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ceejayoztoday at 1:22 PM5 repliesview on HN

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

> The Roman Empire lost the strengths that had allowed it to exercise effective control over its Western provinces; modern historians posit factors including the effectiveness and numbers of the army (check), the health and numbers of the Roman population (check), the strength of the economy (check), the competence of the emperors (check), the internal struggles for power (check), the religious changes of the period (check), and the efficiency of the civil administration (check). Increasing pressure from invading peoples outside Roman culture (check) also contributed greatly to the collapse. Climatic changes (check) and both endemic and epidemic diseases (check) drove many of these immediate factors.


Replies

c7btoday at 1:42 PM

The decline of the Roman Empire, depending on how you define it, played out over centuries, if not a millennium. It is such a bad analogy for the kind of within-our-lifetimes collapse that is being speculated about here that it undermines the original concern. The decline of Germany as the leading scientific powerhouse in the first half if the 20th century would be a better case study imho.

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nozzlegeartoday at 5:03 PM

> Increasing pressure from invading peoples outside Roman culture (check) also contributed greatly to the collapse.

Who is this supposed to be?

jebarkertoday at 1:45 PM

This is not convincing. Many of these are debatable when you actually pull apart what is meant then and now. But there’s also a long list of things that are different about the Roman Empire and US (and the world) today.

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A_D_E_P_Ttoday at 1:32 PM

You could look even earlier. There are a lot of similarities between Trump's style and Emperor Commodus's. And to paraphrase Cassius Dio, Commodus took an empire of gold and transformed it into one of iron and rust.

Every time I hear people praise the stoic Emperor Marcus Aurelius I am reminded of the fact that he failed in his most important duty: To plan well for his succession.

leereevestoday at 1:32 PM

The two worst Roman emperors ruled hundreds of years before the fall: Caligula from 37 to 41 CE, Nero from 54 to 68 CE.

Not many people could name, or recognize the name of, any emperor from the last hundred years of the Western Roman Empire.

So I don't think Rome is a good analogue for the suggestion that the Trump era is going to kill the USA.

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