The Fall of the Roman Empire

For the students of history…

Arnold J. Toynbee and James Burke postulated the following theory as to the fall of the ‘first’ Republic, the Roman Empire.

They argued that the Roman Empire itself was a poorly designed economic system from the beginning. They further postulated that the entire Imperial era was one of steady decay of institutions founded in Republican times. In their view, the Empire could never have lasted longer than it did without radical reforms that no Emperor could implement. The Romans had no effective system for managing budgets, and utilized their resources as they became available. The entire Roman economy was based on looting the conquered territories rather than producing anything. Essentially, they were solely a consumption economy. With the end of Roman territorial expansion, there were fewer resources to loot, not to mention likely leakage of resources to neighboring empires from people escaping Roman oppression. The pattern of excessive tax collection pushed many small-scale farmers into destitution or into dependency upon a landed élite. As taxes declined from conquered territory, the citizens themselves undertook the increasing burden of financially supporting the very large military machine.

The Roman Empire produced few exportable goods. Material innovation had come to a dramatic slowdown long before the final dissolution of the Empire. Meanwhile the costs of military defense and the pomp of Emperors continued. Financial needs continued to increase, but the means of meeting them steadily eroded. Due to an overall economic failure, the armor and weaponry of soldiers became so obsolete that imperial enemies had larger, more well-equipped armies. the social order in many cases was so poor that barbarian invaders found that citizens sometimes welcomed the release from the bindings of the Empire. Eventually, barbarian conquerors saw no benefit to maintenance of the title or position of Emperor of Rome, and allowed it to fade into nonexistence. Many historians point to this as the official end of the Roman Empire.

As we look at our own system in the United States, what possible parallels can be drawn?