Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed

friedkielbasa.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 62 posts

Re: Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed

#21

Post by chadgpt3 »

skybrian wrote: post #10
mentalgear wrote: post #2

One of the engines of collapse of Rome was the corrupt financial elite extending to the government that designed rules to extract maximum wealth for the elites, ignoring the long-term health of the economy. By the end, the government was essentially squeezing a dry sponge. Seems like civilisation has learned nothing.

In ancient times, wealth was based on controlling farmland and extracting food from peasants. Modern economies don’t work like that, so what you can learn from historical analogies is limited.

They're still based on controlling shares and extracting profits from workers. Very similar.

Re: Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed

#22

Post by CoastalCoder »

theoeirjfb wrote: post #18

I do not get the obsession with fall of Rome being a bad thing. Look at taxation, look at big part of population being in slavery. Their military machine, roads and civilisation was basically just to crash rebelions! Today we have taxation around 30 to 70 percent. Imagine if taxes would be at 10% and we would not have to sponsor all sort of "adventures".

That's an interesting point and worth discussing.

I'm not sure why you got down voted. Maybe people are perceiving some subtext that I'm not.

Re: Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed

#23

Post by Gimpei »

To be pedantic, the Roman Empire did not fall in 472. It lived on in the eastern Mediterranean for another one thousand years. The Eastern Romans even took back a fair amount of western Roman holdings for a bit. The people who actually killed the Roman Empire were the Franks, permanently weakening it during the Latin occupation.

Re: Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed

#24

Post by dotancohen »

Planktonne wrote: post #9
comrade1234 wrote: post #6

I've always liked stories about the post-Roman empire when you still had evidence of a richer and more civilized time that your ancestors lived in but you were stuck in your time. I know it's probably fiction, but I always got that fix from King Arthur stories. It took a couple of hundred years after that before Charlemagne and law and civilization again.

If you haven't yet read The Eagle of the Ninth and its sequels, you might really like them. They're set in Britain that is slowly going post-Roman, and the change in culture is a significant theme.

Was that the book that opens with a child running barefoot, and later playing an instrument to entertain guests against his desires? I began reading that book four decades ago and have been unable to find it since.

Re: Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed

#25

Post by thomassmith65 »

Gimpei wrote: post #23

To be pedantic, the Roman Empire did not fall in 472. It lived on in the eastern Mediterranean for another one thousand years. The Eastern Romans even took back a fair amount of western Roman holdings for a bit. The people who actually killed the Roman Empire were the Franks, permanently weakening it during the Latin occupation.

The Catholic church is an institution of the Roman Empire, and it's still around. That puts things in perspective, I find, and makes me wonder if 100 thousand years from now, historians will just lump the Romans and us into the same bucket.

Re: Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed

#26

Post by mjhay »

Ironically enough, the thing that really did Roman Italy it was Justinian’s reconquest. The Gothic War was absolutely devastating. Yersinia pestis didn’t help either, of course.

Re: Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed

#27

Post by riffraff »

theoeirjfb wrote: post #18

I do not get the obsession with fall of Rome being a bad thing. Look at taxation, look at big part of population being in slavery. Their military machine, roads and civilisation was basically just to crash rebelions! Today we have taxation around 30 to 70 percent. Imagine if taxes would be at 10% and we would not have to sponsor all sort of "adventures".

taxes were very low for the majority of civilization and war was way more prevalent than it is today.

Re: Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed

#28

Post by hyperman1 »

thomassmith65 wrote: post #25
Gimpei wrote: post #23

To be pedantic, the Roman Empire did not fall in 472. It lived on in the eastern Mediterranean for another one thousand years. The Eastern Romans even took back a fair amount of western Roman holdings for a bit. The people who actually killed the Roman Empire were the Franks, permanently weakening it during the Latin occupation.

The Catholic church is an institution of the Roman Empire, and it's still around. That puts things in perspective, I find, and makes me wonder if 100 thousand years from now, historians will just lump the Romans and us into the same bucket.

I've always thought of the USA as the east Roman Empire of the British Empire. The seat of the throne moved to the white house, but the USA is still culturally close to the UK. Except for the religion, which seems to come from The Netherlands and Germany.

Re: Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed

#29

Post by userulluipeste »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #19
unsnap_biceps wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give any examples of societies that went to the brink and reversed course? I can't think of any, but I'd be fascinated to learn more about examples who have.

Europe in general, after the World Wars. Ditto Japan. The thing is, though, they had help recovering, and help stepping back from the brink. Help won't be coming this time. Just as there are no George Marshalls in today's Republican party, and no room for any, there is no one outside the US who will come to our own rescue.

The Marshall Plan merely accelerated the recovery, serving as seed money for a lot of investment (among other goals). Even without such help, the conditions for recovery were there. (I also like to think that the same conditions are still present nowadays, and the help you mention won't not play an essential role for anything. But, in case I'm wrong, i.e. if the conditions may not be there any more, then I very much doubt that financial help will count for anything.)

Re: Rome Fell and Nobody Noticed

#30

Post by mathgeek »

hyperman1 wrote: post #28
thomassmith65 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Catholic church is an institution of the Roman Empire, and it's still around. That puts things in perspective, I find, and makes me wonder if 100 thousand years from now, historians will just lump the Romans and us into the same bucket.

I've always thought of the USA as the east Roman Empire of the British Empire. The seat of the throne moved to the white house, but the USA is still culturally close to the UK. Except for the religion, which seems to come from The Netherlands and Germany.

> Except for the religion, which seems to come from The Netherlands and Germany.

Which religion brings those thoughts to mind? As an American I often find myself combining a handful of the American denominations into one, but I’m interested to hear what an outsider sees projected.

Post reply on HN