America was back then!) after which there was a great economic boom. Perhaps the past is easier to measure than the present? A lot of the political norm that is being erased now is for 20th century norms. I would say Andrew Jackson shooting people on the whitehouse lawn was a norm. Congress attending Church every sunday at the Capitol was also a norm and it was erased. I think a lot of people correlate without articulating causation to sound smart.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  When do you think America's political divisions got so tribal? I couldn't tell.
  - thehappypm 5y ago
    Facebook launched its news feed feature in 2006, and set the stage for a generation of doomscrollers.
    - HWR_14 5y ago
      So, you don't think there was tribalism pre-2006? I'm just curious, do you remember that time? Was it much better then? I ask because it seems like we have mostly the same politicians (McConnell, Pelosi, Biden, even Trump ran as an independent) as we did then.
      - irrational 5y ago
        I remember pre-2006. I was in my mid-30s by then. I don’t recall much open animosity between Republicans and Democrats. Certainly nothing like today. There was a lot of coming together post 9/11. I do think social media was the main instigator of the country falling into open tribalism.
AmericanChopper 5y ago
The Republic didn’t fall because it ran out of enemies. It fell because the centre of Roman power was incredibly disconnected from the source of Roman power. The source of Rome’s power came from a small number of people who had extraordinary leadership and military command talents, who were able to win the victories required to expand Roman territory beyond the top half of the Italian peninsula. Yet the senate, responsible for wielding the power won by these generals, were just a bunch of aristocrats and demagogues, who routinely saw Rome’s most competent generals as their greatest threat. This tension exists for the entire republic era, and you could just as easily predict that Romans would have to start “looking inwards for power” after the Pyrrhic War. The senate had a well established history of turning against its greatest generals by Caesar’s time. You mention the defeat of Carthage, but who defeated Carthage, and what happened to them afterwards? Scipio Africanus did at the Battle of Zama, and he was promptly exiled from Rome afterwards by his political rivals (and was lucky to avoid execution really). It is absolutely no surprise that the Roman republic eventually fell to an extremely competent general leading an extremely loyal army, after having the senate try to take him down a peg.
- whakim 5y ago
  The major link in the chain that you're missing here is the breakdown in the elaborate series of checks-and-balances that underpinned the Roman Republic. For most of the Republic, the army consisted of a citizen militia commanded by military leaders whose terms measured months at most, not years. Even if they possessed "extraordinary leadership and military command talents," generals never spent years in the field with their soldiers. As Rome got bigger and wars became further-flung, you begin to see people in charge of armies for much longer which allowed them to build up the ironclad loyalty required to lead an army against Rome. Scipio Africanus is an early example, but this sort of thing became much, much more common in the late Republic.
  - AmericanChopper 5y ago
    I wholeheartedly disagree that those checks and balances actually did underpin the republic in any way. The senate always attempted the keep them in place, but always abandoned them in a crisis. The first Punic war was won by a dictator of Rome. The only thing that changed over time was the scale of the crises that Rome got itself into. Those checks and balances were simply not needed during peaceful times, and consistently failed any time they were tested during conflict. It’s like how people say Athens never had the position of “dictator”, yet for every significant crisis Athens got into, it found itself ruled by a dictator.
billfruit 5y ago
"The Roman Revolution" by Ronald Syme seems to have a good reputation, how does it compre with this. https://www.amazon.com/Roman-Revolution-Oxford-Paperbacks-No https://www.amazon.com/Roman-Revolution-Oxford-Paperbacks-No... (Also posted as a top level comment.)
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
>and so ambitious people started looking inward to gain power instead of outward. This led to a lot of political division and slow erosion of political norms. On the other hand the narrative that America is going the way of Rome has been an ongoing thing since at least the 1950s, in different decades the thing that the person crafting the narrative felt was really bad became the cause of Rome's fall. I suppose it is a favorite to write about because Rome was a Republic once, and America is a Republic, and Rome fell and it was a big, big deal. So people can get really worked up over this idea. Many of the 'causes' of the coming downfall have been bad morals in one way or another; narrative is that Rome fell because of its weakening moral fiber, so in the '50s this weakening was caused by miscegenation, in the 60s debauchery and emasculation of the younger generations, 70s the same and maybe just being tired out by the discipline required for maintaining empire, 80s homosexuality, I think 90s was emasculation of younger generations again although I think there was still quite a bit of gay panic then too. So nowadays hmm, "ambitious people started looking inward to gain power instead of outward" oh yeah, putting personal ambition ahead of social duty, that's a recurring one, I think it was a common complaint in the 50s as well. I mean I sure do think things are not that great, but not sure if I buy that there are any more actually relevant similarities between the fall of Rome and U.S than there are between the Kennedy and Lincoln assassinations.

by jdlyga 5y ago

ceeplusplus 5y ago

Ray Dalio seems to think the opposite: that the US is in the falling Empire stages (think 3rd-4th century AD) where there is a lot of internal strife and the economy is stumbling. A new enemy is rising to challenge the existing superpower and the will to expand and fight is no longer there (Germanic tribes and the Sassanids for Rome, China for the US). I think peak US ala the Roman Republic would've either been right after WW2 or right after the USSR fell (Gulf War era basically).

burlesona 5y ago
That's a popular take, but I don't know how much it holds water. What really does seem to be the sad, sad reality is that America needs external enemies or else it feeds on itself. Since the fall of the USSR politics have gotten steadily nastier, but all the sudden people are finding lots of common ground in solitary against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But will that solidarity last more than a few news cycles?
- pfraze 5y ago
  We have a little bit of a self-vision problem. Historically, America focused on conquering new frontiers: manifest destiny (with all the nastiness that includes), industrialization, the space race, computing. It's not really clear what the next national frontier will be, and a lot of the domestic politics are anchored more around the allocation of resources from past frontiers rather than the establishment of a new frontier. This is all orthogonal to external enemies like the USSR, which I just see as a relatively generic phenomenon; countries frequently unify around external enemies, and you're probably right that the current situation with the USSR won't have a very long-lasting effect.
  - thehappypm 5y ago
    Wow. I hope we can galvanize around something that is a real enemy (climate change, disease) rather than made-up stuff.
    - seanw444 5y ago
      Wouldn't that be nice. Unfortunately we've got politicians with pockets to line. Progress would be antithetical!
- drewcoo 5y ago
  After the cold war ended we had Iraq. And then the war on terror. War makes money. I hear people say that our response to 9/11 shows that the terrorists won. I think actually bin Laden did a huge favor to the military industrial complex - they won.
- socksset 5y ago
  Dalio said without reservation or probability that at the start of COVID we were in a global depression. Oops, 100% wrong but no one cares. IMO the entire narrative that Americans are so divided is largely an illusion. People are highly divided over wedge issues in online arguments. If you turn off the internet, the phone and FOX/CNN/MSNBC people are pretty much the same. Sporting events are a good example of reality. If the media narratives were true getting a 100k people in a sports stadium would result in utter chaos. We are certainly not as divided as in the 60s. That is so apparent if you read any history from that time. Actually, if we suffer from anything it is exactly represented by Dalio. Conflating extreme wealth accumulation with extreme intelligence and wisdom. The ideas of billionaires are given far too much weight. Not based on the ideas themselves but on the size of their net worth. IMO if Feynman or Einstein were alive today no one would listen to them, "If you are so smart why don't you have a billion dollars???"
pfraze 5y ago
I remember reading this theory a bit ago and I thought it was one of the more compelling observations. It depends on whether you're focusing on foreign or domestic politics, because both fit in various ways. When the republic fell to an empire, it was due more to domestic issues: the agrarian middle class was displaced by slave labor and mostly forced into professional military careers, and the very rich infought into conquering the state. The the empire fell (at least, the Western empire) it was foreign issues: the central state was over-extended and unable to hold the full Pax Romana territory any longer. The useful lesson from the "falling Empire stages" is to gracefully cede influence without entering into counterproductive wars with new rising powers, as you mention with China.

_8j50 5y ago

USSR fell in 1989, the climate in the US is a post-iraq thing and China is fiercely rivaling and competing against the US in all fronts. Even America's reaction to Russia bs Ukraine is tailored to send a message to China. The Xenophobia in America is a walk in the park compared to any European country. Still the best place for immigrants. Income inequality is bad but povery has improved a lot and so has crime compared to previous decades. I mean, the great depression was literally before WW2 which is obviously a worse time than now (ask any black person or non-european immigrant how unequal or xenophobic America was back then!) after which there was a great economic boom. Perhaps the past is easier to measure than the present? A lot of the political norm that is being erased now is for 20th century norms. I would say Andrew Jackson shooting people on the whitehouse lawn was a norm. Congress attending Church every sunday at the Capitol was also a norm and it was erased. I think a lot of people correlate without articulating causation to sound smart.

HWR_14 5y ago
When do you think America's political divisions got so tribal? I couldn't tell.
- thehappypm 5y ago
  Facebook launched its news feed feature in 2006, and set the stage for a generation of doomscrollers.
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    So, you don't think there was tribalism pre-2006? I'm just curious, do you remember that time? Was it much better then? I ask because it seems like we have mostly the same politicians (McConnell, Pelosi, Biden, even Trump ran as an independent) as we did then.
    - irrational 5y ago
      I remember pre-2006. I was in my mid-30s by then. I don’t recall much open animosity between Republicans and Democrats. Certainly nothing like today. There was a lot of coming together post 9/11. I do think social media was the main instigator of the country falling into open tribalism.

AmericanChopper 5y ago

The Republic didn’t fall because it ran out of enemies. It fell because the centre of Roman power was incredibly disconnected from the source of Roman power. The source of Rome’s power came from a small number of people who had extraordinary leadership and military command talents, who were able to win the victories required to expand Roman territory beyond the top half of the Italian peninsula. Yet the senate, responsible for wielding the power won by these generals, were just a bunch of aristocrats and demagogues, who routinely saw Rome’s most competent generals as their greatest threat. This tension exists for the entire republic era, and you could just as easily predict that Romans would have to start “looking inwards for power” after the Pyrrhic War. The senate had a well established history of turning against its greatest generals by Caesar’s time. You mention the defeat of Carthage, but who defeated Carthage, and what happened to them afterwards? Scipio Africanus did at the Battle of Zama, and he was promptly exiled from Rome afterwards by his political rivals (and was lucky to avoid execution really). It is absolutely no surprise that the Roman republic eventually fell to an extremely competent general leading an extremely loyal army, after having the senate try to take him down a peg.

whakim 5y ago
The major link in the chain that you're missing here is the breakdown in the elaborate series of checks-and-balances that underpinned the Roman Republic. For most of the Republic, the army consisted of a citizen militia commanded by military leaders whose terms measured months at most, not years. Even if they possessed "extraordinary leadership and military command talents," generals never spent years in the field with their soldiers. As Rome got bigger and wars became further-flung, you begin to see people in charge of armies for much longer which allowed them to build up the ironclad loyalty required to lead an army against Rome. Scipio Africanus is an early example, but this sort of thing became much, much more common in the late Republic.
- AmericanChopper 5y ago
  I wholeheartedly disagree that those checks and balances actually did underpin the republic in any way. The senate always attempted the keep them in place, but always abandoned them in a crisis. The first Punic war was won by a dictator of Rome. The only thing that changed over time was the scale of the crises that Rome got itself into. Those checks and balances were simply not needed during peaceful times, and consistently failed any time they were tested during conflict. It’s like how people say Athens never had the position of “dictator”, yet for every significant crisis Athens got into, it found itself ruled by a dictator.

billfruit 5y ago

"The Roman Revolution" by Ronald Syme seems to have a good reputation, how does it compre with this. https://www.amazon.com/Roman-Revolution-Oxford-Paperbacks-No https://www.amazon.com/Roman-Revolution-Oxford-Paperbacks-No... (Also posted as a top level comment.)

bryanrasmussen 5y ago

>and so ambitious people started looking inward to gain power instead of outward. This led to a lot of political division and slow erosion of political norms. On the other hand the narrative that America is going the way of Rome has been an ongoing thing since at least the 1950s, in different decades the thing that the person crafting the narrative felt was really bad became the cause of Rome's fall. I suppose it is a favorite to write about because Rome was a Republic once, and America is a Republic, and Rome fell and it was a big, big deal. So people can get really worked up over this idea. Many of the 'causes' of the coming downfall have been bad morals in one way or another; narrative is that Rome fell because of its weakening moral fiber, so in the '50s this weakening was caused by miscegenation, in the 60s debauchery and emasculation of the younger generations, 70s the same and maybe just being tired out by the discipline required for maintaining empire, 80s homosexuality, I think 90s was emasculation of younger generations again although I think there was still quite a bit of gay panic then too. So nowadays hmm, "ambitious people started looking inward to gain power instead of outward" oh yeah, putting personal ambition ahead of social duty, that's a recurring one, I think it was a common complaint in the 50s as well. I mean I sure do think things are not that great, but not sure if I buy that there are any more actually relevant similarities between the fall of Rome and U.S than there are between the Kennedy and Lincoln assassinations.