Topic: Learning from Imperial Rome - page 5. (Read 21730 times)

But is there any other god but the Human Intellect? If we listen to Buddha we may as well spend our lives in mental masturbation oops sorry "meditation". Epicurus slaps Buddha everytime, and Chryssipus tells him to get over it.
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Barbarians, with silk road money. nothing exceptional about them.
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      Epicurus is an aesthetic hedonist- much more pallatable than the more materialistic strain, but nonetheless, his philosophy is only accessible to a leisure class supported by a slave underclass.

       The silk road was generating huge amounts of income for centuries before the arrival of Islam, and yet the "barbarians" ruling over it never achieved the level of advancement in architecture, mathematics, astronomy, poetry, or a number of other disciplines that were achieved in the Islamic golden age. Also, remember that the civilized/barbarian dialectic used by the Greeks has still been used in our lifetimes in Bush's "with us or against us" rhetoric.

        The math behind neo-liberal economic theory that points to the wealth generating effects of free trade is sound. The reason that it attracts the ire of the left is because of a problem that is more difficult to calculate- the wealth generated by this free trade is unevenly distributed and intensifies class divides. The decline in influence of the Sassanid and Byzantine empires and the rise of Islam opened up a huge area where goods were able to move more freely due to improved security and decreased taxation- Islamic law taxes wealth, rather than income or trade. Zakat, one of the pillars of Islam, acts as a wealth tax, a sort of negative interest rate and a redistributive mechanism as well as an investment incentive, which increases productivity and helps allay the social tensions that the militaristic structures and intensive taxing of other empires usually quell with sheer force or spectacles.

       The military is provided for by voluntary donations by citizens due to the spiritual rewards that are associated with participating in the military ventures of the Islamic state, which relieves a huge amount of the tension that plagued Rome and still affects those following the Roman tradition, like the US and Western Europe. The failures of the various Caliphates can be attributed more to their failure to adhere to the shari'a than the principle itself. In the same vein, the negative image of Islam in Western media, while serving specific economic interests- in particular the interest hungry financiers of the global economic order- is bolstered by the actions of individuals who stray from clear edicts in shari'a- such as the prohibition on dying by one's own hand- and are picked up as poster children for the Christian PR campaign that has not rested since the crusades... these individuals have been supported both ideologically and technically by both the KGB and CIA (via Saudis by CIA, and in Soviet incitement of aggression toward Israel by KGB see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures), and have proved useful not only as pawns in geopolitical maneuvering, but also to demonize the one ideology that has the potential to provide a credible alternative to both communism and capitalism-an ideology whose spread would erode the dynamic tension that sustains both the bipolar world of the cold war and the two party system, and would render the skill set of the current elite obsolete. The elite are fighting for their survival using any means possible, and our minds are their battlefields, and the media the weapons.

    Anyway, it was not my intention to thread-jack- apologies for the rambling...

BitDreams - thanks for the links - I was unaware that someone had made the connection between
interest rates and the Kondratiev long wave. There may also be a causal relationship
between Debt and generational change, the "Fourth Turning" etc, but there is enough
basic math to work on here without invoking either metaphysics or religion ;-)

Found on that link:
"Obviously, with a date for universal debt forgiveness written in stone, no lender would ever set terms for repayment PAST the Jubilee year."
But see this :
http://www.infosources.org/what_is/Code_of_Hammurabi.html
"The laws (numbered from 1 to 282 but numbers 13, 66-99, 110 and 111 are missing) are on an 8 foot tall stela of black diorite"
Not as easy as wiping a hard disc, but stone yields to a hammer and chisel eventually ;-)
It does make you curious about laws 66-99, No?

Seriously though, attempts to subvert and evade a Debt Jubilee are a certainty in any Age.

Elsewhere on that link a graphs show "interest" at 10 percent and seven percent "growth",
suggested that such an economic system could not continue indefinitely.
Stated that way, I'd suggest the proposition is misleading, though not incorrect, and if I may,
I will direct my reply as best I can toward the economy of Imperial Rome.
The census figures suggest that the Roman population grew by a little over 0.5 percent per year,
and based on best guesses, productivity grew similarly, giving growth in the economy of a little
over one percent per year in most periods.
I had a look at the effect of increasing productivity in an economy with 0.5 percent population
growth and fixed rates of interest of 10 and seven percent - all figure approximate,
using a variant of Keen's Minsky model. The results were unexpected and intriguing, - I don't know
how long it will take to get my head around these dynamics. [ Some of the results are pure
vanilla - see Dr Grasselli's and Prof Keen's papers and video, the other results, ...  too early to tell. ]

Thanks for the topic. I believe that at some point cultures and communities will use bitcoins programmed to their needs, may the best protocols thrive, and that those bitcoins will be bound through Bitcoin. It will be exciting to live in a world where the rulebook is plain for all to see. Earned and proven wisdoms enduring while short sighted corruption fails. Let the psychopaths of finance go find more exciting things to do with their lives, go rustle a comet or something. Heck, I'll help fund it with Bitcoin!

I wrote this a few years ago: http://ponziunit.blogspot.com/2010/01/jubilee.html?q=jubilee

While a single celled organism living communally may counter the attack of a parasite by dying off (preventing the spread to other communities) humanity simply can't afford the die off, or at least hopefully the more social minded individuals would prefer not to devolve into all out warfare against their neighbors so over time, humanity has developed simple mechanisms: codes, laws, standards that remain effective even after thousands of years.

To me, the concepts of Jubilee are fair valuation, debt limitation, governance by a third party held to high standards, the rights of ownership and the protection of freedom. It simply doesn't get any more basic than that.

We simply need to purge the unethical. We can't let them continue to twist the rules. They must be expelled and it will be very bad for the community if the unethical are expelled in an 'at all costs' scenario.

Here's an article from a blogger about Jubilee and the Long Cycle, specifically Kondratieff - a demonstration that nipping the debt cycle in the bud before it has a chance to spread bad debt over generations is possible.  I believe that Bitcoin is the enabler to many ages old algorithms that for one catastrophic reason or another, never really got to see the light of day.

http://www.biblicalresearchjournal.org/brj-pages_html/001bp_2010-03-08.html#.T9vgTdDDLeg.blogger

( he's currently anti-bitcoin :-> I always listen to both sides of a story )

The easy question first: The summary and opinion are mine, as are any mistakes in
calculation or transcription. I've tried to provide links to source material
where possible, so if something is not clearly linked, wikipedia is the likely source.
I'd add that I am approaching this as a not particlularly bright Engineer, who happens
to have an interest in economics and history.

I'd add this to earlier comments:
a) All systems fail eventually, good design provides for graceful failure.
b) Ancient civilisations placed limitations on interest rates, including prohibition of usury
to make their civilisation more robust.
c) To get over the problem of unpayable debt, debt forgiveness was written into Law, and
sometimes applied by edict. Slaves were set free. (Graeber defines freedom as freedom from debt)
d) Arguably, Imperial Rome failed to follow ancient practice, thus their trimetallic system
became debased because of too much debt, leading to hyperinflation and collapse.

Note that prohibition of usury was commonplace prior to the late middle ages:
See Tiberius for an instance during the Imperial Roman period, and Christian Rulers
adopted the practice for many years - currently sharia law has a similar prohibition.

I've gained the impression that some have placed their faith in gold and bitcoin
to remain viable if or when the system collapses. I have to admit I have some of these
myself, but if the System goes down, putting sticking plasters (band-aids) on a torn
artery is not a solution. I have suggested designing a suitable alt-coin as a way
forward, but for various reasons, I doubt it will work.

One point in bitcoin's favour is that this population is somewhat familiar with
exponential change.

Wow! would take me atleast a week to read it all and absrorb. too much info. And yes like history.

But is there any other god but the Human Intellect? If we listen to Buddha we may as well spend our lives in mental masturbation oops sorry "meditation". Epicurus slaps Buddha everytime, and Chryssipus tells him to get over it.
I would also add North Korea too...
Barbarians, with silk road money. nothing exceptional about them.

Working a minimum wage job is effectively a debt bondage.

Debtors prison idea goes hand in hand with modern banking it was short lived in the history of civilization, economists realized there was untapped economic potential there*. Re-read the tread to see how it was resolved in feudal times. Debt as you know it is a relatively new idea.

Today we resolve the problem of income inequality with inflation and bankruptcies.**

Check out  David Graeber,  DEBT: The First 5,000 Years

Edit
* keeping someone in debtors prison is a liability. Forgiving them by allowing bankruptcy puts them back in the economy as an asset.

** the solution is ineffective the 1% avoid inflation and as the wealth of the 99% moves to up the pyramid it impoverished the poor and is now eroding the middle class.

I thought a debt that could not be repaid or had no possibility of being repaid meant ending up in debtors prison or you had to undergo some sort of debt bondage?

He is saying to prevent wealth accumulation debt needs to be forgiven approximately every 42-49 years. This is historically how civilization has managed to get this far. He is making an argument that we can do this with a new altcoin.

Check out An introduction to the history of the Roman empire.

"ROME: Rise and fall of an empire - Part 1/14" on YouTube

It will take you 2 weeks - try and spot mistakes we are repeating.

No clue man, apparently he wants to compare Ancient Rome to modern digital currency, or at least I think he is??? I have no idea man

Can somebody here give us a brief summary as to what the OP is trying to tell us? I fear there is some sort of language barrier.

    Quite simply put, the West never managed it either. The separation of Church and state are an illusion- the enlightenment was a power grab by merchants and guilds on the Church and aristocracies monopoly on manufacture/interpretation of "truth", and thereby political and economic power. The values of humanism, like human rights, that form the basis for the law in the "secular" democracies, are based firmly in Christian theology. If you try to take them to their logical extreme by applying reason to them, they collapse into a sociopathic utilitarianism where the combined potential of society is directed towards hedonism with a pyramidal hierarchy as the socio-economic structure and impetus for all progress, much like the one we live in today. In other words, democracy is a religion where the god that is worshipped is the human intellect, or the human worships its self- and the possibility of humanity to supplant the divine is provided for beautifully by the interpretation of Jesus, a human, as the manifestation of God, laying the humanist foundation for communism and democracy. This worship manifests itself in an endless cycle of trying vainly to fulfill desires that only grow the more you feed them, as noted by Buddha.

     We now get to watch as this mode of existence proliferates in China.

    I don't think even the most Islamophobic historian would try to limit the Islamic golden age to the Fatimid dynasty. Do an image search for Samarkand.

Concerning democracy and roman law
You cannot attribute the post-2000+ years degeneration of an Idea as Flaw in the Idea, rather as society's failure to properly implement the idea.
Not arguing that *any* Idea can be ever properly implemented mind you, see Capitalism, Communism, Democracy.

And not claiming that sharia is a barbaric law, The west simply prefered roman law, It could be simply that the strong decoupling of Law from Religion was preferable, and IMHO better. The East never managed to do that decoupling.

Concerning the Fatmids Glory I wouldn't root it to sharia, Maybe the Muslim states should revisit that Era.

No shit. OP,


(tagged so you see a reply to you specifically)

I'm going to run through your work, and I'm very pleased to have the opportunity. 12 posts, activity = 12. God, we need more of you and less of... well, mostly everyone else new. Quality over quantity, and original thought. (I assume. This is all original work? In that, the summarization and inference are yours?)

   First off, thanks to the OP for this excellent and informative post. As this forum grows it's good to see that quality posters are still around.


  I haven't noticed the ecological collapse hypothesis in the discussion here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_during_the_Roman_period


  Just one more factor to add to the consideration of everything else discussed here.

  As for the comment about sharia law-

   First off, I'm guessing you haven't made any effort to look beyond a smear campaign unprecedented in human history to discredit the ideological foundations of the Islamic civil and judicial system (we're talking a propaganda campaign in the tens if not hundreds of billions of $$$)- the same ideology that just happens to underlie the only group that presents a credible threat to the hegemony of the Egyptian-Greco-Roman intellectual tradition that is today manifest in US dominance and the institution of the nation-state and the structure of the UN.

    Secondly, the justice of the Roman system, or the "freedom" of America looks a lot different if you broaden your perspective to the planetary rather than national level. While it is possible to point out the criminal basis for American empire on a national level, it is much easier to point out that the pathetic masquerade of justice in the Roman legal system used in the US right now is entirely dependent on supporting vassal states around the world where simply speaking against injustice means immediate persecution and torture for the one speaking up, and their whole family/tribe. That is to say, if you look at the hundreds of thousands of corpses in the middle east whose deaths can be directly linked to US policies in parallel to the economic boom of the 90's, maybe the political order of the Roman legal system of the US would not seem like "the lesser evil."

     The crime rate, including drug addiction and child abuse, continues to grow in the US, as does the prison population, with an average cost of about 30,000 dollars a year per inmate. The prison population in the US is higher than the combined population of all Soviet gulags at any point in the Soviet Union, and at a much higher cost- taken at gunpoint directly from the working people who pay a disproportionate share of income to support the system.

  Maybe the reason the media, owned entirely by a few of the elite who pay such a tiny fraction of their income in tax compared to the working people, is so hostile to sharia isn't because it goes contrary to human rights- maybe it's because THERE IS NO INCOME TAX in sharia... oh, but how is it that that was never mentioned on the news? There is, however, a WEALTH tax... so who would the implementation of this system really hurt? No wonder the people who control your mind are afraid of this "fundamentalist" ideology that through free movement of people, goods, and ideas provided the basis for the European renaissance and thereby the technology we enjoy today. Just to recap- the media is owned by a few people who are extremely rich, and sharia would tax this wealth, leading to the extreme rich waging war (both christians and nominal muslims) against the people seeking to institute the application of this law. Ever seen the treasury at the vatican?

  Do you honestly think that the hundreds of millions of people who want to apply this law in their homelands and are violently put down by regimes supported by US tax dollars are just totally bereft of all sense? Why is it that some Arab "barbarians" defeated the numerically and technologically superior Roman and Persian empires in such a short span and instituted a golden age that outshone the brightest days of Athens? Why is it that you have never, ever heard even one, not even ONE report on TV that even mentioned offhand a single positive aspect of sharia? And why are you still swallowing what they feed you?

  As Spengler puts it, democracy is the rule of money, and the mechanism of that rule is the media. Whoever is interested in the truth, can find it. Whoever denies the truth because accepting it would mean having to change their lifestyle, will probably continue to do so.

  Again, awesome thread, keep up the good work.

When in Rome...

So does an asteroid, just wait for the dinosaurs when they come back to life and start using the human remains as gasoline to power their dino-cars

Sneering is a good way to protect yourself from facts and logic, for a while.  They do tend to come crashing through eventually, however.

WTF im reading 
Srsly?

we (west) kept more than bits, take a look at sharia and you will see how bad a law system can go.
it still is, only problem now you now have more heads to coup.