You may not be far off the mark. See "The Roman Empire and Its Germanic Peoples" by Herwig Wolfram. He points out that the Western Empire (which fell over a thousand years earlier) had a far greater disparity of income than the Eastern Empire, and that this meant they couldn't raise the taxes necessary to defend themselves. The Eastern Empire spent a third of their budget on their army, and this was more than the Western Empire collected in taxes. He also points out that this doomed Ostrogothic Italy.
However, the thing that's missing from this analysis is that the Senatorial families that Wolfram is talking about as the super-wealthy weren't just family businesses. They were the equivalent of major corporations of their day. They were huge profit-seeking enterprises, owning sometimes tens of thousands of slaves and having thousands of freed slaves attached. Some of these had annual budgets that were as much as a third of what the Western Empire would collect in taxes in the same period.
We are headed down the same road, I think.
The media companies are throwing money at Washington to get their laws passed, and the best Google or MS or Yahoo can do is send some representatives and give those uncaring congressmen a stern talking-to? Obviously these companies realize that SOPA will crush an open internet, which is directly related to their bottom lines. Start lobbying already!
This isn't the RIAA's country, it's not Google's country, it's not Microsoft's country, and it's not Yahoo's country. It's our country. Until we, the people, accept our responsibilities and stop this from happening, it will continue to happen. More corruption is not the answer.
This isn't the RIAA's country, it's not Google's country, it's not Microsoft's country, and it's not Yahoo's country. It's our country. Until we, the people, accept our responsibilities and stop this from happening, it will continue to happen. More corruption is not the answer.
Look at it from this perspective: as a practical matter, today, corporations have significantly more power in politics than individuals, and media companies more than tech companies. If something isn't done right freaking now, SOPA will pass from committee in three days.
There is nothing you, as an individual, or we, as a collective, can do against the millions of dollars spent on lobbying and campaign contributions by the media companies in the next three days. Talk of what "ought" to be will not solve the immediate problem.
An analogy: suppose you are poor (or bootstrapping), and you are $150 short of making rent for the month. Rent is due in five days. You can talk on and on about how you should have got a better job, didn't iterate on customer development, etc., but if you don't come up with $150 right now, you will "die." So, you might go to a payday loan shark, get a cash advance from your credit card, or sell something to make rent and live another day.
What's my point? When your very survival is on the line right now, you have to do whatever you can to live to fight another day. That's where we are now with media companies and the Internet.
What killed Rome wasn't just the corruption but the fall of the Gracie brothers. You can't have Marius and Sulla without that. No Sulla, no Cesar, no fall of Rome.
And while we are at it, there are no barbarian hordes that can ever invade the US -- unless you count those in the backwater areas of the flyover states -- simply because the US is so monstrously huge.
You're right. It's just math. You just don't understand that math.
Looking at the "donation" list it's to both sides of the aisle and HUGE amounts, these aren't little $10k donations but $100k and even $1M
I am starting to understand the fall of Rome a little better.