{"id":36852,"date":"2018-08-20T07:43:07","date_gmt":"2018-08-20T12:43:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=36852"},"modified":"2018-08-20T07:43:07","modified_gmt":"2018-08-20T12:43:07","slug":"the-telltale-signs-of-imperial-decline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=36852","title":{"rendered":"The Telltale Signs of Imperial Decline"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Telltale Signs of Imperial Decline<\/a><\/h3>\n

Nothing is as permanent as we imagine–especially super-complex, super-costly, super-asymmetric and super-debt-dependent systems. <\/i><\/p>\n

Check which signs of Imperial decline you see around you:<\/b> The hubris of an increasingly incestuous and out-of-touch leadership; dismaying extremes of wealth inequality; self-serving, avaricious Elites; rising dependency of the lower classes on free Bread and Circuses provided by a government careening toward insolvency due to stagnating tax revenues and vast over-reach–let’s stop there to catch our breath. Check, check, check and check.<\/p>\n

Sir John Glubb listed a few others in his seminal essay on the end of empiresThe Fate of Empires<\/a><\/b>, what might be called the dynamics of decadence<\/i>:<\/p>\n

(a) A growing love of money as an end in itself: Check.<\/p>\n

(b) A lengthy period of wealth and ease, which makes people complacent. They lose their edge; they forget the traits (confidence, energy, hard work) that built their civilization: Check.<\/p>\n

(c) Selfishness and self-absorption: Check.<\/p>\n

(d) Loss of any sense of duty to the common good: Check.<\/p>\n

Glubb included the following in his list of the characteristics of decadence:<\/p>\n

— an increase in frivolity, hedonism, materialism and the worship of unproductive celebrity (paging any Kardashians in the venue…)<\/p>\n

— a loss of social cohesion<\/p>\n

— willingness of an increasing number to live at the expense of a bloated bureaucratic state<\/p>\n

Historian Peter Turchin, whom I have often excerpted here, listed three disintegrative forces that gnaw away the fibers of an Imperial economy and social order:<\/b><\/p>\n

1. Stagnating real wages due to oversupply of labor<\/p>\n

2. overproduction of parasitic Elites<\/p>\n

3. Deterioration of central state finances<\/p>\n

War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires<\/a><\/p>\n

To these lists I would add a few more that are especially visible in the current Global Empire of Debt<\/b> that encircles the globe and encompasses nations of all sizes and political\/cultural persuasions:<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Telltale Signs of Imperial Decline Nothing is as permanent as we imagine–especially super-complex, super-costly, super-asymmetric and super-debt-dependent systems. Check which signs of Imperial decline you see around you: The hubris of an increasingly incestuous and out-of-touch leadership; dismaying extremes of wealth inequality; self-serving, avaricious Elites; rising dependency of the lower classes on free Bread […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[127,154,195,196,2384,259,2427,9589,587,5042,21325,862],"class_list":["post-36852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-charles-hugh-smith","tag-complexity","tag-debt","tag-decline","tag-elite","tag-empire","tag-hubris","tag-imperial-decline","tag-of-two-minds","tag-peter-turchin","tag-sir-john-glubb","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36852"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36853,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36852\/revisions\/36853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}