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Following In Ancient Rome's Footsteps: Moral Decay, Rising Wealth Inequality
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
If you want to understand why Rome declined, look no further than the moral decay of ruling Elites.
There are many reasons why Imperial Rome declined, but two primary causes that get relatively little attention are moral decay and soaring wealth inequality. The two are of course intimately connected: once the morals of the ruling Elites degrade, what's mine is mine and what's yours is mine, too.
I've previously covered two other key characteristics of an empire in terminal decline: complacency and intellectual sclerosis, what I have termed a failure of imagination.
Michael Grant described these causes of decline in his excellent account The Fall of the Roman Empire, a short book I have been recommending since 2009:
There was no room at all, in these ways of thinking, for the novel, apocalyptic situation which had now arisen, a situation which needed solutions as radical as itself. (The Status Quo) attitude is a complacent acceptance of things as they are, without a single new idea.
This acceptance was accompanied by greatly excessive optimism about the present and future. Even when the end was only sixty years away, and the Empire was already crumbling fast, Rutilius continued to address the spirit of Rome with the same supreme assurance.
This blind adherence to the ideas of the past ranks high among the principal causes of the downfall of Rome. If you were sufficiently lulled by these traditional fictions, there was no call to take any practical first-aid measures at all.
A lengthier book by Adrian Goldsworthy How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower addresses the same issues from a slightly different perspective.
Glenn Stehle, commenting on 9/16/15 on a thread in the excellent website peakoilbarrel.com (operated by the estimable Ron Patterson) made a number of excellent points that I am taking the liberty of excerpting: (with thanks to correspondent Paul S.)
The set of values developed by the early Romans called mos maiorum, Peter Turchin explains in War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires, was gradually replaced by one of personal greed and pursuit of self-interest.
“Probably the most important value was virtus (virtue), which derived from the word vir (man) and embodied all the qualities of a true man as a member of society,” explains Turchin.
“Virtus included the ability to distinguish between good and evil and to act in ways that promoted good, and especially the common good. Unlike Greeks, Romans did not stress individual prowess, as exhibited by Homeric heroes or Olympic champions. The ideal of hero was one whose courage, wisdom, and self-sacrifice saved his country in time of peril,” Turchin adds.
And as Turchin goes on to explain:
"Unlike the selfish elites of the later periods, the aristocracy of the early Republic did not spare its blood or treasure in the service of the common interest. When 50,000 Romans, a staggering one fifth of Rome’s total manpower, perished in the battle of Cannae, as mentioned previously, the senate lost almost one third of its membership. This suggests that the senatorial aristocracy was more likely to be killed in wars than the average citizen….
The wealthy classes were also the first to volunteer extra taxes when they were needed… A graduated scale was used in which the senators paid the most, followed by the knights, and then other citizens. In addition, officers and centurions (but not common soldiers!) served without pay, saving the state 20 percent of the legion’s payroll….
The richest 1 percent of the Romans during the early Republic was only 10 to 20 times as wealthy as an average Roman citizen."
Now compare that to the situation in Late Antiquity when
"an average Roman noble of senatorial class had property valued in the neighborhood of 20,000 Roman pounds of gold. There was no “middle class” comparable to the small landholders of the third century B.C.; the huge majority of the population was made up of landless peasants working land that belonged to nobles. These peasants had hardly any property at all, but if we estimate it (very generously) at one tenth of a pound of gold, the wealth differential would be 200,000! Inequality grew both as a result of the rich getting richer (late imperial senators were 100 times wealthier than their Republican predecessors) and those of the middling wealth becoming poor."
Do you see any similarities with the present-day realities depicted in these charts?
And how many congresspeople served in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan?
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Hail Caesar!
Moral decay? Bruce Jenner is helping us straighten all of that out.
There is a valid point to all of this, though. As more people feel that they "deserve" to not work and be supported by other people (moral/work ethic decay) via income confiscation and transfer by government, income equality will have to increase. The best possible way to reduce income inequality is to get government out of the mix and allow a free market, capitalist, economy function. Work harder/smarter = more income.
You expect ppl to buy into this? We're screwed at this point. A large part of the population accepts Bernies Sanders, a Socialist, as a viable candidate despite the lovely outcomes of Russia, China, North Korea, and rapidly many countries in Europe. If you disagree you are shouted down. The Left doesn't care about facts at this point and the right has now become the middle. It's all about the madness mantra, "Capitalism is bad, Socialism should not be a dirty word, one puhsent, one puhsent, one puhsent."
They're so crazy they think that the rich are at fault for an exploitable tax system so they vote for more government, or they vote for the Social Justice platforms and ignore the effects of the other policies.
That is a pretty clear technical wedgie pattern ... so either the rich break to the upside or the poor break to the downside ...
Regards,
Cooter
Well.. here we are.. only thing left to honor our destiny is
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1Mk7idVfcA
The problem is we are and have been socialist since we created a peacetime professional military. We also have been socialist since we started subsidizing big business. We are socialist right now! Just the fascist kind that gives all private gains to top 0.01% and socializes their losses.
For the record I believe in regulated capitalism and a well run Republic. But I can't stand the hypocrisy of only abhoring socialism that benefits the common person and being just fine with socialism for the rich which exists RIGHT NOW. Bank bailouts anyone? Corporate welfare? Unassailable ever expanding MIC budgets?!?!
It began in 1947 with the founding of the CIA, escalated with presidential coup of 1963 and has just been continuing along since then. People protested Vietnam in 1968. Did we get out? World-wide protests before Bush invaded Iraq. Did it matter? Socialism has been a big distraction to keep people docile while the elite consolidated power and corrupted every institution from the think tanks in Washington to the congress, to the supreme court. They're smarter than the average bear. They come out of Yale, and Harvard, and Princeton, with an imprimateur of credibility stamped on their foreheads, and the join the club. Do you think the fellow at the CIA who came up with the idea of Conspiracy Theory in 1968 had a 100 IQ? Or that Allen Dulles, who orchestrated the Warren Commission report as a lead member, who was fired by Kennedy in 1962, was performing a public service?
These assholes will not relinquish power because they were accused of corruption and brought to court. They own the judges, they'll have you assassinated while they're drinking expensive burgundy and a center cut Filet Mignon, before they go fuck their mistress. You're gonna need a bigger set of balls...
Dulles bros were lawyers for the Nazis before Paperclip ensconced them in the CIA. I mean you need to look into Averill and Bunny Harriman, the Rockefellers, Union Banking Corp and Brown Brothers Harriman along with Herbert Walker marrying his daughter to Prescott Bush.
The seeds of 47 were planted in the Reconstruction and those go back to Rothschild in 1776 if you believe as I do that JP Morgan and John D Rockefeller got help and/or were front men for them. The Reconstruction era is so rarely discussed much like the first and second Bank of the United States.
Funny how many of the presidents who were on the wrong side of an assassins gun actively opposed central banking and are now honored on our money (Jefferson, Lincoln, Kennedy). I'm well aware of the subtle histories. Some would take it much further back to Uruk and Ur tracing it from renaissance banking to the Knights Templar's letters of credit. I just call it the dark side of humanity. Turns out I'm a gentleman and a scholar. Well maybe not a gentleman. ;-)
You are a scholar, sir. Well said. Let's just hope the truth will somehow set us free
Cheers. Clearly you are too. I disagree about the balls part. I have em. I'm also enough of a student of history to see where things are headed. The Empire is crumbling for all the reasons that the article mentions and many more. I believe there are good people everywhere including in the Deep State. It will collapse. Do we have the fortitude to forge a new republic from the ashes of the empire. That is the only question to me.
I believe we have wonderful men and women ready to take up the challenges. We also have great generations coming up. My nephews and niece are all awesome. My son is great and I'm doing my best to raise him right. I am fortunate enough to know a great many good people many of whom are parents. Believe it or not I feel the best is yet to come, but it is always blackest before the dawn as they say. I am very cynical about current world elites with few exceptions, I am however optimistic about humanity even though I'm a realist.
Humans always do their best work under pressure and rarely change without it. Lumps of coal might become diamonds if enough heat and pressure is brought to bear. Will we rise to the challenge? I don't know, but I will say I think that in a quiet way there are more good hearted folk now than is commonly believed around here.
No, there is no way they can keep it going, it has failed completely, we are just watching the slow-motion catastrophe.
Yes, they deserve all the blame, they believed in their own propaganda, their own wonderful analyses. That never works.
https://thinkpatriot.wordpress.com/2015/09/28/to-the-modelers-of-the-world/
Agreed, but I'm not advocating subsidies for any side. I say tear it all down and return to true free market capitalism.
I agree with that just order of operations. Elites first.
We could also name it 'trickle down moral decay'. The same decay displayed by the establishment, the elites, Hollywood et al, has now trickled down to the masses resulting in massive moral relativism. This has resulted in use of bad judgement, lack of self-discipline and apathy to name a few.
Want to see a sad commentary .. Check out these historically illiterate college students, racking up hopelessly unsustainable debt, for non existent jobs (listen to some of their useless majors) all the while remaining as dumb as a bag of rocks
http://safeshare.tv/w/oHbxeOtsOP
Moral decay of the ELITES, not the landless peasantry. It is the cleptocracy not willing to pay a living wage that has kept up with inflation for the past 40 years, union busting, dismantling of public education, letting infrastructure crumble and endless financial and war crimes that is the problem. What is not the problem but merely a symptom is some single mom forced to choose between a minimum wage job that puts her deeper in debt to the oligarchs or living in permanent poverty via welfare.
The entire point of the article is that the elites should be giving more back to society to set the tone of morality. They have the power they have the responsibility to set the moral tone. When the top 0.01% steal - in broad daylight - endless trillions, they can fuck right off with their moralizing of the lazy people locked into permanent poverty and so can you.
I would end welfare, drop in the bucket that it is, tomorrow *if TODAY* elites paid taxes at the rate I do (Warren Buffet pays less than his secretary) we rebuilt our infrastructure, brought our public schools back to 1950's standards, stopped domestic spying, shrank out millitary budget to a mere 100% of all other nations spending and ended corporate welfare. To want to cut more for the poor without addressing those problems FIRST is fantastically immoral and hypocritical.
Some of the Roman values CHS discussed where due to nationalism/patriotism - one example being Senators themselves going off to war. I've also read columns where it was shown that the past behavior of CEOs of some American-only corporations was often guided by what they felt was the best interests of their nation.
In these times of multinational corporations and instant worldwide communications, the only incentive is to make the most money wherever possible with absolutely no loyalty to any nation for anything other than its potential market. Since those multinational corporations effectively own the governments of "democratic" countries worldwide, such potentially self-sacrificing patriotic behavior is no longer to be found.
HAIL OBAMUS REX!
FORWARD SOVIET!
i know how to fix the problem: instead of slowly killing the 99%, lets kill the top 1% at once
You know, I was really looking forward to getting a sales push done and being able to hire a few more people to grow my business... but if this is the sentiment, I better not hire anyone.
Sorry didnt read, Im too busy watching the song "Banana Hymn of the Republic" ----
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSiVjlknuSw
Yep right on track!
Anyone that thinks the tip top will give up anything, one thin dime, is flat out wrong/crazy. The process will speed out now even faster.
So, who wants to be a trillionair will be the next TV "reality show".
Land of Commies and inequality !
Lol, Piketty is now vindicated by those who spat on him.
"Lol, Piketty is now vindicated by those who spat on him."
No, he isn't. Piketty blames capitalism, which is not the problem. Congress told FASB to allow banks to lie about the value of their assets. That is not capitalism. A central bank artificially manipulating interest rates, is not capitalism. The anti capitalist manipulation has resulted in great income inequality.
The 1929-32 crash, reduced income inequality, from its peak. During the New Deal, while it did not reach the 1929 peak, income inequality rose, under Roosevelt, until the market decline of 1937.
The irony is, the vast majority of people who like Piketty never actually read the entire book, in which the putative "thesis" become much less strong as he critiques his position. Neither did they fact-check what he wrote, but fortunately, there are a few people who have done this:
http://tomwoods.com/podcast/ep-318-piketty-taken-down-for-good/
Also, the Obowelmovement is left scratching their broke EBT ass.
Where be my hope&change.
You forgot Massive immigration from the German Barbarian tribes and constant infighting coupled with coup de tat. Heck the Praetorian Guard essentially held the post of Emperor up for sale and would kill the current ruler if he didn't pay them well enough.
Massive Immigration? Inflation? Infighting Power Struggles? Centralization of authority? Where have I heard that before?
Interestingly the speed of all things seems to have increaced, the Romans from the Republic to late Empire had around 300 years of total Power. The British Empire had prehaps 100 years of Power from the defeat of the French at Waterloo to the First World War.
The USA seem to have barely placed the crown on their heads with the end of the Cold War for it all to go totally up shit creek. And it is Obama who has thrown the paddle away.
Oddly enough a couple of the late Roman Emperors were Africian, did not help the Roman to build a better future, maybe their slogan was "Yes we can"as well
Technology is both a blessing a curse. Technology has caused these natural parts of human nature to accelerate. Caesar could only dream of such powers that are wielded with callus indifference by today's leaders.
…and no, Obama is not the source of America's or the world's ills. We are. Evil only has that power which we grant it. Until enough people have had enough and decide it is time to make a change in the system they have granted authority over them - nothing will ever change.
The right / left, liberal / conservative, immigrant / native, north / south, etc. dichotomy is just a way to keep us fighting each other and not going after they guys at the top pulling all the strings. …they are winning, for those keeping score.
"…and no, Obama is not the source of America's or the world's ills. We are. Evil only has that power which we grant it. Until enough people have had enough and decide it is time to make a change in the system they have granted authority over them - nothing will ever change."
An organized tax rebellion is where the rubber will meet the road. When enough people stop granting the authority, we find out which has more power: the police state they have put in place or the people arrayed against it. Too close to call at this point.
"An organized tax rebellion is where the rubber will meet the road."
That is when multi-nationals, JPM and Goldman Sachs will seize control and start droning the sheeple with impunity.
Be careful what you wish for.
I'm not wishing for it, as such. Just saying that all of us sitting here on the internet and bitching makes zero difference to those running this show. Until it affects their resource collection, they will ignore it. And taxes is how we are granting them authority.
edit to add: I have ignored the tremendous contribution we are making to our own enslavement by spending money at the mega-corporations. That is probably even the larger source of our loss of liberty, both through giving them time (working for them) and money (transacting with them). But people are capable of comprehending the injustice of taxes much more readily than they are of seeing the way the corporate monoliths are enslaving them. A tax rebellion is far more likely to actually occur.
I have thought about this problem is most of us are w2 slaves and we cant stop paying. One thought I did have that is completely legal would be for everyone to claim more deductions. Then anyone who is owed tax refund do it in Jan. Everyone that owes file an extension. Just wondering how much of a gap that could create.
Tax rebellion would make one an unprivileged belligerent. This is one reason why the terminology was changed from unlawful combatant.
Wait I missed that. When did the term change and to what? Link.
It is in the DoD Law of War manual.
http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2015/06/29/new-thousand-page-pentagon-war-m...
Changes in verbiage telegraph a change in agenda. It becomes a slippery slope where 'anything can go' with enough time and forgetting of what the original was.
Good catch, and excellent point.
"When you control the meaning of words, you control those who must use words to express meaning." - Phillip K. Dick
An "organized tax rebellion" has about the same probability as findinga two bedroom apartment in New York or SF for under $700 a month, Obama admitting he's a Muslim or the Cubs winning the World Series. Oh, wait...
Also corruption made it impossible for Rome to defend itself.
The elite got so rich that the where made commanders of armies after which they fired all the soldiers but kept collecting the wages of those soldiers and the public didn't know.
But when Rome was attacked and Rome called upon those armies to defend the city, it turned out they didn't even exist.
Now how is corruption in America on the warfront doing?
They're firing soldiers and going full robotics. Now what if there's a attack and the hack that shit and it all shuts down?
The war machine is still collecting more and more money but the armies of America are getting smaller and smaller for a decade already.
Give unto Ceasar what is Ceasar's !
Jail every QE beneficiary bank's CEO should return the Republic to a better place. Enforce Illegal immigation as well. The author left that out as a major variable in describing the Fall of Rome
The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through a nine stage sequence:
1 – From bondage to spiritual faith;
2 – from spiritual faith to great courage;
3 – from courage to liberty;
4 – from liberty to abundance;
5 – from abundance to selfishness;
6 – from selfishness to complacency;
7 – from complacence to apathy;
8 – from apathy to dependence;
9 – from dependency back again into bondage.
Right now the US is around #7. But consider that 50% of the entire population receives governemnt aid in some form!!! Talk about increasing dependence.
Governemnts and societies also fail when governemnts run out of money to fulfil their promises. (see Greece).
Looks to me that we're at 8+
or 9 is in the process of unfolding now
Trump will bring the US back to # 1 on your list. We are at 9 now.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but 'murica is at the beginning of stage 9.
Have a nice day,
Gaius
Using Plato’s 5 regimes I think transitioning from Democracy to Tyranny is pretty close.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato's_five_regimes
from link above
"The tyrannical man is the son of the democratic man. He is the worst form of man." ;)
Romans didn't have the NSA apparatus. Thats a game changer.
The lack of Lutherans in positions of authority in the USA is a leading contributor of the nation's decline.
Something is very wrong where a country of 48% protestants has a Supreme Court consisting of six Catholics and three Jews.
We just decay faster because we have the technology to do so.
The Eastern Empire lived on for many hundreds of years. Though Greek rather than Latin, it was in many ways Rome living on.
The Holy Roman Empire, of course, was neither holy, etc...
This is very debatable, of course, but in a simple sense I think you can trace Rome's decline as largely due to a leadership that initially, and for quite a long time, were nationalists {so to speak}, had certain shared values, religion, and in the provinces, were not particularly worse than the previous rulers - indeed roads, merchant towns, the rule of law, etc. were of some benefit.
It seems to me, for what very little that may be worth, that once upon a time the United States had politicians who, liars and crooks notwithstanding, had some sense of national pride and of responsibility to voters.
But the rise of lobbies, the consolidation of the news media, and the entrenchment of a ridiculous 2 party system have contributed to a system in which no honest person could stay honest, and the levers of power are pushed by people who could care less about "America" - as an idea, let alone its national interests.
Rome was able to divide itself into a coherent East and West.
The United States does not seem to have this capacity so the issue is, is there any way to get people to begin to reject Washington DC's power matrices and start anew?
I doubt it.
Johnny -.The power split east. Its part of the central bank model to have a new reserve currency every 80 years. Rotating chair based on general understanding GRC has increasingly corrupting influence. The danger is bait and switch in geopolitics. It can and probably will go very bad.
Its all human nature, it never changes. Its just hard for people to recognize. The problem with fiat currency is that greed insists on taking it all. Those in their positions become blind. Politicians pay people for doing nothing to keep the charade going. Circulation shuts down. Plato says that man has no use for paper currency, we currently see why, we are simply human and cant handle it. It really distorts.
As the Empire grew, so did the size of the government bureucracy and military serving it, and so did its cronies and insiders.
USA or Rome?
Its not just the elites. trying to find honest people in everyday life is a challenge. I live in northeast and burn wood in winter. Trying to get an honest cord of wood is very difficult. So many scammers. Either its light or not seasoned enough. i could come up with many more examples including frivolous law suits.
I started selling wood 10 years ago, and it's one of the worst businesses to be in. What dimensions should a cord have in your neck of the woods?
In the image of Rome, stratification prosperity, draining of wealth and morality from the culture and collapse into despair and disease, the Dark Ages I.
Certainly seems we were scheduled to have a realtime remake, 'Dark Ages II - Revenge of the Oligarchs'.
Do I see a fish in those charts? Could be Shemitah.
That's a good write-up Charles. Would have been icing on the cake if you had included the empire being overrun by the inflow of barbarian hordes.
The fall of nations always is a result of moral decay; in the case of the US and Israel; just read the progression in Romans 1:18-32. The manifestations we see, the carnal, is NOT the substance, but the shadow...the substance is in the things we do not see..matter of the inner-man.
The Roman social hierarchy - what bound that society together, or that of any other empire throughout history, has never existed in the USA.
In every organized society, the basis were a social contract: priests of a centralized state religion ruled over spiritual matters, the king/emperor/military caste protected society against invaders (or, in the cases of empires, conquered territories to expand in the name of their citizens), and the plebeians/merchants produced goods and made the money.
In the USA, there has never been a unifying State religion nor an elite warrior class. Its society has been entirely built by merchants. Only ONE class, and the lowest - the enriched plebes with their lowly self-serving pursuits. There has never been any social contract. From its inception, the US Congress has represented private interests and profits, never the citizens. The USA military has always been the US corporations's private army. It has always served private interests, never the citizens. There has never been any real State, only an extension of big business might and corporate interests, a travesty. Why do you think nearly ALL the US presidents were sons of billionaires?
The country was badly glued together by the often hypocritical social conformism induced by the various Protestant churches, but as soon as that was gone, the USA has been laid bare for all to see what lies at its core: unmitigated, unbound merchant greed. To paraphrase Poe's raven, only that and nothing more.
This is a country where a criminal like Al Capone is perceived like a fucking national hero, for heaven's sake. A fucking murderous mafioso scumbag admired just because he had made a fortune! If that doesn't tell you what this country really is, what will?
That's why it is going down the drain so fast. No real human values, nothing to stand firmly on. Just a society entirely built by Mammon, complete with idols (all of them symbols not of pride, decency, intelligence, artistry, imagination, noble behavior or human ideals, but solely of wealth, greed or money-making) and human sacrifices (the endless wars).