06-25-2017, 12:18 AM
Ancient Rome went from a critical moment (the Third Servile War for which we know Spartacus as the enemy) in 73 BC to AD 476, beginning during the Republic and ending with Odoacer deposing Marcus Augustulus. That is 579 years from the point at which the Roman polity could have had the economic and social cancer of slavery put to an end -- and Rome enjoying more of a free-enterprise economy open to innovations in commerce and technology. Slavery precluded the rise of a middle class of entrepreneurs and impeded technological innovations. Just imagine ancient Rome with no slaves -- but steam power. Rome comes to encompass the whole of what is now Germany and Poland. Steam power allows the Romans to sail across the Atlantic and around the Horn of Africa.
But I digress. The technology needed for locomotives and steamships isn't much more complicated than what the Romans had. But the Romans had huge resources upon which to draw as their world degraded. We have far more resources to draw down before our social order becomes extinct.
But I digress. The technology needed for locomotives and steamships isn't much more complicated than what the Romans had. But the Romans had huge resources upon which to draw as their world degraded. We have far more resources to draw down before our social order becomes extinct.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.