« It's the Inflation Fallacy, duh! | Main | Why are lawyers against higher inflation? »

Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

Future historians are really bad! The Roman Empire lasted a solid millennium beyond 476, with much thriving. The capital had been moved to Constantinople, and the city of Rome had been provincial for decades by the time it was sacked. It was a big deal, but no more so than the defeat in Vietnam for the United States.

Livio: "We are also pleased to note to the Board that transferring faculty to past eras with a lower cost of living has allowed for substantial savings in current budgets."

But hang on; what did they use for money? Antique Roman coins? Or modern counterfeits? Or, maybe they just took along some good, that is very cheap nowadays, that was very expensive back then (but nothing too advanced, that would blow their cover).

Nick:
How is this for an intertemporal investment opportunity. Bring bolts of cheap textiles into the past.. You convert them into Roman currency and then buy art - perhaps commission a few statues. Bury them. Go fo the future, unearth them and sell them.

Livio: a comment is stuck in the spam filter.

Nick: Looked but could not find it in spam.

Livio: It was An Igyt's comment above. Stephen must have fished it out.

I'm guessing neo-conservatives would be thrilled to see history rewritten like that:

Rome didn't fall due to military overreach or corruption, it fell because all the people became latte-sipping sissies (a.k.a liberals)!

Livio, is this in honor of the bimillenium of Augustus's death, or the first day of school?

Shangwen...I thought it would be a good celebration of the first day of school at all educational levels!

How about:

The elite government decided that their Roman citizens were too expensive to do basic manual and agricultural work and continued using far off slave workers to increase profits. As time went on the slave labors got tired of their low wages and blamed the Roman empire and rebelled. However, since the poorer Roman citizens could no long afford to make a living they stopped supporting and paying taxes for the military. Therefore the Roman military could no longer beat the slave barbarians and the average Roman citizen did not care they were part of an empire because all the goods went to the top 10%.

Shangwen...The timing with the 2000th anniversary of Augustus's death was purely coincidental. I did miss it by a few days - August 19th is apparently the date of death.

Sounds like today. Today's education, illegal immigrants and open door legal immigrant policy of countries which are quite culturally and linguistically foreign, and green-types not wanting housing over 500 sq.ft. and pipelines. Doomed to repeat history. Also today as back then, a corrupt senate, govt debt, and the rise of dictatorship.

The comments to this entry are closed.

Search this site

  • Google

    WWW
    worthwhile.typepad.com
Blog powered by Typepad