{"id":46962,"date":"2019-06-28T06:48:23","date_gmt":"2019-06-28T11:48:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=46962"},"modified":"2019-06-28T06:48:26","modified_gmt":"2019-06-28T11:48:26","slug":"how-to-destroy-a-civilization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=46962","title":{"rendered":"How to Destroy a Civilization"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mises.org\/wire\/how-destroy-civilization\">How to Destroy a Civilization<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There are lots of ways to kill off a civilization. Wars, politics, economic collapse. But what are the actual mechanics? It might be a useful thing to know whether or not we are killing ourselves off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ancient Rome is a good place to start. They had an&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Roman_technology\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">advanced civilization<\/a>. They had running water, sewers, flush toilets, concrete, roads, bridges, dams, an international highway system, mechanical reapers, water-powered mills, public baths,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Soap#Roman_Empire\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">soap<\/a>, banking, commerce, free trade, a legal code, a court system, science, literature, and a republican system of government. And a strong army to enforce stability and peace (<em>Pax Romana<\/em>). It wasn\u2019t perfect, but they were on their way to modernity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One of my favorite quotes is from Marcus Tullius Cicero, statesman, orator and writer (106-43 BCE):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If that isn\u2019t a mark of a civilized society I don\u2019t know what is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But Rome collapsed. I often wonder what would have happened if it hadn\u2019t. Could we have avoided a thousand years of the Dark Ages. Could we have been flying airplanes and driving cars in the year 1000?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What the hell happened to Rome?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Dictators. After 500 years, the famous&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Roman_Republic\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Roman Republic<\/a>&nbsp;ended with the dictator Julius Caesar taking power. Four hundred years later his progeny and usurpers ran the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Roman_Empire\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Empire<\/a>&nbsp;into the ground and Rome fell to invading barbarians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The standard explanation for Rome\u2019s decline and fall is that they devolved into dictatorships (true, but not&nbsp;<em>the&nbsp;<\/em>cause of their fall). Or they became decadent and corrupt (true, but not&nbsp;<em>the<\/em>&nbsp;cause of their fall). They fell to barbarian invasions (true, but not&nbsp;<em>the<\/em>&nbsp;cause of their fall).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Rome fell because the dictators ruined the Roman economy and the institutions that had made it prosperous. Rome was falling apart&nbsp;<em>before<\/em>&nbsp;the barbarian invasions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u00a0\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How to Destroy a Civilization There are lots of ways to kill off a civilization. Wars, politics, economic collapse. But what are the actual mechanics? It might be a useful thing to know whether or not we are killing ourselves off. Ancient Rome is a good place to start. They had an&nbsp;advanced civilization. They had [&hellip;]<\/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":[2,7],"tags":[138,139,150,26164,7617,1024],"class_list":["post-46962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-survival-2","tag-civilisation","tag-civilization","tag-collapse","tag-jeffrey-harding","tag-mises-institute","tag-rome"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46962","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=46962"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46963,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46962\/revisions\/46963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}