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Comment by tasubotadas | Hacker News Reader

>And empires must fall

Why?

I am not a historian, but I cannot think of any empire where there was no coercion. I read it in this context: Empires must fall, because "Absolute power corrupts absolutely".

Disclosure: I work at Cliqz.

In fairness, you'd also need to concede that there has never been a single independent village where there was no coercion. Mankind's history is mostly a story of how we have related to each other in forced groupings. (Forced by Mother Nature's many threats in the prehistoric past, but still, forced.)

So is it necessary that every grouping of man, "must fall", because there exists "coercion" in those groupings?

Just as a matter of full disclosure:

My own view is that any grouping must fall only when the grouping provides no, or very little, actual benefit to it's constituent members. Western Rome fell when people in Lutecia, Londonus, or even Ravenna were no longer deriving real benefit from being inside the Roman polity. Which arguably was long before Odoacer finally had enough and put an end to the charade.

Generally speaking, empires are negative entities. The work because they took advantage of being first (or first to be successful) and used that advantage to absorb the wealth of those they conquer. While a lot of productive things can come out of such an environment, at its heart the empire is sustained by consumption. When there is less to conquer, there is less wealth available for the wealthy, but the desires of the powerful is to always increase. The wealthy use power to to start pulling wealth from the empire. The common identity of the empire is destroyed and the wealth is no longer available to defend the empire, so the empire is ultimately absorbed by the next identity that comes along.

Wealth isn't some finite quantity that is merely taken or traded between a group of individuals. This is highly ignorant of economics and is a worldview that sadly what drives a lot of hysteria around wealth inequality (that when one person has more wealth it means they deprived it from another person who would have had it otherwise, combined with the idea it just sits there in a bank account not being used or it's all being spent like a consumer).

It is not a given that massive wealth accumulation involves depriving others of wealth but it's also very often the case.

While it's ridiculous to view wealth as a finite thing, it's just as ridiculous to imply hysteria over wealth inequality is based in ignorance. There is a long-standing trend of capitalists treating lower classes as exploitable resources undeserving of the means to have a healthy and happy existence beyond what keeps them productive inside the constraints of the current system.

Median salaries haven't been stagnant while the rich get richer because that's what's best for everyone, it's because that's what's best for the people with control.

Just for the record, many people who oppose and criticise massive wealth inequality are fully aware of the basics of economics (or even advanced economics).

because they’re often brittle and create closed systems

This feels like tautological reasoning.

Brittle empires fall.

The Chinese empire has a history (including mutations to its government) spanning thousands of years.

> the last Chinese dynasty — the Qing dynasty — fell in 1911–1912, it marked the end of the nation's incredibly long imperial history.

It marked the end of that government, but the nation of China is still very much an empire, by definition of its ambition and cultural reach exceeding its borders. In the same sense that the US and UK are empires.

Of course, if you use a custom definition for everything and cherry pick informations, everything is possible.

But no, it wasn't just the end of the government, it also meant losing almost 30% of its territory.

https://imgur.com/r/mapporn/Cdi6KOL

> In the same sense that the US and UK are empires.

UK was an empire, and it's already fallen, it is now on the brink of losing even the Kingdom and becoming an Island hosting borders and customs.

U.S. is not really an empire, never was. It is more the mandator of many bad things that happened in the last 70 years, that turned many countries into U.S. colonies through "exporting democracy" which actually translated too many times as "planting dictatorships befriended with U.S.A.". But it was good for U.S. and only U.S.

That's why Cliqz has reasons to exist, U.S. is an unreliable ally, even more now and Europe needs to

> building the foundation for a sovereign digital future of Europe

> develop digital key technologies as a European alternative to the market dominating US platforms.

> If We Don’t Act Now, We Will Become a Digital Colony

I'm going by the Wikipedia definition, to wit: "An imperial political structure can be established and maintained in two ways: (i) as a territorial empire of direct conquest and control with force or (ii) as a coercive, hegemonic empire of indirect conquest and control with power." The US and China are the latter. The UK's power has slipped, but it's still in this category with extraterritorial colonies. A specific emperor is structurally optional.

But the Chinese Empire has already fallen and changed radically, U.S.S.R. is not the same thing as the Russian Empire, even though they shared most of the same territory.

The point was that every empire falls sooner or later and that it happened to China as well.

And yet it fell.

An empire crumbling under its own weight is different from deliberately destroying one because we dislike it.

You have to see yourself that it is a pretty week argument.

I guess they don’t necessarily have to fall, but from a historical perspective I think it’s safe to say that empires will fall.

Because they only serve their own systemic survival and we have other systems of power and governance that can do more on top of this.

Why? Because they hit a ceiling of the paradox of development. Development introduces problems that their current system cannot fix, and they face crisis: either breakthrough the ceiling or fail. Usually breakthrough is associated with figuring a new ways to extract more energy from the environment (industrial revolution).

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