One thing Patrick Wyman really hits on in history of Rome podcast is how the actual experience of decline and fall was so radically different for different people living in the empire. First off, a full half of the empire didn't fall until a thousand years after a lot of folks think about "the end" of Roman Empire - just less than 65 years before the Protestant Reformation!
If you lived in north Africa, without having to ship all your grain to Rome, life might have actually gotten better for you during the decline. But if you lived in Britain, where the economy was largely based around the military... when the legions left the economy collapsed. I don't think it will be any different for us in the US. Some areas might thrive in the absence of an effective central government, just like some individuals might. While a whole lot are hurt, of course.
And while a lot of people will say what's the big deal about the post taking longer, another thing Wyman emphasizes, with Rome it was the cumulative effect of a thousand things like this. For us, it will be longer post times. Then more days of the year without electricity. Then it becomes nearly impossible (unless you pay serious $$$) to fly cross country in less than a day. Death by a thousand cuts.
These are ridiculously easy things to fix from a technical standpoint, though- we just need our political impasses resolved. I don't think we're in the crisis of the third century, we're in the collapse of the oligarchic republic preceding the emergence of a popular dictator (in the Roman sense), either coming from a mass movement to expand democracy and struggle against the global capitalist class (establishing America as a socialist republic), or a "populist" individual leader who establishes the beginnings of an actual, mask off empire that "reconciles" the class struggle through hyperexploitation of the periphery (from our perspective it will be ecofascist but it's almost certain to be multicultural, which will throw a lot of people off)
One thing Patrick Wyman really hits on in history of Rome podcast is how the actual experience of decline and fall was so radically different for different people living in the empire. First off, a full half of the empire didn't fall until a thousand years after a lot of folks think about "the end" of Roman Empire - just less than 65 years before the Protestant Reformation!
If you lived in north Africa, without having to ship all your grain to Rome, life might have actually gotten better for you during the decline. But if you lived in Britain, where the economy was largely based around the military... when the legions left the economy collapsed. I don't think it will be any different for us in the US. Some areas might thrive in the absence of an effective central government, just like some individuals might. While a whole lot are hurt, of course.
And while a lot of people will say what's the big deal about the post taking longer, another thing Wyman emphasizes, with Rome it was the cumulative effect of a thousand things like this. For us, it will be longer post times. Then more days of the year without electricity. Then it becomes nearly impossible (unless you pay serious $$$) to fly cross country in less than a day. Death by a thousand cuts.
These are ridiculously easy things to fix from a technical standpoint, though- we just need our political impasses resolved. I don't think we're in the crisis of the third century, we're in the collapse of the oligarchic republic preceding the emergence of a popular dictator (in the Roman sense), either coming from a mass movement to expand democracy and struggle against the global capitalist class (establishing America as a socialist republic), or a "populist" individual leader who establishes the beginnings of an actual, mask off empire that "reconciles" the class struggle through hyperexploitation of the periphery (from our perspective it will be ecofascist but it's almost certain to be multicultural, which will throw a lot of people off)
What we really need to resolve this polarization is the unity of our trust and the trust of our unity :pete: