Time to put on my myth busting cap again. This time, it looks like the USA is turning into Rome. But probably not. This is a comparison we almost always hear from hyperinflationists, those making ridiculous claims about the USA being bankrupt or those who are excessively worried about the influence of the government in the USA. And maybe some of this is justified to a certain degree. After all, it was largely government ineptitude that led to the decline of the Roman Empire.
Before any discussion about the Roman Empire begins, we should put things in perspective. The rise and fall of Rome was a spectacular historical progression. Although the fall of Rome is often described as some sort of event, the truth is that the rise and fall of Rome occurred over the course of 1,000 years with the final 200 years broadly being seen as the period of decline. The USA has only existed for 235 years and has only been a superpower for about 100 of those years. This doesn’t mean we have 765 years left to party, but some perspective is appropriate. The tendency to view the fall of Rome as an event and not a gradual progression is highly misleading.
There are, in my opinion, three major differences between the Roman Empire and the USA. They are:
Manifest Destiny is long gone….
The first point is one of the most important. Any empire that overextends itself is bound to run into any multitude of problems trying to maintain stability outside of their direct sphere of influence. At their peak, the Romans had conquered all of Eastern Europe, much of Western Europe, a large portion of northern Africa and much of the Middle East. This was no small feat back in the days before cars, phones and internet. Coordinating such a vast empire must have been a logistical nightmare. And that’s exactly what it proved to be. Not unlike the British Empire, this proved an impossible task as cultures clashed, coordination become increasingly difficult and authority from Rome diminished on the fringes.
Some people claim that the USA’s large military and policing of the world are somehow comparable to this. But the reality is that we haven’t colonized any part of the world since 1959 when Hawaii became the 50th state. It’s true that the USA went through a period of “manifest destiny” in which we essentially established what is now know as America, but those days are long gone. We’re not in the business of colonizing the world or ruling foreign lands. Yes, we are probably overextended on the military front and I am not sure why we often feel the need to police the world, but this is dramatically different than what the Roman Empire did through directly conquering and establishing their own leadership in other parts of the world and then attempting to maintain direct control over those regions.
Political Stability
The leading cause of the decline in the Roman Empire was political instability. The Roman Empire was actually only one period of Roman prosperity. Rome was many different styles of government over time with the Monarchy and then the Republic leading to its great rise and the Empire leading to its great decline. The Empire led to considerable division within the Empire itself with the leadership, at times, being distributed across many different Emperors. There was no real unification, but rather separate rulers as time went on. The Roman Empire was generally fragmented between East and West and this lack of unification led to instability as time went on.
The United States is in no way comparable to the Empire of disunity or rule by Emperors. We are and have always been a Constitutional Republic. This form of government has proven remarkably stable with time. And while we might see increasing disagreement among the various political parties within the USA, the foundation of our Republic is strong and stable. There is no first or second triumvirate, no Brutus stabbing Caesar in the back, no overthrow of one government for another….There is only a stable progression of leadership chosen by the people and for the people.
Economic Prowess
I know it’s not popular to cite the continuing economic dominance of the USA, but the reality of the matter is that the USA is still the dominant economic power throughout the world. Despite China’s incredible growth, the USA is still the largest economy in the world. Our GDP per capita is almost 6 times China’s. Nominal GDP is 23% of ALL world output. If you combined ALL of the BRIC nations you’d still have an economy smaller than the USA’s. We export more goods and services in the course of a year than the entire nominal GDP of Russia.
Now, clearly, the U.S. economy is in stall speed currently. I am not trying to downplay the obvious rut the economy is in. But let’s not be overly dramatic here. The USA is still comprised of incredibly innovative and productive corporations and a people who seek the very best living standards in the world. And while we might be a bit off track currently, I don’t see the trend in innovation and output collapsing any time soon. I know it’s not popular to be optimistic about the future of this country, but let’s maintain a little perspective here. The obvious direction from being #1 is becoming #2, but that doesn’t mean the American society is going to be overrun by vandals overnight to the point where it becomes a mere shadow of what it once was.
In short, the USA might be on decline (though I don’t really think so). But one thing we’re not is the Roman Empire. The comparisons are apples and oranges.
Good stuff. I might also add that the USA is monetarily sovereign. The Roman Empire was not.
I just threw a link in at the top. I didn’t feel like this needed to be a MMR post….
No so! The Romans had all those silver mines in Spain and controlled the supply of money that way. … They also debased that currency for years by continually shaving down the coins and mixing them cheap ores.
You’re not sovereign in a currency when you tie it to a rare metal….
What if the currency *is* the metal? Normally we think of the gold standard as dollars or pounds backed by the rare metal. But in the Romans’ case, the currency was the metal. And the Romans owned the metal to the extent that they had mining right and could take it from users via taxes. Isn’t that our our dollars work — the government prints the money, owns the money and can take it from you at their discretion.
No, because you’re still constrained by the ability to mine and mint coins in this case. The U.S. is never operationally (the “operative” word here) constrained in its ability to create its currency, since 99% of it is in digital bits; the Romans were.
You’re still constrained in your ability to make the currency. Being sovereign in a currency means having no constraint in the ability to produce it.
Probably more importantly, Rome was a solar powered economy in an era before modern economic growth. It makes monetary sovereignty way less interesting.
Roman empire was monetary sovereign, they deficit-spent the money into the system and the unit of account was more important than the commodity-material (specially in late stages), they never, ever, ran out of money. Hell, these units were even used after the empire ceased to exist well into the middle ages.
Also I agree that “the fall of the Roman empire” is very misleading, actually the fall of the empire was a very complex social dynamic that run well over centuries and it didn’t fall just like that overnight. A part of it never ceased to exist in fact (the oriental empire) and transformed into something else through the middle ages.
The very last vestige of the Roman Empire still exists today. It is called The Catholic Church.
i would argue that based on military bases around the the US is are “colonizing” – or at least overextending ourselves. Rome was also drastically changed by immigration which the US is experiencing.
I personally think that’s a stretch. It’s one thing to try to rule over an area and establish your government as the driving force there. It’s another to maintain military bases in other countries that can be brought home with a phone call. The same Iraq comparisons were made after WW2 during the rebuilding and in Japan. I totally agree that our military is overextended, but that’s pretty different than establishing new colonies with the US govt in charge….
Great article. Two things I would add: 1. The Romans ran out of soldiers. Their birthrates in their 200 years of decline plunged and they simply ran out of men to man the legions, so much so that the Northern tribes simply overwhelmed their meager defenses at the end. 2. The decline was a good thing. Rome was a dominion society with a few people at the top ruling large numbers of people, many of them slaves. There’s been a lot of research lately that indicates the so-called Dark Ages were a centralized period rich in political, cultural and economic advances that flowered in later ages.
Point 1. Yes, and even worse, they were forced to recruit and bribe former enemies to become soldiers. In the early days, there were plenty of volunteers, not so many towards the end.
“And while we might be a bit off track currently”
All I can think of is that ridiculously melodramatic “It’s halftime in America” commercial hahah!
Interesting read as usual though!
“We are and have always been a Constitutional Republic….”
The Constitution has been in a constant state of revision, and this is the second republic, which came about as a result of a murderous civil war. The second republic itself has recently brought into being some pretty incredible laws which allow a level of control of the citizenry that is unprecedented outside of wartime. This is not so say America is no longer a Constitutional Republic, just that the constitution is only a piece of paper, the real drivers of law are the courts, and there interactions with presidential power. And since on security issues the courts and the whitehouse are in broad agreement, congress is reduced to rubber stamping on defence and security (homeland) issues. this is not what was envisioned by the founders.
http://www.salon.com/2012/01/30/leon_panettas_explicitly_authoritarian_decree/singleton/
I find puzzling the ‘very stable over time’ claim of Cullen, after acknowledging that the Roman empire (and that was only a fraction of the Roman dominance period as he says) ran through the centuries.
Strikes me as a short term bias, because: a) USA has run through deep turmoil periods (including a civil war) in its short history; b) it has a short history… too., so talking about how stable it is is non-sense (Roman dominance ran through centuries without significant economic & political cycles at all.)
Also while I respect what northamericans have archived the american exceptionalism is tiring sometimes, USA miracle was never isolated, it was created by merchantilistic policies and an enormous capital import from Europe (human capital, but also goods and knowledge, which was originated mostly in Europe) and it didn’t even exploited until late XIX cent. (again, huge migration). And that with an huge paradise full of resources to exploit (compare that to the already crowded Europe in late XIX) and “freedom” (to conquer and kill natives).
Thank you for this excellent synopsis. Very well written. You’re right, not many parallels. People know about Rome only through the title of Gibbon’s book about decline and fall, which is now considered outdated. Rome was at its greatest extent around 50 BCE to 50 CE, so the “decline” occurred over 400 to 500 years, as you point out. Most people didn’t see much change in their lifetime. Even today there is widespread diagreement among historians. Peter Wells’ “Barbarians to Angels” claims Romans slowly assimilated into barbarian culture without realizing it was happening. Goldsworthy’s “How Rome Fell” is more conventional, but still hardly the event everyone thinks they understand. My takeaways: Respect for Roman power and culture slowly died, so the Roman model of conquer and assimilation while retaining some aspects of conquered people’s culture stopped working. The wealthy/senators became increasing irrelevant, as political decisions were often made by the military, including who was Emperor. Living standards slowly decreased; recession and scarcity were common. Borders that were defensible in 200 BCE were indefensible by 200 CE as barbarian power increased. Rome didn’t get the military strength that they were paying huge sums for. And on and on.
Not much in common. If the US is going downhill for the next 100 years, we probably won’t know it except via hindsight.
TPC,
“The leading cause of the decline in the Roman Empire was political instability”. You are deadly wrong. (just 1st apologize I’m not a native English).
What cause the decline/fall of the Roman Empire has nothing to directly deal with politics. The GRE was centrally controlled by Rome, the richest part of the country. But for Rome continue to sustain their level of life, they need money (gold at that time). This is the reason why they conquer the large majority of Europe at that time. But as they conquer more, they also need more military power to protect their border, more administration to control the provincies, and of course more gold to paid for all that. So they conquer more. At one point, the farest parts of the empire runs their government under Rome control but with an increasing autonomy. At one point, the growth rate was just simply unsustainable to maintain all this system, which begin to weakens. (1) the farest get their autonomy (2) the military force was unable to maintain the stability at the border (invasions from Germans).
That is to say that what make GRE to collapse was just this inherent dynamical structure, disequilibrium and imbalance. Some kind of bubble if you prefer.
The problem right now in Western is the dynamical structure of economy. Go back to productivity. Gains are about 2% each years (average since Industrial Revolution). This means one can produce the same with 2% less capital/labour; or to maintain labor force we need to expand sales by 2%. Every years. As a consequence, we had agricultural revolution, industrial revolution, electrical revolution, energy revolution, web revolution alongs the time.
So we CANNOT go out of this mess just by MMR nor austerity. We must find a real new revolution by innovation (of any kind) to sustain our way of life. Who is better positioned for that? I don’t know. But we need to put any patriotism aside and read the tape.
The issue of militarization and the structure of the monetary system are very politically oriented.
It took weeks to months to travel or send a message from one end of the Roman Empire to the other. This means there was far more local control then without a 10th Amendment than there is now in the US with one and I see that as the central difference. Many things that took a century then could be telescoped into just a few years or less now.
Entitlements and reality TV are bread and circuses.
I was disapointed when I saw that piece by Doubleline. As much as I love my financial porn Zero Hedge addiction I don’t ever want to see one of my investment managers being celebrated and lauded on that site. EVER. I like stip clubs but I don’t want to see my daughters teacher there.
I reviewed the presentation a couple of times and it was disapointing.
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