91–100 of 208 posts
One thing I really got out of the History of Rome podcast by Mike Duncan is if anyone tells you there was ONE cause of the fall of Rome, they're full of crap.
But wether the effect is significant enough, I am not qualified to judge.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Based on Canadian Prices, a working guy would spend. And not even going very far from home. Gas $100 Beer $50 Cigs $15 Ontario Park Campsite $59/night x 2 = $120 Firewood 2 x $15 = $30 Some basic sausages and food = $50 Total $375 Min Wage $15/hour. Hours of work = 25 hours Actually it would take more than 25 hours, because most likely that person does not live with Grandma and has shelter / food expenses. So might n…
Ontario Park Campsite $59/night x 2 = $120 i have been to places where hotels are cheaper than that.
State park "primitive" campsite here is $15 max. That's still in the official campground area. If you hike into a state or national forest, it's free.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s actually a really interesting metric. Cost of living has really shot up in Canada while wages have stagnated. Everyone knows that housing has increased dramatically. This leads to less disposable income obviously. I’m 40 and grew up in Edmonton. Once or twice a year, as a kid and into my late 20s, my family and and/or I did a hotel type vacation in Banff or Jasper once a year, which seemed expensive at the tim…
I’ll take the devil’s position: Your are not owed by nature a footprint on the ground, or a weekend camping. Manille (Manila? Capital of Philippines) has 43079 inhabitants per square kilometer (23sqm per person, including agriculture), China tries to do the same. The key is nature doesn’t owe you democracy, and governments neither. We can store many people vertically if we remove their personality. What I mean is pov…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's very reasonable. But there was a slow collapse of the economy that is an intermediate cause in the chain of events that is central to the fall. You can speculate what caused that collapse, that in turn caused the fall and there are also many causes to consider, but again, there is one intermediate cause that is Christianism. The religion altered several aspects of the economy: slavery, commerce and lending. No…
The eastern half of the empire was just as Christian and didn’t collapse for another thousand years, so you can’t really point to Christianity as the cause. I don’t know why people obsess over finding a cause for the fall of Rome when it was one of the world’s longest lasting empires. We should be more interested in how it endured for over a millennia (nearly two thousand years if you count the Republic) whereas most…
When Rome invaded the hellenistic region, there was already an established economy that relied a lot less on big domains worked by slaves and that region managed to keep it that way. Thus when the slave mode of production came to a dead end, it was the part of the empire that relied massively on it that collapsed.
Another interesting point was that the adoption of Christianity made the elite even bigger with the whole Church apparatus now living the life and putting even more pressure on the system.
I wish I would find the sources again.
Here is a counter-point[1] which finds high levels of lead toxicity in regular citizens. While this article seems to mostly be reasoning based on a literature review, the counterpoint uses analysis of roman skeletons. [1]: https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/londinium-romans-blood-l...
The issue also isn't just "did they have high lead levels?". The Roman empire around, with its lead pipes, for a long time. Why after hundreds of years would the lead of resulted in the downfall of Rome when Rome had flourished under the same lead-filled conditions previously?
One thing I really got out of the History of Rome podcast by Mike Duncan is if anyone tells you there was ONE cause of the fall of Rome, they're full of crap.
And if you really want to boil it down to a single reason, the best candidate would be "becoming militarily dependent on hired mercenaries and then not paying them" rather than something more interesting
So often any of these single causal theories forget to look at timespan. Which was either decades or centuries... If system survived previously with mostly same things in place there is really no reason why such thing as lead pipes would be the cause of downfall part. By any reasonable conclusion the culprit in such case should be some disruptive innovation. In the end gradual natural degradation of system is much mo…
It is very unlikely that the lead pipes that were there since the beginning would be such a cause, but the duration of the fall alone is not enough evidence that it wasn't caused by an immediate problem.
One thing I really got out of the History of Rome podcast by Mike Duncan is if anyone tells you there was ONE cause of the fall of Rome, they're full of crap.
And if you really want to boil it down to a single reason, the best candidate would be "becoming militarily dependent on hired mercenaries and then not paying them" rather than something more interesting
One thing I really got out of the History of Rome podcast by Mike Duncan is if anyone tells you there was ONE cause of the fall of Rome, they're full of crap.
And if you really want to boil it down to a single reason, the best candidate would be "becoming militarily dependent on hired mercenaries and then not paying them" rather than something more interesting
Instead of drafting these poeple into the empire, Rome recruited foreigners for the army, while the productivity of the domestic population kept going down. Eventually the state, needing to pay both the welfare receipients and the army, ran out of economic capacity to provide for both groups. Stopping the dole was if possible more dangerous short term than not paying the provicial armies, since the proletariat in Rome/Constantinople could riot instantly, and overthrow any emperor.
So often any of these single causal theories forget to look at timespan. Which was either decades or centuries... If system survived previously with mostly same things in place there is really no reason why such thing as lead pipes would be the cause of downfall part. By any reasonable conclusion the culprit in such case should be some disruptive innovation. In the end gradual natural degradation of system is much mo…