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> Eras like this one can be what kills an empire/great power. Is there actually any good analogue for this era that caused a previous empire or great power to
by jebarker 2mo ago
> Eras like this one can be what kills an empire/great power.
Is there actually any good analogue for this era that caused a previous empire or great power to collapse?
- ceejayoz 2mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_Western_Roman_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_Western_Roman_Empi... > The Roman Empire lost the strengths that had allowed it to exercise effective control over its Western provinces; modern historians posit factors including the effectiveness and numbers of the army (check), the health and numbers of the Roman population (check), the strength of the economy (check), the competence of the emperors (check), the internal struggles for power (check), the religious changes of the period (check), and the efficiency of the civil administration (check). Increasing pressure from invading peoples outside Roman culture (check) also contributed greatly to the collapse. Climatic changes (check) and both endemic and epidemic diseases (check) drove many of these immediate factors.
- A_D_E_P_T 2mo agoYou could look even earlier. There are a lot of similarities between Trump's style and Emperor Commodus's. And to paraphrase Cassius Dio, Commodus took an empire of gold and transformed it into one of iron and rust. Every time I hear people praise the stoic Emperor Marcus Aurelius I am reminded of the fact that he failed in his most important duty: To plan well for his succession.
- leereeves 2mo agoThe two worst Roman emperors ruled hundreds of years before the fall: Caligula from 37 to 41 CE, Nero from 54 to 68 CE. Not many people could name, or recognize the name of, any emperor from the last hundred years of the Western Roman Empire. So I don't think Rome is a good analogue for the suggestion that the Trump era is going to kill the USA.
- ceejayoz 2mo agoSure. We had Nixon. Most collapses start slow, and I tend to doubt this one is finished.
- Waterluvian 2mo agoI expect things to actually get better by some measures for a little while as the U.S. liquidates its holdings of international political and socioeconomic influence. A sort of short-lived glut from voluntary cannibalization.
- flossly 2mo agoThere a quite popular narrative saying JFK's murder was a coup, and the US is still couped to this day (voting does not truly matter: the dark budget agencies make the policies anyway, those votes into office simple have to follow suit).
- c7b 2mo agoThe decline of the Roman Empire, depending on how you define it, played out over centuries, if not a millennium. It is such a bad analogy for the kind of within-our-lifetimes collapse that is being speculated about here that it undermines the original concern. The decline of Germany as the leading scientific powerhouse in the first half if the 20th century would be a better case study imho.
- ceejayoz 2mo ago> The decline of the Roman Empire, depending on how you define it, played out over centuries, if not a millennium. Sure, and before COVID-19 pandemics often took years/decades to spread around the globe. Agriculture took thousands of years to develop; iPhones were invented twenty years ago. Things move faster in a world of eight billion people who can get anywhere on the planet in 24 hours.
- bryanlarsen 2mo agoSure, but it's also likely that some (but not all) historians will put the peak of the American Empire in the 1960's somewhere, perhaps onat the moon landing. Declines often start out slow and are often indistinguishable from random noise until well after the fact, and there will be rises and falls after the peak.
- senordevnyc 2mo agoit's also likely that some (but not all) historians will put the peak of the American Empire in the 1960's somewhere Based on what metric?
- jebarker 2mo agoThis is not convincing. Many of these are debatable when you actually pull apart what is meant then and now. But there’s also a long list of things that are different about the Roman Empire and US (and the world) today.
- ceejayoz 2mo ago> This is not convincing. Yeah, we heard that about climate change, too. We may be Cassandras, but that doesn't make us wrong.
- nozzlegear 2mo ago> Increasing pressure from invading peoples outside Roman culture (check) also contributed greatly to the collapse. Who is this supposed to be?
- datsci_est_2015 2mo agoI think the whole “empire collapsing” is a bit of a dramatized phrasing, though historians can correct me. I think it’s much more death by a thousand cuts, and the UK is a great analogue in that regard. Look at Brexit, for example. Or Black Wednesday, from which the US’s esteemed Treasury Secretary profited handsomely. The UK’s decline has taken centuries, though, and there are many events that one can point to. I think I agree with the grandparent’s comment about grandparents, about the arrogance of how things will continue to be a certain way.
- ceejayoz 2mo ago> I think the whole “empire collapsing” is a bit of a dramatized phrasing, though historians can correct me. I think it’s much more death by a thousand cuts, and the UK is a great analogue in that regard. Didn't the UK's empire notably collapse quite rapidly?
- datsci_est_2015 2mo agoDid the US? I would argue it’s been going on for 80 years, in tandem with the rise of the military industrial complex. Go back much further than that, though, and the argument starts leaking into whether the US was ever great to begin with (assuming “great” = “empire”, loosely). But the US was never really an empire in the traditional sense, no? More of a cultural hegemon / terrorist petrostate.
- ceejayoz 2mo ago> Did the US? I would argue it’s been going on for 80 years, in tandem with the rise of the military industrial complex. That's pretty fast, historically. > But the US was never really an empire in the traditional sense, no? Sure it was/is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_imperialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_imperialism
- datsci_est_2015 2mo agoNot to get weighed down in pedantry, but the Wikipedia article is “American imperialism”, not “the American empire”. Taking imperialist actions is a low bar for determining what is or what is not an empire. I wouldn’t call Yugoslavia an empire, as an example. Even the USSR is tough to call an empire, for some reason. Maybe because it collapsed so quickly. Now that I peruse a bit, I guess scholars use the term “imperial power” to get away from the colloquial baggage of the term “empire”.
- pjc50 2mo agoLast time we discussed US collapse I wrote about the Chinese empire: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49211339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49211339 I would also deploy Adam Smith's "there is a lot of ruin in a nation". The US can withstand a few bad years provided it corrects.