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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 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.

Sir John Glubb listed a few others in his seminal essay on the end of empires The Fate of Empires, what might be called the dynamics of decadence:

(a) A growing love of money as an end in itself: Check.

(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.

(c) Selfishness and self-absorption: Check.

(d) Loss of any sense of duty to the common good: Check.

Glubb included the following in his list of the characteristics of decadence:

— an increase in frivolity, hedonism, materialism and the worship of unproductive celebrity (paging any Kardashians in the venue…)

— a loss of social cohesion

— willingness of an increasing number to live at the expense of a bloated bureaucratic state

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:

1. Stagnating real wages due to oversupply of labor

2. overproduction of parasitic Elites

3. Deterioration of central state finances

War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires

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

1. An absurdly heightened sense of refinement as the wealth of the top 5% has risen so mightily as a direct result of financialization and globalization that the top .1% has been forced to seek ever more extreme refinements to differentiate the Elite class (financial-political royalty) from financial nobility (top .5% or so), the technocrat class (top 5%), the aspirant class (next 15%) and everyone below (the bottom 80%).

Now that just about any technocrat/ member of the lower reaches of the financial nobility can afford a low-interest loan on a luxury auto, wealthy aspirants must own super-cars costing $250,000 and up.

A mere yacht no longer differentiates financial royalty from lower-caste financial Nobles, so super-yachts are de riguer, along with extremes such as private islands, private jets in the $80 million-each range, and so on.

Even mere technocrat aspirants routinely spend $150 per plate for refined dining out and take extreme vacations to ever more remote locales to advance their social status.

Examples abound of this hyper-inflation of refinement as the wealth of the top 5% has skyrocketed.

2. The belief in the permanence of the status quo has reached quasi-religious levels of faith. The possibility that the entire financialized, politicized circus of extremes might actually be nothing more than a sand castle that’s dissolving in the rising tides of history is not just heresy–it doesn’t enter the minds of those reveling in refinement or those demanding more Bread and Circuses (Universal Basic Income, etc.)

3. Luxury, not service, defines the financial-political Elites. As Turchin pointed out in his book on the decline of empires, in the expansionist, integrative eras of empires, Elites based their status on service to the Common Good and the defense (or expansion) of the Empire.

While there are still a few shreds of noblesse oblige in the tattered banners of the financial elites, the vast majority of the Elites classes are focused on scooping up as much wealth and power as they can in the shortest possible time, with the goal being not to serve society or the Common Good but to enter the status competition game with enough wealth to afford the refined dining, luxury travel to remote locales, second and third homes in exotic but safe hideaways, and so on.

4. An unquestioned faith in the unlimited power of the state and central bank.The idea that the mightiest governments and central banks might not be able to print their way of our harm’s way, that is, create as much money and credit as is needed to paper over any spot of bother, is unthinkable for the vast majority of the populace, Elites and debt-serfs alike.

That all this newly issued currency and credit is nothing but claims on future production of goods and services and rising productivity never enters the minds of the believers in unlimited state/bank powers. We have been inculcated with the financial equivalent of the Divine Powers of the Emperor: the government and central bank possess essentially divine powers to overcome any problem, any crisis and any conflict simply by creating more money, in whatever quantities are deemed necessary.

If $1 trillion in fresh currency will do the trick–no problem! $10 trillion? No problem! $100 trillion? No problem! there is no upper limit on how much new currency/credit the government and central bank can create.

That there might be limits on the efficacy of this money-creation never enters the minds of the faithful. That pushing currency-credit creation above the limits of efficacy might actually trigger the unraveling of the state-central bank’s vaunted powers never occurs to believers in the unlimited reach of central states/banks.

The possibility that the central state/bank’s powers are actually quite limited is blasphemy in an era in which the majority of the Elites and commoners alike depend on the “free money” machinery of the central state/bank for their wealth and livelihoods.

It is instructive to ponder the excesses of private wealth and political dysfunction of the late Roman Empire with the present-day excesses of private wealth and political dysfunction. As Turchin and others have documented, where the average wealth of a Roman patrician in the Republic (the empire’s expansionist, integrative phase) was perhaps 10-20 times the free-citizen commoner’s wealth, by the disintegrative, decadent phase of imperial decay, the Elites held wealth on the scale of 10,000 times the wealth of the typical commoner. Elite villas were more like small villages centered around the excesses of luxury than mere homes for the wealthy and their household servants. Here is a commentary drawn from Turchin’s work:

“An average Roman noble of senatorial class had property valued in the neighborhood of 20,000 Roman pounds of gold. There was no ‘middle class’ comparable to the small landholders of the third century B.C.; the huge majority of the population was made up of landless peasants working land that belonged to nobles. These peasants had hardly any property at all, but if we estimate it (very generously) at one tenth of a pound of gold, the wealth differential would be 200,000! Inequality grew both as a result of the rich getting richer (late imperial senators were 100 times wealthier than their Republican predecessors) and those of the middling wealth becoming poor.”

Following in Ancient Rome’s Footsteps: Moral Decay, Rising Wealth Inequality(September 30, 2015)

We can be quite confident that these powerful elites reckoned the Empire was permanent and its power to secure their wealth and power was effectively unlimited. But alas, their fantastic wealth vanished along with the rest of the centralized, over-extended, complex and costly Imperial structures.

There is a peculiarly widespread belief that Elites are so smart and powerful that they always manage to evade the collapse of the empires that created and protected their wealth. But there is essentially no evidence for this belief when eras truly change.

Yes, Elites have proven to be adept at shifting with the political winds; thus the guestbooks of French chateaux were filled with the names of Nazi dignitaries during the German occupation of France, and with the names of Allied bigwigs after the war ended the 1,000-year Reich.

But the complete collapse of the financial system and centralized power is not a war or financial crisis–these are storm waters which the Elites have the wherewithal to survive. But when a tsunami disintegrates the entire structure and carries it out to a nameless sea as flotsam and jetsam, there is no transfer of wealth from the Old to the New.

The Roman Elites did not become Barbarian elites who just so happened to own the same villas and vast estates they did when they wore togas and dined on super-refined delicacies. They were pushed aside along with everything that supported their wealth and power.

Nothing is quite as permanent as we imagine–especially super-complex, super-costly, super-asymmetric and super-debt-dependent state/financial systems.

*  *  *

Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog



114 Comments on "The Telltale Signs Of Imperial Decline"

  1. JuanP on Tue, 21st Aug 2018 10:32 pm 

    Delusional Davy “Greggie, give it a rest. Calm down and please don’t kick the dog. You need anger management classes. You shouldn’t be on a blog like this where you lose your temper. Think about your family and friends and the mental deterioration you have gone through since your retired and now spend most of your time here.”

    You are projecting again, Exceptionalist!

  2. fmr-paultard on Tue, 21st Aug 2018 10:53 pm 

    My name is davytardo. I am a retardo. I live on 99 Retardo street. I like to sit on the steeple and shit on the people, and I say, my name is davytardo. I am a retardo. I live on 99 Retardo street. I like to sit on the steeple and spit on the people, and I say, my name is davytardo. I am a retardo.

  3. Davy on Wed, 22nd Aug 2018 5:29 am 

    “Turkey’s Financial Crisis Raises Questions About China’s Debt-Driven Development Model”
    https://tinyurl.com/ybvq2eov

    In Turkey and China, the debt-driven approach sparked remarkable economic growth with living standards being significantly boosted and huge numbers of people being lifted out of poverty. Yet, both countries with Turkey more exposed, given its greater vulnerability to the swings and sensitivities of international financial markets, are witnessing the limitations of the approach.

    Debt-driven growth could also prove to be a double-edged sword for China itself even if it is far less dependent than others on imports, does not run a chronic trade deficit, and doesn’t have to borrow heavily in dollars. With more than half the increase in global debt over the past decade having been issued as domestic loans in China, China’s risk, said Ruchir Sharma, Morgan Stanley’s Chief Global Strategist and head of Emerging Markets Equity, is capital fleeing to benefit from higher interest rates abroad. “Right now Chinese can earn the same interest rates in the United States for a lot less risk, so the motivation to flee is high, and will grow more intense as the Fed raises rates further,” Mr. Sharma said referring to the US Federal Reserve.

    “Turkey’s troubles are homegrown, and the economic war against it is a figment of Mr. Erdogan’s conspiratorial imagination. But he does have a point about the impact of a surging dollar, which has a long history of inflicting damage on developing nations,” Mr. Sharma said.

  4. Davy on Wed, 22nd Aug 2018 5:35 am 

    “Ebola Death Toll Climbs To 55 As Number Of Infected Rise; Congo Authorities Lay Plans For Crisis”
    https://tinyurl.com/y8jrjqnh

    “Authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DNC), South Africa, announced five new cases of Ebola hemorrhagic fever in the Mabalako hot zone of the North Kivu district, bringing the total number deaths to 55. Of the 69 currently infected with the disease, 13 are heath workers – just under 20%.”

    “It is not like the epidemic in the Equator that we have known already. This epidemic will bring with it a lot of surprises: the number of cases is going up and the number of infected zones is increasing so it will take a long time to control this epidemic and for the anti-virals which the companies will provide us, they are ready to increase the doses,” said Muyembe.”

  5. Antius on Wed, 22nd Aug 2018 6:44 am 

    No one else appears to have picked up on this:

    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-21/germany-calls-global-payment-system-independent-us

    Europe is the most credible entity to put a dollar alternative system into practice, because the Euro is the only serious contender to the dollar as a global reserve currency. The Chinese as bulk exporters are not in the best position to do this.

    It will be controversial in the EU, as an alternative payment system would almost certainly push up demand for (and cost of) the euro or some sort of convertible proxy. Exporting nations like Germany would take a hit. The same thing ultimately contributed to the demise of the British pound as the global reserve currency: the country’s domestic manufacturers were becoming uncompetitive against competitors, because the value of the currency was artificially inflated.

    So hosting a reserve currency may prove something of a burden. But it could be done if the political situation with the US becomes untenable.

  6. JuanP on Wed, 22nd Aug 2018 6:45 am 

    “Washington is always assessing new targets in Russia for US sanctions – State Department”
    https://www.rt.com/usa/436534-sanctions-russia-us-mitchell/

  7. JuanP on Wed, 22nd Aug 2018 6:48 am 

    “China ditching US coal imports”
    https://www.rt.com/business/436555-china-coal-imports-us/

  8. JuanP on Wed, 22nd Aug 2018 6:54 am 

    “Semper fat? Marine Corps to overhaul chow in bid to fight obesity”
    https://www.rt.com/usa/436525-marine-corps-obesity-diet/

  9. JuanP on Wed, 22nd Aug 2018 7:00 am 

    “3 Pennsylvania men charged with 1,460 counts of ‘sexual intercourse with animals'”
    https://www.rt.com/usa/436538-pennsylvania-extreme-animal-abuse/

  10. Davy on Wed, 22nd Aug 2018 7:06 am 

    No one else appears to have picked up on this:

    I posted it yesterday morning:
    Davy on Tue, 21st Aug 2018 3:46 pm

  11. JuanP on Wed, 22nd Aug 2018 7:06 am 

    Antius, Davy posted a link to an article on that subject yesterday, but thanks anyway because it is interesting and related to what this thread was supposed to be about. I read about it on RT but didn’t post the link because Davy had already brought it up.

  12. Antius on Wed, 22nd Aug 2018 7:24 am 

    “I posted it yesterday morning”

    “Antius, Davy posted a link to an article on that subject yesterday”

    Thanks. Apologies for the duplication.

    As noted, I think the Europeans could be in a position to do this; though I expect they will be reluctant to do so, as the cost is very substantial.

    There is nothing to prevent Europe, Russia, China, etc., developing a common exchange currency and allowing their currencies to be pegged to it. The Chinese have tried to do this alone, but the Chinese economy is nowhere near strong enough to issue a global reserve currency and the value of the Yuan is too volatile. Given that China is the world’s largest exporter and Europe the largest consumer of finished goods, a pan Eurasian reserve currency could be workable. But I wonder if the parties involved would ever reach a common understanding or be prepared to stump up the cash? Saying something and being prepared to commit hundreds of billions to its enactment are two very different levels of commitment.

  13. JuanP on Wed, 22nd Aug 2018 9:08 pm 

    This one is for MM.
    “The inescapable weight of my $100,000 student debt”
    https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/aug/21/the-inescapable-weight-of-my-100000-student-debt

    I can’t even begin to understand someone who would borrow that much money for a MA degree in English Lit.

  14. duh on Thu, 23rd Aug 2018 4:18 pm 

    Global warming is good. Global cooling caused by less active sun is not good- you liberal nazi faggots.

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