This would happen. |
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I'm sure this should be in Philosophy, seeing how it relates to time and how things can be different in theory if things were changed. This question has been bugging me for some time now. |
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Question: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Answer: Neither, single-celled organisms did.
LD's - 3
This would happen. |
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Paul is Dead
If the Roman empire hadn't collapsed we would all be Speaking Latin and would probably be on Mars by now. |
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The Roman Empire didn't collapse because of externalities; it collapsed because it was an empire. The nature of all empires is to collapse. The typical life cycle of an empire is as follows: |
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Last edited by drewmandan; 10-13-2008 at 12:24 AM.
Well if the Roman empire took Germania and stemmed the growth of the tribes, I wouldn't be here. I'm of Saxon decent. YAY BARBARIANS! |
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Surrender your flesh. We demand it.
drewmandan has a point. Because in a way it is happening right now in the U.S, with the markets slowing down and all. Would this have meant that Rome may have split into several individual states, each with their own individual economy and independence, like the Western Roman Empire, and the Eastern Roman Empire, so the economy could have been managed more efficiently? |
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Question: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Answer: Neither, single-celled organisms did.
LD's - 3
Rome's collapse was inevitable. There are dozens of factors that you would have to pretend weren't present if you want to think about a scenario where the empire continued and thrived. |
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That is what happened. In fact, the Eastern Roman Empire became the Byzantine Empire and it lasted another 1000 years, but that was a slightly different phenomenon. The Byzantime Empire began as a monarchy, which made it much more stable. As a general rule, the freer a government begins, the faster it blows up. So the Byzantine Empire blew up fairly slowly. It wasn't conquered by the Turks until 1453. |
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Every empire must collapse at some point. |
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"...and we want punks in the palace, 'cos punks got the loveliest dreams..." - A Silver Mt. Zion
It was the best of times. It was the end of times.
No, taxation does not slow the economy by itself. |
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Last edited by Omnis Dei; 10-16-2008 at 02:51 AM.
Everything works out in the end, sometimes even badly.
Question: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Answer: Neither, single-celled organisms did.
LD's - 3
Actually, Carthage did conquer Rome in the first (?) Punic war. It was either the first or the second Punic war that Carthage actually held Italy. But then the Romans were able to fight a decades long guerrilla war and reclaim the peninsula. So, just knowing the Roman people, and knowing that we have an example of exactly what you describe, I don't think there's any possible way that early Rome could have been destroyed from outside. Their destruction could have only come from internal collapse. |
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I see. You misunderstood. I meant that the economy gets slowed compared to what it would have been without taxes. Even if it still expands with tax, it isn't expanding as much as it would have otherwise. However, the end result is the same. |
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Last edited by drewmandan; 10-19-2008 at 11:23 PM.
Okay but whether the society is taxed or not does not decide whether it's going to implode. It's a catalyst because the upperclass starts sneaking more and more money into their luxury funds through whatever means, but in the case of the USSR (which expanded as quickly as most free market based economies did) there were stubborn economic policies that weren't thought out very well but imposed rigidly. Everything became too much for the party to keep track of, and most of their money was going to fighting Afghanistan and securing satellite states. In short, over expansion and incompetance, as well as clinging to obsolete economic philosophies (ones that resulted in commodities being sold for next to nothing so industries stopped making money, as well as ones that pissed managers off so efficiency went down perpetually), lead to their downfall. |
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Everything works out in the end, sometimes even badly.
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