Rome

(This article probably needs some editing, but I can't do it. If somebody could please let me know. Thanks)

Rome doesn't have a future. Rome is very strong but doesn't have a future. Rome is very strong for others but not for itself. Rome doesn't have a mechanism to share the wealth it generates and it fails.

Rome was very strong. Rome was very strong but didn't survive. Rome was very strong for others but not for itself. Rome didn't have a means to distribute power and it crashed. Or maybe I should have started my sentences with: Rome "is" strong, as it is well and alive today. Rome is what we're living in and it doesn't have a future, at least the way it is.

Rome had a series of reformers, or revolutionaries some might say, that tried to change the way the wealth is transferred to people but they failed. At the end of these reformists, came the era of the empire and Roman republic ended. There is still talks about these reformists and whether they wanted to consolidate power on the back of people, but whether these people were right or not, it should be mentioned that Roman republic could not have survived. We cannot talk about intentions of the reformists and at the same time hope for the future; either we listen to reformists or to the prophets of doom.

I personally am a prophet of doom! As mentioned in the beginning, Rome has no future, and as the history showed it didn't. It is easy to come at the end of the events and have a prophecy for what just passed (!), but these prophecies are relevant today. USA of today, and many nations, including a lot of American adversaries, are republics, and have foundations more or less similar to Roman republic. They idealized America and America itself idealized the Roman republic.

Rome didn't have a future and neither does the USA. They try to tell to people that with current social and political settings, there could be a future, or problems could be solved, but it is not true. If one tries to change the social and political order fundamentally, it is in fact a revolution, and current system doesn't allow for a revolution. Moreover a revolution doesn't solve the problems either. American democracy came out of a revolution itself, and promised and delivered a certain prosperity for people for a while. But as the system consolidates, the rich is going to be richer and the poor is going to be poorer and there is not much anybody can do about it.

Rome was strong and so is the USA. They are both republics and this means that soldiers are fighting for themselves. It is hard to beat an army that is fighting for itself or its own land. The more democratic and more inclusive a democracy is, the harder they are to beat. If the USA of today was as inclusive as the USA of times of revolution, maybe they would be even harder to beat. As there is a distance between political leaders and the soldiers, there is less and less energy and encouragement in soldiers to fight; in fact, why should they? This is what happens to USA and what has happened all throughout history.

It is not hard to see the distance between the leaders and the people these days. It is not hard to see that leaders do not really represent the will of people and the Trump phenomenon is a testament to this. We can't really call Trump supporters conservatives and neither is he. He has objections to the way American politics is run and before the 2016 election he wasn't even part of this political party. He is angry about politics and so is his supporters.

Rome was strong and so is the USA. It is not hard to see that if somebody was a landowner, or a major landowner in the USA 100 years ago, is a major landowner today, and his wealth has only increased. There are studies in economics literature that shows the social mobility in the USA has decreased, or it is not what it used to be. In other words, USA is not a land of dreams anymore, or not as good as it was.

Rome doesn't have a solution. Rome is built on a certain set of rules, like who can be a senator and what a senator can do, and these rules determine the fate of the republic. In the old times only Patricians could be senators who had blue blood, and these days there are other characteristics needed to make a senator. But at the end of the day, there are a set of set or rules required to make a ruler, and a ruler can do a certain set of things. But what if the one person who can solve all those problems doesn't have those requirements? It is not hard to see that as times goes by the probability of meeting such circumstances increases, and it eventually happens.

Rome was strong, and lasted a long time. Rome lasted a long time because people were following its rules exactly, for a long time. They tried to block any attempts for kingship or revolutions for a long time. And as a person who swells because of no exercise and no diet, Rome swelled and finally burst into an empire. It is not hard to see the fate of the empires as there has been many in the east, and they basically suffer from the problems of the Roman republic, on steroids. An empire is a more unstable version of a republic, where the guy on top, or girl as may be the instance, has very many powers, including killing its rivals, who may be able to solve the problems of the system, in the future.

Toward the late Roman republic, we see that some senators and some other wealthy families are very rich and powerful, and there are few landowners who are free and can go to the war. The rich gets richer because they have bigger families and if one of them dies in the battle, there is somebody who tends the estate. But the poor, or rather poor free men, don't have this option. They would go to the war and they would not be present to take care of land, and they would lose it. It is as-if everybody goes to the war, but some become rich and some don't. In the Roman society if somebody fights for the republic, with everything he owns, he is going to be bankrupt. In Roman society everybody should keep something at bank for savings and investments.

Rome, as an empire, finally fell because there was nobody to defend it. There was too many problems they had to solve and there was nobody to fully fight for Rome. Any system that has this property, that alienates people from the republic, or the society has the same fate. Today's world is full of these nations that don't include the people in the decision making process, or if they do, they don't share them in wealth. Rome was built on the notion "eat or be eaten" and so is the world today.

I am not against "eat or be eaten" philosophy myself. But one has to figure out a way to eat as a nation, and not as an individual. If they start eating as individuals, eventually they are going to start eating themselves, as Rome showed. Early Roman republic was built on inclusiveness, or as much as they could, but later they started killing themselves and engaging in civil wars. If they didn't have those civil wars maybe Rome would be around, at least in its old form. One has to wonder why should people kill themselves, or people that call themselves citizens, or brethren. If brothers kill themselves there would be no family, and there was no more Rome.

Maybe Roman history is the most interesting history, at least for somebody who tries to find a solution for contemporary problems. Roman history was very long, and they implemented a lot of solutions, or easy fixes to the system. But as the history showed, none of them fully fixed the problem. The civil wars that ended the empire in fifth century was in the republic too, hundreds of years before. The civil wars was about some faction of society feeling deprived and fighting others. It is hard to imagine the people who had those demonstrations were not really deprived, as they risked their lives and rights under strict Roman law. But it is hard to imagine if they had a solution to offer to those problems too. If there was a solution to Rome's problems, we probably wouldn't have this conversation in the first place.

Rome didn't have an easy fix, nor a set of laws that could save it. There was tons of laws and edicts by all sorts of factions of society but none of them saved Rome. There is no set of written laws or documents that could promise solve everything. There may be temporary fixes, to solve something for short term, as patch, but finally it has a side effect, or the patch is not strong and the robe tears apart.

Rome didn't have a solution, and revolution is no answer either. Revolution assumes the old regime to be evil and therefore there is a "good regime" that it is going to replace it with. There is no "good regime", at least by regime meaning a certain set of rules that everybody should follow. Rome had all sorts of rules that it tried and it didn't work. Coming up with a never ending fixed set of rules for prosperity is like saying if you follow these certain rules you would become a good painter, or a good musician. There are no such rules, and anybody selling them is likely to be a fraud. At the end of the day, there should be an agreement between people about how to get together, and share their accomplishments. It is very difficult to say how the agreement looks like under all circumstances, and therefore we cannot come up with a certain set of rules to say if you follow them your society would not demolish, forever.

Rome was demolished, and so is the rest of the world, as they all are built on Roman models. Unless there is an agreement between the people of each society how to share wealth, there is going to be some hard feelings and eventually it erupts in form of civil war, or revolution or what not. It is hard to achieve these agreements as the society gets larger, and as the society gets larger, there is more need for leaders of bigger calibers who can lead such negotiations. Of course the story of leadership is bigger than the scope of the article and so there goes Rome.