How is everything not collapsing in the US?

[innonimatu]

If you look at Madisons estimate, you will see that Roman economy was pretty unequal, like very poor western regions, rich Italy and the eastern part being in the middle. By medieval period the western part seems to have been richer than the eastern part while Italy was still richest. Overall the gdp per capita seems to have grown from roman time to medieval even if that growth was mainly in western, northern and southern europe.

I'm aware of the estimates of wealth for regions of the Roman Empire ad of medieval Europe, but think those must be taken with a truckload of salt. During imperial times Italy literally fed on the rest of the Empire, true. But with the total collapse of taxation and transportation the the 5th century Italy ceased having that advantage, and the population of its cities, Rome especially, had fallen calamitously and remained small during the Middle Ages. Even Naples became bigger, which is not surprising: it was a seaport and had extensive fertile lands nearby, whereas Rome was boxed in by malaria-infested swamps to the north and the south! Italy, it is worth remembering, had some naturally wealthy regions in the middle ages (agriculturally very productive), but plenty of crappy regions. The same was true ot Greece and other areas of the eastern roman empire that are often described as "wealthy".

What really made the wealthy of Italy in the late middle ages. and imo had made the wealth of Greece before (and continuing into) imperial times, was its favorable position to run talassocracies from several of its cities. It was localized in a few cities. So it wasn't exactly "rich Italy" so much as "rich Rome", and Tarento, or Naples, or Venice or Milan or Genoa or Florence or... cities that by being seats of power over extremely fertile regions or hubs of trade became indeed wealthy. But the penninsula as a whole wasn't particularly wealthy, no more I dare say than Gaul or Hispania.
Another rather absurd thing with estimates of wealth for medieval Europe happens with the caliphate of Cordoba. It was wealthy, known doe minting gold coins when "poor christian Europe" lacked the gold to do it, but its fall and annexation into the christian kingdoms didn't lessen the wealth of the region: technology didn't change, population wasn't killed off, it was just a matter of the commercial connections to north Africa being disrupted. Temporarily, and anyway with replacements with trade with other regions. And the thing is, in medieval times the portion of wreath that was traded, versus what was produced locally for local consumption, was tiny.

Ancient economic history is tricky. Far too often, I think, an excessive emphasis is placed in the small portion of the economy that is measured through long-distance trade because that is more interesting and may have more remaining recrods (in the municilap archives of the city-states of that time) that the everyday and often unrecorded "feudal" life.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Keep in mind that there may have been climate changes that benefited certain parts of the world and hurt other parts which could explain why regions such as western europe who in the past had been poor advanced beyond regions that in the past had been richer. It is not actually so clear what actually drove collapse of western Roman Empire while the Eastern part survived. Even if something like the hunns is to be blamed it simply lead to the question what drove the hunns towards the borders of Roman Empire and why would Roman Empire at the time no longer be capable of defending itself when in the past it had fought successful wars against rival powers like Carthage?

Argubly the change from roman to medieval was probably not that big deal and probably not particular violent, especially compared to how brutal the romans was in their conquest. More like regions becoming more and more independent overtime, economies become more local (which is probably both good and bad) and eventually they stop being part of the empire.

The narrative that christian medieval europe, the celts and germanic people was backwards and inferior to the romans and greeks and that technology and knowledge was stagnate to the renaissance and only improved by "rediscovering" texts from the romans and greeks around a millennium after western Roman fell is nothing more than a myth that is really no different from how europeans viewed themself superior to other cultures later on to justify their imperialism.

 

[Hrothbern]

The businessmodel of Rome became over time to pay the legions, the administration and the amenities of the Rome dwellers with ofc taxes from the empire but also with fresh silver from the Spanish silver mines.

That business model became addicted to printing money (that silver) that trickled from Rome downward and outward supplying money for the growing population and total economy.

Perhaps a banal reason in the total equation is that those silver mines yielded less and less.

 

[Commodore]

and why would Roman Empire at the time no longer be capable of defending itself when in the past it had fought successful wars against rival powers like Carthage?

There's a pretty good YouTube video I saw that actually explains this, at least from the military perspective. When I get home I'll try to find it again and link it here. The basic gist of it though was the Romans' change in defensive strategies led to a situation where each battle lost created this negative feedback loop that caused more failures that continuously weakened their borders without them getting time to recover.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

The businessmodel of Rome became over time to pay the legions, the administration and the amenities of the Rome dwellers with ofc taxes from the empire but also with fresh silver from the Spanish silver mines.

That business model became addicted to printing money (that silver) that trickled from Rome downward and outward supplying money for the growing population and total economy.

Perhaps a banal reason in the total equation is that those silver mines yielded less and less.

There was something similar with Spain during 16th and 17th century as the influx of precious metals at first increased its coffers but eventually the value of these dropped leading to financial problems.

 

[Commodore]

Here's the video I was talking about if anyone's interested:

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Here's the video I was talking about if anyone's interested:

Yes I have seen that. One thing that is quite interesting is how people like to think of medieval era as being particular well defended when the roman systems of fortifications and armies was superior to basically anything seen in the medieval era.

 

[Ajidica]

During imperial times Italy literally fed on the rest of the Empire, true.

Can you elaborate? I was under the impression that in Imperial times Italy increasingly became a bit of a backwater, full of powerful and influential families sure, but the economic drivers of the Roman economy were increasingly moving elsewhere. Food for Italy was brought in from North Africa and Egypt. Industry that once been concentrated in Italy, such as making mosaics, was increasingly being found in non-Italian regions (such as the large mosaics center in what is now Cirencester in the UK). Indeed, the movement of economic activity out of Italy is one reason Halsall gives for the instability seen in the late Roman Empire: the local Roman nobility did not need economic links with Italy in order to partake in and express their Roman-ness. Further, one of the possible reasons for regional power centers stopped contesting the Imperial crown was that Italy simply wasn't worth the effort needed.

 

[Hrothbern]

Can you elaborate? I was under the impression that in Imperial times Italy increasingly became a bit of a backwater, full of powerful and influential families sure, but the economic drivers of the Roman economy were increasingly moving elsewhere. Food for Italy was brought in from North Africa and Egypt. Industry that once been concentrated in Italy, such as making mosaics, was increasingly being found in non-Italian regions (such as the large mosaics center in what is now Cirencester in the UK). Indeed, the movement of economic activity out of Italy is one reason Halsall gives for the instability seen in the late Roman Empire: the local Roman nobility did not need economic links with Italy in order to partake in and express their Roman-ness. Further, one of the possible reasons for regional power centers stopped contesting the Imperial crown was that Italy simply wasn't worth the effort needed.

What I also understand of the period after 200-250 AD is that Rome got an increasing trade deficit. Decadent luxuries ? Just plain cereals/wheat ?
The Roman silver coins got more and more debased also since 200-250 AD.

 

[innonimatu]

Can you elaborate? I was under the impression that in Imperial times Italy increasingly became a bit of a backwater, full of powerful and influential families sure, but the economic drivers of the Roman economy were increasingly moving elsewhere. Food for Italy was brought in from North Africa and Egypt. Industry that once been concentrated in Italy, such as making mosaics, was increasingly being found in non-Italian regions (such as the large mosaics center in what is now Cirencester in the UK). Indeed, the movement of economic activity out of Italy is one reason Halsall gives for the instability seen in the late Roman Empire: the local Roman nobility did not need economic links with Italy in order to partake in and express their Roman-ness. Further, one of the possible reasons for regional power centers stopped contesting the Imperial crown was that Italy simply wasn't worth the effort needed.

I wasn't disagreeing with you. Italy fed on the rest of the empire by taxing or outright looting other territories. Its production of real material goods was probably little different from that of other regions with similar populations. And may indeed have fallen.

What happens I thing is that the present idea of "wealth" has been projected to the past by economic historians, in that Rome was wealthy because they had a million people selling services to each other, even if they imported the goods. We could make some parallels with a present-day empire... The US indeed.

In some views this is valid: if we're looking at the ability to sustain a large population with complex and materially expensive tastes, they did it: Rome was the empire's largest city, and Italy very urbanized, for centuries. At least until the political power of Rome collapsed, then everything unraveled. If we're looking at the potential for dealing with crisis using its own productive capabilities, Italy turned out to not be particularly wealthy: there was nothing unique about it but geographic position (a very good one in the central Mediterranean, that would pay off in the late Middle Ages again), and past history (Rome's military success having made it the capital of an empire). When leaders of other regions quit trying to be emperors (moving to Italy and sustaining it) and decided to simply cut ties to Italy, Italy collapsed into its own "wealth" ability: no different from other regions of the Mediterranean.

Replace the Mediterranean with the world, Rome with the US... it depends on a web of trade and institutionalized advantages from its past prominent, imperial role to remain wealthy above all other regions, to sustain an internal economy very much based on selling services to each other and internationally. When it loses that web and political prominence it's just one region of the world among others.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Here you can get an idea how advanced western Europe useage of waterpower became: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/11027/1/MPRA_paper_11027.pdf

Basically waterpower was know but not widely used during the roman era. By around year 1000 waterpower started to be used in many various areas, not just grinding grain. By the Norman Invasion England had something like 6000 watermills and a few centuries later over 10 000. By mid 1400s the technology had become so advanced it could be used to pump water out of mines, drive blast furance and many other areas.

The heavy use of waterpower seems to be particular a western european thing, not seen in the Byzantine, muslim and chinese world to the same degree which may explain why the industrial revolution happened in europe. This may be due to the medieval european system encouraged construction and advancement of water power technology since mills could be used to collect taxes, but at the same time a single mill could save huge amount of labor.

So the collapse of western Roman Empire may allowed for important technological development, which was not used well in Eastern Roman Empire, which maybe indicate that Roman economic priotries was not the best in the long run. It also is quite telling that encourage certain technologies which may not look particular remakable early can have massive impact centuries later, so even if watermill technology was not particular economic viable, by investing in it, the technology developed and became more and more useful and maybe allowed other technological development towards steam power. It is mentioned that in China's case the primary agricultural product was rice which don't need milling unlike grain which may limit the employment of watermills.

I don't think US is in the Roman situation, US have adopted from an industrial economy to a services based economy while its not clear what changes the romans made to its economy to face economic challenges. US also have centuries of economic, political and technological knowledge to work on which the romans did not have as far as I can tell.

 

[Hrothbern]

Here you can get an idea how advanced western Europe useage of waterpower became: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/11027/1/MPRA_paper_11027.pdf

Basically waterpower was know but not widely used during the roman era. By around year 1000 waterpower started to be used in many various areas, not just grinding grain. By the Norman Invasion England had something like 6000 watermills and a few centuries later over 10 000. By mid 1400s the technology had become so advanced it could be used to pump water out of mines, drive blast furance and many other areas.

The heavy use of waterpower seems to be particular a western european thing, not seen in the Byzantine, muslim and chinese world to the same degree which may explain why the industrial revolution happened in europe. This may be due to the medieval european system encouraged construction and advancement of water power technology since mills could be used to collect taxes, but at the same time a single mill could save huge amount of labor.

So the collapse of western Roman Empire may allowed for important technological development, which was not used well in Eastern Roman Empire, which maybe indicate that Roman economic priotries was not the best in the long run. It also is quite telling that encourage certain technologies which may not look particular remakable early can have massive impact centuries later, so even if watermill technology was not particular economic viable, by investing in it, the technology developed and became more and more useful and maybe allowed other technological development towards steam power. It is mentioned that in China's case the primary agricultural product was rice which don't need milling unlike grain which may limit the employment of watermills.

Watermills were also used to make paper.
Paper is in Europe increasingly important in late medieval time (first paper watermill in Italy in mid-end 13th century)... but after the printing press invention 1450... paper demand skyrockets.
Paper made from fine milled/hammered flax or linen or old garment, sails, etc. soaked in water.

 

[amadeus]

Two pages ago the U.S. was invading European NATO and now the Romans didn't have enough waterwheels. This thread is a whirlwind of topics.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Two pages ago the U.S. was invading European NATO and now the Romans didn't have enough waterwheels. This thread is a whirlwind of topics.

Well there have been people saying that U.S look like the Roman Empire near its western collapse. As far as I can tell, that is not the case.

And if people think it was better in the past, keep in mind that idea was already present in ancient Greece and Rome, who had some sort of idea that the younger generations was less moral and able than the past generations.

 

[Ajidica]

I wasn't disagreeing with you. Italy fed on the rest of the empire by taxing or outright looting other territories. Its production of real material goods was probably little different from that of other regions with similar populations. And may indeed have fallen.

What happens I thing is that the present idea of "wealth" has been projected to the past by economic historians, in that Rome was wealthy because they had a million people selling services to each other, even if they imported the goods. We could make some parallels with a present-day empire... The US indeed.

In some views this is valid: if we're looking at the ability to sustain a large population with complex and materially expensive tastes, they did it: Rome was the empire's largest city, and Italy very urbanized, for centuries. At least until the political power of Rome collapsed, then everything unraveled. If we're looking at the potential for dealing with crisis using its own productive capabilities, Italy turned out to not be particularly wealthy: there was nothing unique about it but geographic position (a very good one in the central Mediterranean, that would pay off in the late Middle Ages again), and past history (Rome's military success having made it the capital of an empire). When leaders of other regions quit trying to be emperors (moving to Italy and sustaining it) and decided to simply cut ties to Italy, Italy collapsed into its own "wealth" ability: no different from other regions of the Mediterranean.

Replace the Mediterranean with the world, Rome with the US... it depends on a web of trade and institutionalized advantages from its past prominent, imperial role to remain wealthy above all other regions, to sustain an internal economy very much based on selling services to each other and internationally. When it loses that web and political prominence it's just one region of the world among others.

Got you. The reference to Italy made me think you were talking about the region itself, instead of it being the center of the Roman Empire.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

To my eye, World War I, the Great Depression and World War II are a trilogy that you have read together. If I were trying to draw an analogy between today's events and the upheaval of the first half of the 20th Century, we haven't even reached WWI yet.

I'd say 9/11 and the global war on terror is the equivalent to WWI in this analogy.

I think we're rapidly restructuring our economy with Covid and will come out stronger for it. We will onshore a few more strategic industries, but the big gains will come from how many people are entering industries of culture. Cameras almost doubled in price, audio interfaces (connecting computers to studio speakers and mics) are sold out everywhere, people are diving into learning skills they have been putting off. A lot of people are trying to learn to code or do other brainy "remote-work" jobs. Covid could wreck us, but as long as we keep pooling national resources back on ourselves to weather the storm, and as long as we quarantine during the storm, we're going to come out years ahead.

Cameras and audio equipment are doubling in price not because everyone is starting Youtube series but because all the teachers are having to teach remotely along with a huge chunks of other employees.

Yeah we may on-shore some of the medical industrial complex but I have not seen any other movement to broadly on-shore other industries. There's been lots of talk of course but no action.

Protection from what, space aliens? Giant death robots?

Someone's not been paying attention to the news:

(a Japanese company is building a Gundam robot for a theme park)

payroll tax cuts!!!!!! (these are the parts of employees checks that pay for their future Medicare and social security. There is a dogged race to reduce these so republicans can later justify reductions in benefits and then rinse repeat this cycle)

And Trump is pushing ahead on this even with significant push back from the rest of the GOP. Someone in his administration has a fixation for gutting medicare and social security and are not above using the crisis to get it.

Back to the topic at hand -

Congressional negotiators failed to make a deal even after the Democrats came down on their demands to $2T in spending from $3. It appears Mark Meadows was the lead White House negotiator and thus it should be no surprise that no deal was reached as he's been an obstructionist asshat since getting elected in the Teahadist wave. Meanwhile Trump is claiming he can extend UI benefits via executive order (he can't) along with the eviction moratorium and a payroll tax 'deferment'. The deferment would be set up such that everyone has to pay back these deferred taxes at the end of the year which would force Congress to cut the tax altogether to avoid that which is the whole point. He's basically coming up with illegal, unconstitutional end-runs around Congress and the GOP is just fine with that.

Meanwhile the economic recovery has stalled and the virus is getting worse in rural and suburban areas even as we see the beginning of it coming under control in urban areas.

 

[Hygro]

Cameras and audio equipment are doubling in price not because everyone is starting Youtube series but because all the teachers are having to teach remotely along with a huge chunks of other employees.

Good point that teachers are driving the bulk of camera sales, but that doesn't preclude the previous observation. Teachers aren't why oeksound raised their plugin prices by 10% (it's a download, there's no scarcity).

 

[EgonSpengler]

I'd say 9/11 and the global war on terror is the equivalent to WWI in this analogy.

I don't think the war on terror did anything to upend the world order. We're still the remaining superpower, and it didn't do anything to benefit any of the rising regional powers, China or North Korea or Russia. Well, maybe Russia, a little, in Chechnya after the attack on the theater in Moscow. It gave Iran an opportunity, but it doesn't seem like they've made much of it. To my eye, Al Qaeda scored two operational successes - the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993, which wasn't a terrorist attack, and the commuter train bombings in Madrid in 2004, which was. Strategically, they weren't able to turn those victories into much of anything.

The Taliban and ISIS are organizations that made use of terrorism and also managed to redraw the map, but I think they did more with conventional warfare and by building a more traditional power base. In the case of ISIS, the gains they made didn't last long, they got crushed and all they accomplished was to kill a bunch of people. They didn't even change the balance of power in the region, nevermind the world.

For the most part, I put terrorism in the same category as piracy and drug cartels and organized crime; dangerous, occasionally so much so that the power they're attacking has to pay some attention and grind them under its boot, but it's never been a threat to whole countries. Terrorism has rarely accomplished much of anything at all.

As to the United States' misadventures, it's true that we also killed a whole lot of people and accomplished nothing. The invasion of Iraq may go down in history as one of the worst things this country ever did, but it didn't hurt us. We still have the world's biggest economy, the world's most powerful military, and among the world's most influential cultures, with global reach in all three. imo, Al Qaeda did the equivalent of tying our shoelaces together and making us fall on our faces.

 

[amadeus]

I think it's too early to tell if invading Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein was in some sense either a positive or a negative for advancing U.S. interests. If Hussein had not been deposed and still ruled Iraq, he would be 83 today. Would one of his sons be taking the reins? Would he rule another 10 years? (Hastings Banda of Malawi was 96 when he resigned.) It seems in retrospect that Iraq had been effectively contained during the years 1991-2003, so on the surface the invasion seems now like a waste. Iran, a much more actively hostile and larger power, remains the greatest threat to the U.S. in the region and I wonder how/if a Hussein-led Iraq in the present day could be a counterweight to Iran in the region.

 

[Commodore]

, so on the surface the invasion seems now like a waste

It, along with the simultaneous war in Afghanistan, effectively destroyed Al'Qaida as an international organization and reduced them to just a bunch of localized factions claiming to be Al'Qaida that had no real ability to plan or execute any plans outside of their localized area.

Iraq is where we finally pinned Al'Qaida down and forced them to fight us in a protracted campaign that drained them of resources and personnel. Iraq was an effective battleground for this purpose because while Saddam's regime and the people of Iraq had no real love for the US, they also weren't supportive of Al'Qaida like Afghanistan was. That worked to our advantage because it allowed us to make temporary alliances with other insurgent groups in Iraq who wanted Al'Qaida dead just as much as we did.