Salvian, a 5th-century Roman priest, wrote from Rome (Italy) in 440 AD that taxes were crushing, bureaucracy corrupt, and empire extractive — the cost of being Roman had exceeded its worth for ordinary people. He was watching collapse in real time, and the argument is that barbarians didn't beat Rome (Italy) so much as Rome (Italy) made itself a worse deal than the alternatives. The parallels are striking: US Federal Register regulations grew from 3,450 pages in 1937 to 107,262 by 2024, and the 1913 tax code was just four pages long. Tainter's line is the one I keep returning to — collapse never announces itself; from the inside at the peak, everything looks like it's working. 📜⚖️
Video links Salvian's 440 AD Rome (Italy) to modern regulatory and tax complexity
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Key facts
- Salvian, a Roman priest writing in the 5th century AD, is quoted in the video as concluding that the empire was extractive, that taxes were crushing, and that bureaucracy had become corrupt, so that for ordinary people the cost of being Roman exceeded its worth
- The video places Salvian's observation in Rome (Italy) in 440 AD and presents his conclusion as seeing the collapse happening in real time
- The video argues that barbarians did not defeat Rome (Italy) because Rome (Italy) made itself a worse deal than the alternatives were
- The official US Federal Register of regulations grew from 3,450 pages in 1937 to 107,262 pages in 2024, roughly 31 times larger, with the growth coming from agency regulations rather than statutes passed by Congress
- The US tax code was four pages in 1913; current estimates range from 6,000 to 75,000 pages depending on what is counted
- Modern parallels cited include the 2008 bank failure transmitting economic shocks internationally and AI being integrated into military systems, power grids, healthcare and financial markets by developers who say they do not fully understand its outputs
- Tainter is quoted in the video as saying collapse does not announce itself: from inside a society at its peak, everything appears to be working until it is not
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