I've often stated that a historian of any variety, whether advising, teaching, on television or doing research, is basically worthless in understanding why things happen if they don't fastidiously account for the finacial incentives behind events.
Empires collapse through plunder of local resources and attention by internationalists using deficit spending to finance military campaigns. That is all (unless you include catastrophe events of natural disaster)
As it stands from what I can see our account of recent history appears wilfully naive because those involved in the discipline simply do not have the grasp of macroeconomics or the social architecture to escape the romanticised ideological prism they are using.
To sideline the realities and dynamics of social heirachy is to sideline human nature itself. You can't do that because history is about humans. They know this because when they understand this they DO INTERPET history that way. Interpretation of written history (especially in empires) is usually the interpretation of propaganda. This requires an understanding , that is not based in sentiment, of what is really behind human behavior.
When your history expert is invited onto network TV by the MSM, and appears to be swallowing all the BS narratives behind the military campaigns, attempting as resident expert to relate things to the past for viewers, and talks as if the US is a sovereign military, discusses terrorism with no mention of the way the military industrial complex factors into the incentive structure, no mention of resources or political ambitions such as regime change for financial incentive like piplenes, oil etc then l have news for you. It's not looking good. Are these people going to piece the evidence together from the past when they can't even get a handle on last week Tuesday?
That world view is either so hopelessly naive, or corrupted by ideological prejudice itself, that such an individual cannot possibly posses the faculties of critical thought required to properly interpret the past. I hope I have shown that it is this useless perspective that has prevented us from learning from the past. History of the great civilizations are especially heirarchical, the elite in all societies (above all) want money, power, influence and status. As it stands the historical record of these empires, with a few exceptions, reflects ideological drivers of war and important elements such as nationalism, religious crusades or tribalism only receive light psychoanalytical review. Once more these ideologies are the very means of control over masses and cannot be viewed as drivers in and of themselves in a vacuum. In other words just like it works today. This is sometimes pointed out in the historical records and the inconsistency appears commensurate with the particular bent of the standing political climate, history is written by the victors. But who are the victors? Who in a society controls the narrative?
Part 1 covers Divide & Rule, Essential if you haven't read it:
https://dwahts.blogspot.com/2018/06/how-to-defeat-most-effective-social.html?m=1
And, just like today those BS reasons were more often than not just PR for peasants, or rather the contemporary equivalence of "Brutal Dictator, Hearts and minds, WMD's" etc. Constantine did not exclusively march to the beat of a christan warrior drum, and those around him too were certainly not apolitical either. In fact it takes a high degree of spin mastery to convert the idea of sacrifice on the crucifix cross, to the imagery evoked by cross of an upturned sword. The Christian lion imagery used in popular culture finds its way to books written by authors such as C.S. Lewis far more frequently than the "lamb of God" image which the Bible sought to evoke. At these stakes you cannot cite agendas and incentives at face value, it's unacceptably academically lazy. Where is the curiosity over big money? Who were the Patrons of Marx, The Boksheviks, Michaelangelo, De Vinci, Robespierre and the Ancient Greeks? Freud?
To sideline the realities and dynamics of social heirachy is to sideline human nature itself. You can't do that because history is about humans. They know this because when they understand this they DO INTERPET history that way. Interpretation of written history (especially in empires) is usually the interpretation of propaganda. This requires an understanding , that is not based in sentiment, of what is really behind human behavior.
Rome used some creative ways to finance the war effort.
When your history expert is invited onto network TV by the MSM, and appears to be swallowing all the BS narratives behind the military campaigns, attempting as resident expert to relate things to the past for viewers, and talks as if the US is a sovereign military, discusses terrorism with no mention of the way the military industrial complex factors into the incentive structure, no mention of resources or political ambitions such as regime change for financial incentive like piplenes, oil etc then l have news for you. It's not looking good. Are these people going to piece the evidence together from the past when they can't even get a handle on last week Tuesday?
That world view is either so hopelessly naive, or corrupted by ideological prejudice itself, that such an individual cannot possibly posses the faculties of critical thought required to properly interpret the past. I hope I have shown that it is this useless perspective that has prevented us from learning from the past. History of the great civilizations are especially heirarchical, the elite in all societies (above all) want money, power, influence and status. As it stands the historical record of these empires, with a few exceptions, reflects ideological drivers of war and important elements such as nationalism, religious crusades or tribalism only receive light psychoanalytical review. Once more these ideologies are the very means of control over masses and cannot be viewed as drivers in and of themselves in a vacuum. In other words just like it works today. This is sometimes pointed out in the historical records and the inconsistency appears commensurate with the particular bent of the standing political climate, history is written by the victors. But who are the victors? Who in a society controls the narrative?
Part 1 covers Divide & Rule, Essential if you haven't read it:
https://dwahts.blogspot.com/2018/06/how-to-defeat-most-effective-social.html?m=1
And, just like today those BS reasons were more often than not just PR for peasants, or rather the contemporary equivalence of "Brutal Dictator, Hearts and minds, WMD's" etc. Constantine did not exclusively march to the beat of a christan warrior drum, and those around him too were certainly not apolitical either. In fact it takes a high degree of spin mastery to convert the idea of sacrifice on the crucifix cross, to the imagery evoked by cross of an upturned sword. The Christian lion imagery used in popular culture finds its way to books written by authors such as C.S. Lewis far more frequently than the "lamb of God" image which the Bible sought to evoke. At these stakes you cannot cite agendas and incentives at face value, it's unacceptably academically lazy. Where is the curiosity over big money? Who were the Patrons of Marx, The Boksheviks, Michaelangelo, De Vinci, Robespierre and the Ancient Greeks? Freud?
Excercise in historic propaganda.
Diogenes the Cynic (Διογένης ὁ Κυνικός, Diogénēs ho Kynikós), was a Greek philosopher and one of the founders of Cynic philosophy. He was born in Sinope, an Ionian colony on the Black Sea,[1] in 412 or 404 BC and died at Corinth in 323 BC.[2]
Diogenes was a controversial figure. His father minted coins for a living, and Diogenes was banished from Sinope when he took to debasement of currency.[1] After being exiled, he moved to Athens and criticized many cultural conventions of the city. Diogenes was also noted for having mocked Alexander the Great, both in public and to his face when he visited Corinth in 336 BC.[5][6][7]
What I propose is that the above philosopher is more noteworthy for his
Minting /banking connections and his encounter with Alexander the Great,
Son of Phillip 2 Macedonia, which sounds manufactured. The real story lies
Somewhere there!
It strikes me as obvious too that a Serbian lone nut shooting an Archduke is no reason, even as a catalyst, for the world to watch powerlessly as they are dragged by the littany of treaties and pacts binding them "article 5" style into a horrific global war, conveniently financed by the same interests behind the pacts themselves. It should be obvious the key to understanding the architecture of war surely lies in the incorporated entities tied to the financial lenders of global deficit spending, the arms manufacturing industries, resources, mining and geopolitical routes or strategic advantage to multinational corporation interests (just as much as national interests) as well as industries servicing the war efforts, civil engineering and infrastructure contracts. But this is more than just historians and naivety of course because at play here is the elephant in the room, there is a conflict of interest when the entities in question have a causal connection to economic and political abuses of the past getting called out when that shines an unfavorable light onto their current operations. That's basic detective work and its where things get interesting if you are someone that chooses understanding our past choices rather than indulging in romance.
The established reasoning of things is pure fantasy, those people reporting a CNN version of today's current times for example would report (concluding logically) about the US empire being undone by immigrants, blowback and hostile invaders in its territories and colonies, sprawling expansive military bases and influence, hedonistic indulgence's and excessively grand theater to opiate the masses. I'm not saying these are wrong, as with the past. These are more often than not symptoms of one thing. One thing always undoes empire and produces the same symptoms of class divide culturally. Loss of sound money. When a nation loses sound money, and military campaigns are funded by deficit spending, campaigns become more about greed and power than defense and propaganda skyrockets. It was so with Athens and Sparta in the Peloponnesian wars. Same with Rome, starting with the desire to end Hannibal of Carthage where rulers began deficit spending to finace the war effort. You can deficit spend with gold and silver coin by diluting them with cheap metals like copper. Just like today it was a hidden tax that devalues the coinage in circulation by expanding the money supply by coin clipping, melting old gold and silver down and diluting it with copper and spending more than they had by elimating the very thing that gave value to Gold and Silver, SCARCITY. Today in a broadstrokes sense this is QE and fractional reserve gearing of money, or money printing,
The economic degrading of the fundamental basis of a monetary system is bad for the peoples side of an economy. But its not actually what destroys it. It's the centralised power to create the money you deficit spend that separates the need and dependency of taxation, and therefore accountability disappears once taxpayers or voter oversight is removed and corruption explodes as the powerful are now in a position to place ambition over accountability. Leaders become bosses of the public (instead of public servants.
This practice actually changes the definition of MONEY to CURRENCY because it's no longer a store of value, it's inflationary. Interestingly today still mainly in response to funding military campaigns.
All the other symptoms directly all result from this and for the most part it's reported that the inflation of money supply is "fitness of coin" decline, IE is a consequence, instead of the driver of decline.
This is a FUNDAMENTAL misunderstanding. This understanding is a direct and total result of historians reporting history, CNN style, ideologically naively, instead of understanding it in terms of human nature and what drives the elites vs what are the peasants told.
The established reasoning of things is pure fantasy, those people reporting a CNN version of today's current times for example would report (concluding logically) about the US empire being undone by immigrants, blowback and hostile invaders in its territories and colonies, sprawling expansive military bases and influence, hedonistic indulgence's and excessively grand theater to opiate the masses. I'm not saying these are wrong, as with the past. These are more often than not symptoms of one thing. One thing always undoes empire and produces the same symptoms of class divide culturally. Loss of sound money. When a nation loses sound money, and military campaigns are funded by deficit spending, campaigns become more about greed and power than defense and propaganda skyrockets. It was so with Athens and Sparta in the Peloponnesian wars. Same with Rome, starting with the desire to end Hannibal of Carthage where rulers began deficit spending to finace the war effort. You can deficit spend with gold and silver coin by diluting them with cheap metals like copper. Just like today it was a hidden tax that devalues the coinage in circulation by expanding the money supply by coin clipping, melting old gold and silver down and diluting it with copper and spending more than they had by elimating the very thing that gave value to Gold and Silver, SCARCITY. Today in a broadstrokes sense this is QE and fractional reserve gearing of money, or money printing,
The economic degrading of the fundamental basis of a monetary system is bad for the peoples side of an economy. But its not actually what destroys it. It's the centralised power to create the money you deficit spend that separates the need and dependency of taxation, and therefore accountability disappears once taxpayers or voter oversight is removed and corruption explodes as the powerful are now in a position to place ambition over accountability. Leaders become bosses of the public (instead of public servants.
This practice actually changes the definition of MONEY to CURRENCY because it's no longer a store of value, it's inflationary. Interestingly today still mainly in response to funding military campaigns.
All the other symptoms directly all result from this and for the most part it's reported that the inflation of money supply is "fitness of coin" decline, IE is a consequence, instead of the driver of decline.
This is a FUNDAMENTAL misunderstanding. This understanding is a direct and total result of historians reporting history, CNN style, ideologically naively, instead of understanding it in terms of human nature and what drives the elites vs what are the peasants told.
How the Medici dynasty used these tactics to skirt regulation between the Venetian financial boom and the renaissance
https://tontinecoffeehouse.com/2019/01/21/the-medici-bank-and-letters-of-credit/
Nothing has changed and in case you don't believe me I've broken down the costs of the financial source of funding of to today's prevailing empire, the US voter and taxpayer. Deficit spending is still rife and exponentially increasing just like Rome or the City States of Athens and Sparta, it's deficit spending to fund expensive and extensive Military campaigns, also foreign, also to serve the interests of empire expanding elites (the equivalent of today's globalists) rather than the interests of its citizens, the taxpayers who ultimately absorb the loss of purchasing power currency experiences when you expand the money supply without increasing its output manufacturing and GDP. Any spoils of war go to the elites, not the citizens or colonies doing the fighting. Bank bailouts and war dominate deficit spending still today.
https://dwahts.blogspot.com/2018/02/facts-how-much-taxpayer-money-has-us.html?m=1
We never learn from history because we explain "effect" as the "cause". Its almost as if central banks are writing history books in their spare time (which I would not rule out mind you) Take this example from the esteemed Encyclopedia Britannica: "The weights of gold coinages were kept at a reasonably steady level, though fineness ultimately declined with the economic decline of the issuing kingdoms themselves."
Utter rubbish.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/coin/Coinage-in-western-continental-Europe-Africa-and-the-Byzantine-Empire
Stay away from establishment trained historians, they do not know their ass from their elbow. And while those who understand macroeconomic monetary economics, history and sound monetary policy are rare, they do exist, let me kick start you.
Nothing has changed and in case you don't believe me I've broken down the costs of the financial source of funding of to today's prevailing empire, the US voter and taxpayer. Deficit spending is still rife and exponentially increasing just like Rome or the City States of Athens and Sparta, it's deficit spending to fund expensive and extensive Military campaigns, also foreign, also to serve the interests of empire expanding elites (the equivalent of today's globalists) rather than the interests of its citizens, the taxpayers who ultimately absorb the loss of purchasing power currency experiences when you expand the money supply without increasing its output manufacturing and GDP. Any spoils of war go to the elites, not the citizens or colonies doing the fighting. Bank bailouts and war dominate deficit spending still today.
https://dwahts.blogspot.com/2018/02/facts-how-much-taxpayer-money-has-us.html?m=1
We never learn from history because we explain "effect" as the "cause". Its almost as if central banks are writing history books in their spare time (which I would not rule out mind you) Take this example from the esteemed Encyclopedia Britannica: "The weights of gold coinages were kept at a reasonably steady level, though fineness ultimately declined with the economic decline of the issuing kingdoms themselves."
Utter rubbish.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/coin/Coinage-in-western-continental-Europe-Africa-and-the-Byzantine-Empire
Stay away from establishment trained historians, they do not know their ass from their elbow. And while those who understand macroeconomic monetary economics, history and sound monetary policy are rare, they do exist, let me kick start you.
The consequences: The stages of empires who believed they would the first to break economic laws successfully by deficit spending ad infinitum.
Rome compared to the USA