Comment by joebob42
4 years ago
The roman empire seems like an especially terrible example of complex systems failing quickly given it existed in a partially collapsed state for longer than most major empires existed period.
4 years ago
The roman empire seems like an especially terrible example of complex systems failing quickly given it existed in a partially collapsed state for longer than most major empires existed period.
Exactly. Even considered on its own it's a really bad example of rapid collapse. Roman civilization lasted for about 1000 years until the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD (250 more if you include the pre-republican period). One could argue at length when its decline started, but a reasonable starting point would be ~250 years prior to that, with the great crisis of the third century. That's a quarter (fifth) of its entire existence, and a lot of human generations, who would mainly have noticed significant up- or down-swings during their own lifetimes (with somewhat equal probability). Only the most historically literate would maybe have perceived a general downward tendency over the centuries.
I have yet to see one comparison to the fall of Rome that wasn't complete horse shit - and this is no exception. It's just madness from the beginning - "Rome" began to fall as soon as it was relevant, it lasted for more than a millenium, and if you just pick the right point in time, you can make an argument for almost anything.
Except in this case the author didn't even bother to pick the right time, instead opting for some quote "A few centuries" before the "rapid" descent. Most empires last only a few decades.
Even the fall of the republic to "tyranny" / dictatorship took a pretty long time. You could pick a number of different starting points I guess but I think it'd be hard to argue it wasn't in progress post Sulla, which is like 30 or 40 years before Caesars whole thing. I guess on the scale of history that's pretty short but that's still multiple lifetimes for most people back then.
the Roman Empire being brought up over and over again makes sense in the current context where people like to compare the USA with the Roman Empire. Apart from certain small similarities IMO the comparison is nonsense and does not make sense.