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Comment by hliyan | Hacker News Reader

CHAP. II seems to indicate that what the world is experiencing now, and experienced at the turn of the twentieth century, is a recurring phenomenon: a growing, systemic asymmetry in power and wealth, un-remedied and eventually resulting in a catastrophic reorganisation of the social order (and then the cycle restarts).

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The Greeks even had a word for this recurring cycle: kyklos. The historian Polybius believed the Roman constitution allowed them to avoid this cycle by balancing the forces of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. You can compare and contrast the constitutional setup in Rome in his Book 6;

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Polybius/6...

Of course, he stopped writing towards the end of the second century BC when Rome’s Republic began to slowly fall apart, but even the Empire that came after proved somewhat durable.

"proved somewhat durable"

People consider Norway or Switzerland durable because they lasted 800+ years so far.

The Eastern Roman Empire, as a continuation of the unified Empire, lasted more than twice as long, on much bigger territory which attracted all sorts of external invaders (Goths, Persians, Arabs, Slavs, Crusaders, Venetians, Turks).

Compared to the ancient-ness of the Romans, England and Sweden are middle-age countries, the US is a youngster with a fresh driving licence and the EU is a toddler who can barely say "mama".

Of the currently existing countries, only Japan seems somewhat comparable to the Roman Empire as far as continuity goes, and it is an island state well shielded against invaders by the sea and its fierce storms.

Norway is probably the worst example to choose of the Scandinavian countries. They have barely been an independent nation for 200 of those years.

In reality, Denmark is one of the only countries in (Northern) Europe to have been completely independent for a milenia .

> People consider Norway or Switzerland durable because they lasted 800+ years so far.

France has lasted longer than that so far, more or less since Clovis I was crowned king of the Franks in 509. (it does not disprove your point, that's just for context).

> the EU is a toddler

The EU is not a nation or a state, and does not pretend or try to be one; it's a strange thing to include in your list.

Depends on your definition of continuity. Succession crises, revolts and changing borders have been the norm throughout history and I’d argue we still haven’t found political structures which are guaranteed to prevent them. Even during the Republic, you could argue (as Harriet Flower has, for example) that Rome experienced several discontinuities between the kings and Augustus.

Everyone's limit is different, but I would say that most people wouldn't consider contemporary Turkey (a republic speaking a Turkic language whose population is mostly Muslim) a continuation of the Eastern Roman empire in any but purely geographical meaning, so we have a fairly clean break around 1453, when the ruling elite in Constantinople was forcibly displaced by an entirely different group of people with other traditions, languages etc.

On the other hand, mere Christianization of the Roman Empire doesn't seem as crucial (pun intended) as to create a break in its statehood. Most of the institutions went on just like before, most of the important families stayed the same, the legal system and the language of the realm didn't change at all or only very little etc.

The republic period is more interesting, but I believe that the Romans considered themselves the same people and the some country in that period, without breaks in identity - which IMHO should matter more than a purely academic take from the early 21st century.

There definitely was tension between imperial Roman identity and Hellenic identity after the sack of Constantinople in 1204, at least, so I think even here it’s not simple. But I’m not so much arguing about that, rather that an empire with constant succession crises, revolts and civil wars isn’t really gaining much from passing down the same titles and blood-spattered regalia each time. But as you rightly say, everyone’s limit is different.

Well, the imperium does not consist of titles and regalia only. It also means established trade routes and various institutions (schools, the navy, churches, possibly parliaments, legal codes, urban development standards) that make the world of an average citizen more predictable and living standards somewhat higher.

From where I live, the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian empire put a lot of economical and ethnic strain on the successor states, destabilizing the entire Central European region and making it an easy target for imperial intents of Germany and Soviet Russia.

And even today, in Czechia of 2022, we have a lot of A-H legacies in our daily lives, like paying with "the crown" and using the same kilometre markings along our railway routes, beginning with 0 = Vienna.

Empires tend to consist of much more than just the ruling class.

Let’s imagine I’d not used the word ‘durable’. What I’m interested in is whether there was anything in the Greek or Roman constitutions (or any since) that prevented cycles of tyranny, oligarchic excess, and popular uprising. However long the ostensible empires lasted, I see very little that worked. And despite my experience being young in the 90s where we’d perhaps convinced ourselves we’d reached some post-history period in parts of the West, it’s clear we still haven’t cracked the formula.

the EU is a toddler

I don't think the EU should be in that list at all, as it isn't a nation. Not by the UN definition, nor by its own.

Power and wealth is always asymmetric. The effect is competent people holding power and building some impressive society -> slow reversion to the mean of that society's elites -> a challenge comes up that requires renewal and an above-average response which they can't meet -> collapse.

To me it seems like there is a lot more to this building-flourishing-decay-collapse cycle than power and competence with regression to the mean. I first got interested by this topic after reading "The Fate of Empires" [1] where the author puts the "blame" so to speak, not on competence, but on the generational gap. His thesis is that it takes approximately 10 generations before the values that built the society are no longer followed by their descendants.

[1] http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf

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