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Studying the demise of historic civilisations

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Re: Studying the demise of historic civilisations

#141

Post by Gibbon1 »

riffraff wrote: post #73
discodave wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember that the bulk of the worlds population doesn't live in the Anglosphere, or Europe. E.g. if you're from the Middle East, or Africa then you might know a thing or two about revolution, if not war itself. Additionally, the US has now been engaged in Afghanistan longer than they were in Vietnam. There's a whole generation of Americans who know all about war. In the US, the generation who served in Afghanistan an…

also, right at the border of continental Europe we had that "russia just annexed a part of ucraine" a couple years ago. Have people already forgotten that?

That felt to me like the US neocons thought their cunning plan[1] would separate Russia from the Sevastopol Naval Base. That backfired bigly. Me I can't think is any Russian Government that would tolerate that.

[1] With the utterly incompetent Sen Clinton running the State Department no less.

Re: Studying the demise of historic civilisations

#142

Post by dang »

titanix2 wrote: post #16

The full article is here: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190218-are-we-on-the-road-... 'Interestingly' the first two listed factors are ecology related, and the biggest thread to the European civilization is not explicitly stated.

Ok, we've changed the URL to that from http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190218-the-lifespans-of-an.... Thanks!

Re: Studying the demise of historic civilisations

#143

Post by mnm1 »

stcredzero wrote: post #120
mnm1 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words, anyone could build a prosperous society on the back of slaves if they have some natural resources to exploit. It's not even a great feat or accomplishment. The legacy of that is still what drives a lot of the economy in the US even today.

In other words, anyone could build a prosperous society on the back of slaves if they have some natural resources to exploit. But that ceases to be competitive past a certain level of technology and value-add. Even slaves in the American South got paid extra for work requiring exceptional skill and attention to detail. It turns out you can't whip people into producing quality past a very basic level. The legacy of th…

Are you saying that black people aren't suffering today due to slavery and Jim Crow? How do you explain that the median white household wealth is sixteen times that of black households? Or is that a leftist conspiracy also? https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2015/03/26/the-racial...

Re: Studying the demise of historic civilisations

#144

Post by usrusr »

discodave wrote: post #48
adrianN wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we're past the age of physical conquering. It's been less than a hundred years since the last World War. That's not particularly long, historically speaking. The pattern seems to be that a new major war starts not long after the eyewitnesses of the last one have all died. If that holds true, the next few decades or so will be interesting.

Remember that the bulk of the worlds population doesn't live in the Anglosphere, or Europe. E.g. if you're from the Middle East, or Africa then you might know a thing or two about revolution, if not war itself. Additionally, the US has now been engaged in Afghanistan longer than they were in Vietnam. There's a whole generation of Americans who know all about war. In the US, the generation who served in Afghanistan an…

> Additionally, the US has now been engaged in Afghanistan longer than they were in Vietnam. There's a whole generation of Americans who know all about war.

During the Vietnam war, the US still had the draft. The numbers deployed to Afghanistan are insignificant compared to Vietnam. There's a tiny fraction of a generation in the US who know all about war.

Re: Studying the demise of historic civilisations

#145

Post by mnm1 »

kolinko wrote: post #133
mnm1 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be anti your family while being pro 10, 100, or even 10,000 other families, depending on the wealth amassed. That sounds incredibly pro-civilization and pro-society.

Forbidding people from passing on wealth (or anything else) to their children seems inhumane - and wealthy people are still people with emotions and feelings. Personally, I would sooner accept 90% tax to the rich&living, than 100% tax upon death. Both are theoretical of course - there is no way to enforce them really without hurting overall society. There is also no need I think. A better solution is to make sure tha…

To be practical, I would allow some transfer of wealth actually but put a marginal tax rate of 100% over say 5 to 10 million, gradually increasing from say 0% at 250k. That seems like a fair compromise. Sure, guaranteeing basic living conditions would be nice, but as we can clearly see right now, there isn't much support for it. This tax would provide plenty of money to get to that goal, however.

Re: Studying the demise of historic civilisations

#146

Post by magpi3 »

wallace_f wrote: post #74
pjc50 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Washington was a slave owner. Tyranny, but only for some people.

I think this is misleading. I think when tossing out the credence of people such as Wadhington or Jefferson with the slavery problem, there is very little context understood about the cultural norms, science and religion those people lived in. The problem was that they did not see other races as people as they saw themselves. They saw their lives and societies and thought of them as savages. They further justified th…

Slaves were not slaves because whites were trying to save them from themselves. They were slaves because they provided cheap labor. Any other argument is just a rationalization, a story for slave owners to tell themselves to make themselves feel better.

Both Washington and Jefferson owned plantations that profited from slave labor. Your comparison with the modern liberal should try to take that fact into account.

Re: Studying the demise of historic civilisations

#147

Post by remarkEon »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #101
remarkEon wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sure you’re a reasonable person and could come up with a reasonable tax rate on generational wealth, but I have zero faith that we will elect reasonable people to make these sorts of decisions.

So what you're saying is that the cure will be worse than disease? If that's so, then I guess we agree there's a somewhat concavey-looking function of "limiting generational wealth transfer" -> "sustainable benefit to civilization". Which shifts the problem from "whether to do it at all" to "how to move towards maximum without screwing up". It's a harder problem, but civilization is essentially built of attempts to s…

>It's a harder problem, but civilization is essentially built of attempts to solve such problem.

I fundamentally, emphatically disagree with this. I think it's a weird rewriting of history to think that "Civilization was built by trying to stop wealth transfers within powerful families".

Do I think a lot of wealth is trapped within a few families, and that might be a problem? Sure. Do I think that the ability to destroy generational wealth transfers is what made Civilization? No, and I think it's absolutely crazy to think so. It ignores every great family in history that did everything from win wars to build railroads.

Re: Studying the demise of historic civilisations

#148

Post by nitwit005 »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #81
nitwit005 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did you know that after the Ottoman Empire conquered Constantinople, Sultan Mehmed viewed himself as the successor of the Roman Empire and declared himself "Caesar of Rome"? I was previously curious how many countries declared themselves to be the heirs of the Roman empire, and I found there is something of a wikipedia list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Rome

putting the EU in that list is fishy and a reminder that Wikipedia is not a reliable source, especially for evaluating contemporary information.

I'm sure everyone will be shocked to hear such things of an article that begins with a highlighted "The neutrality of this article is disputed.".

Re: Studying the demise of historic civilisations

#149

Post by prevedmedved »

hungryhobo wrote: post #46
dak1 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The script has changed considerably over time between different dynasties, and different areas have had mutually unintelligible languages, even if sharing similar script. For example: Japan shares many characters with Chinese, and Korean and Vietnamese both used to use Chinese characters, but they are all separate languages. Similarly, numerous "dialects" in China are less mutually intelligible than many different We…

honestly this is just not?true. the Chinese script have evolved, but one can still look at inscriptions from thousands of years ago and understand it. it might be hard for people to understand different dialects in China but they all use the same writing system, standardized in the Qin dynasty. Same with the borrowed Chinese characters in Japanese and Korean. A native Chinese speaker would have little problem reading…

Are you seriously claiming that you can understand seal script inscriptions?

Are you Indiana Jones?

Re: Studying the demise of historic civilisations

#150

Post by prevedmedved »

jlktrl wrote: post #64
jcranmer wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it true to say that China is the longest surviving civilization? Not really. The Chinese tend to emphasize viewing their history through a lens of continuity and a single notional empire whereas the Western history tends to view their history as discontinuous and fractured empires. But when you start comparing the actual effects of these empires and their rises and falls, they are actually much more similar. For…

The comparison of the Roman Empire and the Chinese civilization is very flawed. First of all, Rome did not unite neighboring groups in Italy as a culture, never mind Europe. The lands and tribes they conquered simply used Latin for trade and as a lingua franca. It never became the mother tongue for any of those people. In China, for thousands of years, you have people from every province celebrating many of the same…

> First of all, Rome did not unite neighboring groups in Italy as a culture

This is simply false. Please learn about the pre-Roman history of Italy.

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