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A comment on Body Count of the Roman Empire.

Re:Body Count of the Roman Empire by dsfyu404ed on Friday August 11, 2017 @10:11AM (#14989802)
It took them nearly a millennium to do only a fraction of what communists accomplished in about a century.

If anyone wants to crunch numbers and determine a per capita "death as a result of state action" for various empires over time I think it would be really interesting.

How does a bad year in the roman empire compared to a purge year in the USSR? Average year vs average year? What about the great leap forward?

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Re:Body Count of the Roman Empire by JoeAltmaier on Friday August 11, 2017 @10:58AM (#14990288)
But, percapita? There were far fewer people around in Roman times. The 'death rate' must have been an order of magnitude higher then.
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Re:Body Count of the Roman Empire by oliver_quartic on Friday August 11, 2017 @10:32AM (#14989999)
Stephen Pinker did this number crunching (in fastidious detail) in "The Better Angels of our Nature". I forget what the result was, though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Natur...

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