> we might see another Fall of Rome in our lifetimes.

The Western Roman empire took around 80 years to fall. From 395 to 476.

The Eastern Roman empire lasted for several hundred years more.

It's sometimes thought of as a quick obvious event, but it wasn't, it lasted a lifetime. We may already be in the period of time that future historians will refer to as 'the fall'. It may not be obvious from within what stage we are at, or when thee start was.

Western Rome had pretty bad 3rd century as well. Luckily there were no serious contenders around. [1]

As for Eastern Roman Empire it lasted for several centuries but after VII/VIII century and loss of Africa, Egypt, Syria (main sources of manpower and grain) it became only local power at best.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_of_the_Third_Century#:~...

> commoditizes people's time, making them more replaceable and lowering what one's salary can buy even longer

Commodification of people is treated extensibly in anticapitalist writings. ( https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Commodification )

> Call me paranoid, but we might see another Fall of Rome in our lifetimes.

There is a more moderate stance of American Decline ( https://www.wikiwand.com/en/American_decline ) that has been a source of sourness to many US nationalists

The word "capitalism," in our lifetime has two fairly distinct meanings.

One meaning is marxist. Marx popularised the term and he implicitly defined it as an economic-political system and "that which we are fighting against." Most of his writing and communist contemporaries was about corruption and cruelty of this newly described system. In marxist capitalism, when a monopolist bribes a government official this is capitalism par excellence. The premise of the term is that "capital rules," so regulatory capture is assumed

The other meaning is pro-capitalist. These mostly riff on Adam Smith. David Ricardo responded directly to marx and provides some technical ammo. By Ayn Rand, "capitalism" it has a full blown utopian definition like communism. Regulatory capture is seen as a corruption of "true" capitalism.

Anyway... the two frames are highly related to eachother.

Das Kapital was published in full form only in 1883, long after Ricardo's Principles which was published in 1817. Das Kapital spends its entire contents defining and analyzing capitalism and starts from Ricardian economics. Principles is actually a good prerequisite to reading Das Kapital for someone unfamiliar with classical economics.

I generally see people who describes themselves as capitalists in the “good” sense, act in accordance or in support of capitalism in the bad sense. They claim to like “the invisible hand” of the market etc, but don’t complain about monopolistic behavior or ever agree that healthy capitalism and efficient markets require regulation (as Smith, for example, was clear about.)

Hypocrisy is ever present. One thing in common to all ruling communist parties was establishing party members as a full-frills ruling class with their own schools, institutions, culture, etc.

For my own "philosophy," I make a distinction between ideology and idealism. "Ideology" (in my personal lexicon) is to ideology as Orwell's "nationalism" was to nationalism.

An ideal (a capitalist one) is Adam Smith's pin factory or village economy. Maybe Ayn Rand's dissenting heros like Howard Roark or Hank Rearden.

An ideological take is to justify a fb or a google by insisting these are like a Smithian pin factory. Explaining good stuff in those term. Explaining bad stuff in terms of government (looters) involvement. Facebook's profits and market cap are reflective of the immense value that they provide society.

An idealistic take is criticising fb because the aren't like a Smithian pin factory at all. In fact, they prevent such pin factories from existing.

It's notable that an idealistic posture is easier and more common from a dissenting position. A ideological posture tends to be easier and more common in a defensive, incumbent position. That's probably why Ayn Rand reads as idealistic (despite being formulaically ideological) while modern pro-capitalists tend to come off as more ideological. Rosa Luxemburg the idealist vs Leon Trotsky, the ideologue.

IMO, you can't deal in absolutes. FB is easy to pick on because they are so unimpressive technically or operationally. FB could literally be done on 1% of its budget. Google is a mixed bag, because they do have technical achievements. But, what makes google their money is search and adware.

Tesla/Musk are an even more complex example. Musk is as close to a Randian hero as reality can offer. Obvious technical and operational achievements. Real, genuine risk taking. So far so good. The ideal does not appear to be trampled.

But... what happens if recent investors are right? What if Tesla's data is giving them an unassailable edge in self driving cars for a generation. Does that give us a capitalist ideal of innovation, competition and efficiency or a capitalist antipattern of control, monopoly and lock-in?

Reality is complex ideals are simple. Ideology is an attempt to square the circle by insisting on its squareness.

I tend to agree, but with some reservations.

One difference between centralisation due to monopolies and centralization due to other things (government planning, industry-scale unions, etc.) is that monopolies are highly profitable regardless of efficiency.

Going broke is what usually kills things.

The macrofinancial situation, currently, is telling. We are obviously in the midst of a recession. Huge industries are in meltdown: hospitality, air travel, physical retail, etc. They are literally producing far fewer goods and services... stuff that people normally consume.

OTOH indexes are up. Why, because the profits of H&M or RyanAir are miniscule compared to fb or amzn regardless.

Consider what "increases efficiency .., lowering the prices and making products more affordable" means for fb or google. There are no prices, except ad prices. We can't even think about consumer benefits (more, better goods) in a meaningful way. What does more facebook even mean? Is it beneficial to anyone?

This matters because "more resources to fb, less to Ryanair" is the market working normally. Since fb doesn't consumer capital, all that happens is a stock price change.

Indexes are up because the wealthy were bailed out with the “stimulus”, which was free money printed by the fed and given to people who don’t need it, lead them to just put it in the “market” since again there’s nothing to spend your money on currently other than stocks and real estate, this only leads to higher assets prices.

The fact that the us government took zero equity positions despite bailing out the wealthy will be discussed for decades.

TLDR money printer go brrrrrrrr

True also.

This cycle has definitely a proven point now about how asset prices are a fungible for currency inflation. Every flavour is different though... with this kind of inflation, what what government y prints, government y receives. A central bank handles the deficit, but the asset inflation is global, not limited to a national currency. Probably destabilizing in a game theory sense.

That said, there's also the fact that for amzn, 2020 has really made prospects X% better. X% of amzn makes up for a lot of Y% worse in companies that do worse in a pandemic. There's a definite correlation between company size and prospects in this crisis year.

On government equity, I agree. Macroeconomics needs a do over. I think norway proves the principle of governments owning equity stakes pretty handily.

Incidentally, Norway would probably have been (could still be) an even bigger success case if they adjusted even more boldly. A lot gets lost on regular price inflation.

The historical Fall of Rome, having lasted from one to three centuries, was a tad more gradual.

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

As they don't say in the asteroid Belt: Da Rom na decho dewe im wang diye. (Rome didn't fall in a day)

Edit: why even use earth days in the belt? maybe they'd count in shifts, maybe they'd use watches (of which there are many varieties, where the US submariners' reduce to shifts)?

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

Fall of Rome is more of a literary trope than an actual reference.

Arguably, Rome didn't even fall when Rome fell. A Roman emperor continued to rule over a roman empire from constantinople (which had already been the capital for a long time) for another millenium.

Western intellectuals just had an obsession with "the fall of rome" as a concept. Lots of historians studied tomes of the stuff. Everything can be projected onto it: social puritanism, christian puritanism, anti-christianity (they abandoned jupiter), anti-immigration sentiment, anti-german sentiment, etc.

Some say it fell in the 1400s when Constantinople fell, if you ask the Russian orthodox church, russia is the old rome or something. Then there's that whole catholic thing...in rome, sorta.

The first time I visited Washington D.C. I thought this is looks like “New Rome”. So maybe it’s hasn’t fallen after all.

That's on purpose.

In fact, even Rome built its public buildings and spaces to make it seem like the "new Rome," except that Rome to them was Athens or Mycenae.

There's a very direct line of descent from the White House to bronze age greek public architecture. That template for a building has meant "power" forever, and that's the symbolism everyone always goes for.

I'd like to draw that line further back to ancient Egypt, a wellspring of inspiration for Greek and Roman civilizations.

In my mind, the line goes forward, reflects and refracts through Europe, the Catholic church, the Renaissance; the Freemasons, whose first lodges in America were in Philadelphia; the "Sons of Liberty" gathering at the Green Dragon tavern - among them Paul Revere; Ben Franklin, who commissioned the design of the Great Seal of the United States, with the pyramid symbolism; and reaches George Washington, the first U.S. President and Grand Master of the Masonic Lodge in Virginia. And who were masons but builders and architects?

The morsels trace an admittedly sinuous and questionable lineage, lost and found across time and place, revived through myth and homage, and, I believe, still feeding some mad dreams of an empire.

On which point I've just begun following HoB: https://thehistoryofbyzantium.com

Things happen faster in the modern era. War in particular can happen very quickly now.

Under half an hour, depending upon where the boomers may be. But I've been reassured by HN that MAD is no longer a thing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24662277

(Then again, assuming attacks these days are more likely economic than kinetic, it looks like it took two months, May-July 1997, to take down THB. The longest market manipulation of which I am aware lasted 5 years, but those were only a pair of billionaires, so presumably trillionaires' poker played between nation states might go longer until someone folds.)

THB?

฿, thai baht. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Asian_financial_crisis#Th...

Thanks.

>If your work doesn't keep your mind busy, it finds a different outlet, that seems to be driven by some primal tribal instincts. Team up with the ones of your kind and go against the neighboring tribe.

You followed this statement with "call me paranoid, but we might see my tribe (presumably) fall out of dominance in our lifetime." The end of US hegemony is not some terrifying future, it's the US living like the rest of the world.

> The end of US hegemony is not some terrifying future, it's the US living like the rest of the world

The issue most of the world (outside the US) worries about is not the end of their hegemony but the power vacuum that they leave behind.

Despite the near plutocratic state of the current US, they at least make an attempt at having core democratic values with checks and balances and a respect for rule of Law.

It is unclear if those who crave to take that soft-power away from the US will share the same ideals.

A century ago people in the UK were probably arguing about the terrible impact of the End of Empire on civilisation.

Turns out that the world was rather better off without us trying to run a big chunk of it and we were better off as well.

The US will be fine and might even become a better place once they stop being the most powerful country.

>Despite the near plutocratic state of the current US, they at least make an attempt at having core democratic values with checks and balances and a respect for rule of Law.

Why the hell would the rest of the world care about these things that only matter inside the United States? The US has never made it their goal to spread these "core democratic values," has no real checks or balances internationally, and shows a complete disregard for international law.

Except for the half a century after WWII where the US shaped international law and democratic values, and heavily shaded modern international trade and its norms and values.

>shaped international law

Except they never consider themselves subject to that law, just use it to punish those they don't like.

> democratic values

When have they ever spread this? The amount of democratic governments we've overthrown vastly outnumbers the successful ones we've created. And that's ignoring things like Operation Gladio.

>heavily shaded modern international trade

Which has enriched them far more than anyone else.

That and what impact a decline of democracy in would have on other western-style democracies would have.

Removing US regime change could very well bolster other "western-style democracies,"

Right now I am more worried about the boost right-wing populists will get from a second Trump term. And the boost the Russians will get of it.

I'm a first generation immigrant who moved to North America because I didn't like living "like the rest of the world".

Mind you, most of the world lives in poverty fueled by endless tribal fights. Shia-vs-Sunni Muslims, Mexican drug cartels, endless tribal wars in Africa. Sponsored by the local "top ladder" successfully running the "divide and conquer" strategy. I don't see anything good in bringing that standard of living to the 1st World countries.

And, mind you, China is completely unaffected by the processes tearing the U.S. apart. They are more than ready to take the place, and also they don't give a slightest damn about human rights, freedom of association and many other Western virtues. Read about Uighur camps if you have any doubts. Be careful for what you wish for.

Every example of the "divide and conquer" strategy you mention has the US at least assisting the "top ladder." Mexican drug cartels only exist because of America's "War on Drugs," and beyond that you run into people like Pablo Escobar deliberations propped up by the US to further their interests.

>And, mind you, China is completely unaffected by the processes tearing the U.S. apart

Isn't this the exact same " divide and conquer " strategy you just mentions? If we don't continue supporting our tribe, ignoring it's many faults, that other tribe will make things much worse.

Europe has been living like this for centuries during Medieval times. Inquisition, witch hunts, heretic burning, wars, plague... African tribes have been at war with each other for as long as we know them. It's a human fallacy and not some evil plan hatched by U.S. billionaires.

Besides, the billionaires will be fine, it's the middle class that will find themselves living in ghettos.

>It's a human fallacy and not some evil plan hatched by U.S. billionaires

Right, US billionaires would never develop an evil plan like exploit violence to make money. Those actions are just African nature.

If China were to gain more power though, obviously they would steal the middle classes' wealth and force them into poverty.

Fall of Rome, a long running process that for the outskirts of the empire meant people lived and were fed better based on the increased bone density of their remains.

So we have a metric of resources you need to keep people under control vs resources you would need to release to people if you did not control them. This number is currently very low through automation, fake news optimisation etc.

So elites get all the resources secondly they give out to affiliates (Roman's debts forgiven, discount wheat for Romans, land to 75k Romans) then it becomes unsustainable because it has giveaways have no solid economic foundation, then affiliates become strong, then make everyone Roman so as to dilute power and then the former affiliated secondary elites stop helping and/or revolt and through their organizational capability also everybody else joins them, sometimes through unrelated incidents. But Rome has already fallen years ago, and after the actual rubber stamp, most people except those at the center of empire are better off. What is missed, is products of economies of scale, but people have already learnt to hate them along the insurmountable accompanying taxes.

>So elites get all the resources secondly they give out to affiliates (Roman's debts forgiven, discount wheat for Romans, land to 75k Romans) then it becomes unsustainable because it has giveaways have no solid economic foundation, then affiliates become strong, then make everyone Roman so as to dilute power and then the former affiliated secondary elites

All of these events happened around the end of the Roman Republic. Blaming them for the "Fall of Rome" that happened around five hundred years later is just ridiculous. A rough equivalent would be blaming Columbus for America's current problems.

A lot, if not most, of America's current problems are the result of the settler-colonial pattern that Columbus established.

While this is broadly true, it's like saying Alexander Graham Bell is responsible for me dropping my cell phone. Yes, if Columbus had acted differently we might not have these problems, but there are countless other situations since then where a different choice may have alleviated though problems.

The point being that it was a long process that took centuries during the last few of them was irreversible. That long process and its subsequent conclusion was perceived as positive event for most of its subjects, and in some important aspect it really was.

Rome didn't just collapse, it was sacked. The US is incapable of suffering a fall of Rome. America's geography makes that impossible. At the very worse you would see a return to a more insular America like it was before WW1. But even without American hegemony, the nation would still be a major power being the world's largest oil producer, the world's largest agricultural producer, and the world's largest consumer economy.

The problem with any loss of American power is that potential great powers that could replace it, such as China, are deathly reliant on American lead order. China is neither energy nor food secure. How will they manage when their shipping isn't defended by the USN? How will they manage when climate change strains available resources? Especially when they are so geographically isolated from potential sources of those resources, and rivals are closer to those resources.

>The US is incapable of suffering a fall of Rome. America's geography makes that impossible.

That’s true if you look at America’s rivals on the world stage, i.e. Russia or China. But Rome wasn’t sacked by the Persians, or the Egyptians, or another Great Power of the time. It was sacked by tribal Gauls and migrating tribes of Visigoths.

By that time, the gauls and the visigoths had gotten to be a greater military force than the romans. A few hundred years of battle against the romans had allowed the germanic barbarians to organize and weaponize to parity and beyond. Not too long after, the huns arrived and proved to be even more powerful and that pretty much ended the roman empire. For the last decades, the romans were pretty much paying the germanic tribes and the huns to stay away from rome.

Certainly the germanic tribes as a whole can be considered a local "great power" and the huns certainly qualify as a great power.

Why would you be paranoid? If the US is Rome then the “Fall” has been happening for multiple decades now. No Rome stays “Rome” forever so I don’t know why people work themselves into a tizzy over the fact that it’s happening.

Rome is empire and empire is violence. Let it fall and make room for a better future.

Past history shows that when an empire falls, there is more violence, followed by the rise of a new empire itself, as you say, based on the triumphs of its violence.

Anyone who calls calls for the fall of empire, without explaining how we avoid the normal consequnces, is calling for more violence.

If reformation proves impossible then revolution is inevitable. What any individual wants is largely irrelevant.

True, but not relevant to my point.

Empire is violence, and so is revolution.

If you don’t have an alternative, and you support either one, then you are advocating for violence.

You seem to be advocating for more violence.

Let’s take a different view, America has periods of chaos before and it seems common, maybe this is just another period of change where we get to grips with technological change and nationalism and racism and come out the other side a more integrated, just and thoughtful society. One hopefully with better restraints for demagoguery.

I always find it interesting when people think we're living in unique times. I don't know if it's just the human tendency to view the past with rose colored glasses or an opinion of younger folks who weren't around when things got crazy in the past.

The US has been through periods like (and much worse) in the last 60 years:

- 60's race riots across most major cities that resulted in the deaths of hundreds & Vietnam War where every opinion article lamented about "America's global leadership is over"

- Watergate where a sitting president was forced from office due to truly breathtaking corruption and law breaking

- The 80's when Japan was on the rise and people talked about the US falling behind and no longer being a major economic player (I remember people smashing Japan electronics on the Whitehouse lawn)

- Gulf War, LA Riots, Clinton scandals, pre-9/11 terror attacks in the 90's

- In the 2000's, 9/11, the financial crisis (aka "The End of Capitalism")

It's always been like this.

Welcome to the consequences of a world where history education has been underemphasized in favor of technology and ‘practicality.’ The world is always ending, the future is always impossible to predict, and everything is original, cutting-edge and new. Except...it isn’t. It’s all happened before, but we didn’t bother reading those books.

America will be fine.

"It’s all happened before" doesn't imply "will be fine". For instance, the Civil War happened but I wouldn't call that being fine. And survivorship bias being what it is, just because the country survived certain major crises in the past doesn't mean it will survive them in the future.

The comparisons to the Civil War make no sense and just illustrate my point that historical education is deeply lacking. As someone else already pointed out, the issues today are still nothing compared to the 60s.

Current domestic issues have nothing to do with the Civil War. There is no state-like military complex ready to secede. There is no geographic division that lends itself to secession. Etc. etc. The only reason this is invoked is because it's the only meme that most people are aware of, not because it's even remotely accurate. Even something like the 90s Balkan Wars is so far from the contemporary American situation, it's absurd to compare it.

The only thing that's truly new is the media's profit motive for creating a perception of chaos.

Of course, the fact that things have worked out in the past doesn't mean they will always work out in the future. But people who compare contemporary America to the Fall of the Roman Empire or the American Civil War really don't know much about either.

No, you are right, the situation is much more comparable to Weimar Germany, which is far far worse.

While there are parallels to Weimar Germany, again I don't think this is actually a useful comparison and it's mostly used as a fascist boogeyman. Major factors in Weimar that don't exist in America/the West today:

- Immediately after a massively destructive war that affected all levels of society

- Populace of young men with PTSD and military experience

- Little/no social safety nets

- No history of democracy - remember that prior to Weimar, Germany was governed by Prussia and basically had no democratic traditions

IMO the real actual historical comparison to use in 2020 is the Printing Press and Protestant Reformation; i.e. established power structure (the Catholic Church) dealing with new information-propagation technologies and factions. I'd bet that 2050 is going to look a lot like 1550.

You can name factors, but that doesn't mean those factors are the most critical ones, just the ones that support your narrative.

I mean, I don’t really have a narrative here. I just find the comparison to Weimar unconvincing. Modern culture, in its inability to generate new futures (see Baudrillard, Deleuze, etc.) constantly looks backwards. The popular trend now seems to be reframing the 2020s as a 1920s redux, but again, I think this is mostly lazy ignorance.

What makes you think you live in an exceptional time of historical ignorance?

Too many things to list in a single comment, but I'll just sum them up in one sentence:

The widespread idea that somehow Modernity is a new, tabula rasa (blank slate) epoch in which the old rules and realities don't apply anymore.

Sorry but I don't see that as new. Just off of the top of my head the Age of Aquarius new age nonsense, the belief that war would end with World War 1, and fascists believing that democracy was obsoleted with industrialization, heck even the French Revolution and the Enlightenment had similiar lines of thought. There have long been beliefs along those lines about how this time is different.

You could argue that it means that we aren't sufficently historically literate but I don't see how it stands out as worse given ample precedent.

That’s actually a really good summary.

“This time it’s different” comes up again and again (tech bubble, housing bubble) and it turns out, no, it’s not different.

The latest is MMT, in which people say “you can print as much money as you want without fears of inflation because this time it’s different”. And maybe it is? But there is a good chance that, no, it’s not different this time.

Or thinking that this time, a constantly growing wealth gap between the rich and the poor won't lead to a revolution if major reformation doesn't happen first.

Also, pretty sure MMT knows that printing money leads to inflation. Thats why the theory has taxes to remove money as well, if you want to tax someone other then those who hold capital evenly (which is inflation).

As a big history nerd, that’s what I love about digging into the details of these events. What is taught in school makes it seem very “clean” (I understand there is no time to really cover it in detail).

Take the Vietnam War for example - what’s taught in school is the Domino theory, support for a corrupt Southern government, quagmire, withdrawal and fall of the South. But, if you read through a bit of the Pentagon Papers you pretty quickly get a sense of how nuanced it was and how it wasn’t a single decision to support South Vietnam, it was a complex web of global geopolitics with messy arguments, fears, overconfidence, “fake news”, etc. And the people making those decisions were not dumb, in fact, they were pretty damn smart and considered a lot of different options and the risks that went with them. It just didn’t turn out how they thought it would.

And then it dawns on you just how much history is repeated over and over. Sure it’s a little different each time (and those small differences have a big impact), but the same types of things happen again and again.

It’s a form of recency bias. Some people need to believe that the place and time they occupy is the most significant.

Just because things worked out in the past doesn't mean they will always work out in the future.

The person's deleted their tweets since then but it read something like

> Thinking about how agricultural subsidies are like this classic example of inefficiency but also a big part of the reason the US still has a strong agricultural base.

Fictional books such as Snow Crash and Jennifer Government explore the idea of non-governmental neighboring tribes.

That’s what 2020 has felt like to me. The fall of Rome. It’s like we had every single advantage we could have wanted and blundered it all. Maybe we just aren’t meant to be this connected, thus aware, this effective. We’re just not responsible enough to be so efficient at changing our world.

Actually I think the global side of things has held up remarkably well. There were brief shortages in supermarkets early on but when you consider the changes in our eating habits it wasn't much. The doomsayers would have had us eating each other by now.

> One layer deeper, it commoditizes people's time, making them more replaceable and lowering what one's salary can buy even longer.

More or less you have summarized Karl Marx's conclusions in Das Kapital. "as capital accumulates the situation of the worker, be his payment high or low, must grow worse". The commoditization of peoples time is the way the capitalism extracts value from work.

And yes, this last stage of capitalism will be the toughest for the people..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Kapital,_Volume_I

IMO globalization is dangerous because it's putting all our eggs in one basket. We have it beyond good on the US compared to most places in the world.. And we still managed to have Trump, Hillary, and Biden be our presidential choices in these 2 elections. All it takes is one bad idea or leadership that takes the helm of an entire world government instead of several countries keeping each other in check and having different ideas/philosophies. I worry people actually want to be ruled by a king/monarch/dictator. I wish people would stop putting so much emphasis on the federal government and focus on local community politics. Higher level government should do less, not more.

On the other hand the wheat harvest is down by 40% in the UK this year but that has barely warranted a mention in the media because there is a global market for grains.

I'm still for global, open markets; just not central government. Competition and differing views/ideas are extremely beneficial and this highlights an example of why.