Slashdot Mirror
How Concrete Contributed To the Downfall of the Roman Empire
concertina226 (2447056) writes "The real reason behind the downfall of the Roman Empire might not have been lead contaminating in the water, which is the most popular theory, but the use of concrete as a building material. Dr Penelope Davies, a historian with the University of Texas believes that the rise of concrete as a building material may have weakened ancient Rome's entire political system as Pompey and Julius Caesar began 'thinking like kings'. Concrete was used to build many of Rome's finest monuments, such as the Pantheon, the Colosseum and the Tabularium, which have lasted the test of time and are still standing today."
The Romans found out that when you build a society on the assumption of permanent growth, when you stop growing... you stop existing. And today's business leaders, who don't pay attention to history unless it makes them money, are repeating the same mistake.
I am now dumber having read that article. Nowhere does it explain how concrete may have caused the downfall of the Roman empire.
I see projects being built with concrete every day!
I'm going to start accosting random people in the street, "We have to stop them! We have to stop them from using concrete!!!"
I think I will dress as a clown to more effectively get their attention!
Thanks, Slashdot, for my new summer project!
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Be relieved, with everything built from two-by-fours and drywall sheets, decline is averted.
...of bullshit. How this poorly written piece of crap got on Slashdot, I have no idea.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Oil? Drones? Junk food? We are heading in pretty much the same direction, and for the same reasons. Political infighting and disrespect for constitution (like Julius Caesar becoming a dictator) do it every time.
The article says:
The Roman Republic preceded the Roman Empire. The historically literate person is saying that concrete helped in the transition from the Republic - which was controlled by the senate and consuls with limited terms, to the Empire, which was ruled by a single emperor for long stretches.
Concrete helped start the Empire, not end it.
The empire wouldn't end in Rome for another 600 years. It wouldn't end in general for another 1600 or so. It lasted so long, at least partly, because of all its durable buildings and bridges.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
This referenced article is rediculous. First of all, the title says "Downfall of the Roman Empire", but Caesar FOUNDED the Roman Empire, so clearly it did not cause the empire's fall. I suspect they meant the fall of the Roman REPUBLIC, which preceded the empire. But it's still garbage. What most emperors wanted was power, not concrete buildings. The article doesn't even begin to make a connection between the two. If you want more about the history of the (Western) Roman republic and empire, listen to AWESOME "The History of Rome" podcast: http://thehistoryofrome.typepa... It's fantastic.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
Worst... article... ever...
It looks like the article writer may have completely misunderstood the research. It looks like Prof. Davies is saying that the end of the republic and the start of the empire was a result of concrete usage. In the article she is quoted as saying "One could even say that it played a significant role in bringing down the Republic." and mentioned Julius Caesar and Pompey using concrete in their building to help shore up their political power by building permanent structures.
Everything other than the article's writer synopsis points to the era of the end of the republic, not the end of the western empire some 400-500 years later.
Maybe the crazy desire to continually expand and build everything under the sun with concrete resulted from drinking all that water from the lead lined pipes!
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Endless factional infighting combined with ever more rebellious provinces and incursions from surrounding regions did for the western roman empire. It managed quite nicely for hundreds of years without permanent growth - in the sense of territory - so that had nothing to do with it.
Besides, the eastern roman empire - otherwise known as Bytzantium - continued until the 15th century when the ottomans finally conquered constantinople. Thats almost 2000 years. The british empire barely managed 200, the soviets 70 and the 3rd reich about 10. Give credit where its due!
So concrete allowed to end the Republic and start the actual Roman Empire.
The professor did not make that claim that concreted contributed to the end of the Republic/Empire. Instead she claimed that the use of Concrete demonstrated a psychological weakness - arrogance and that that weakness caused the end of Rome.
At heart, it is a "They became rich, fat and spoiled" argument. Never that convincing, as I have seen many rich, fat, spoiled people go on to do amazing things.
The thing is if you are rich, fat, spoiled and talented, then people call you smart and ignore the rich, fat and spoiled part.
If you aren't talented, then people talk about the rich, fat and spoiled part.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
lead contaminating in the water
Whew -- for a second there I was worried that the lead would contaminate the water, rather than contaminating itself ("in the water").
This article makes little sense, it doesn't deliver any explanation for such thesis.
But everyone already knows that one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs.
I love the charmingly simplistic explanations of why the Western Roman Empire fell (the Eastern Empire survived for another thousand years). FTA:
The real reason behind the downfall of the Roman Empire might not have been lead contaminating in the water, which is the most popular theory
Most popular theory amongst whom? Certainly not historians. Romans had been been using lead for centuries. Why did it suddenly become a major issue? And why didn't it affect the Eastern Empire, which also used lots of lead? Now they're blaming concrete, without any real explanation. They're also confusing the Republic and the Empire, which would get you a failing grade on a HS history test (ok, probably lower grades too).
The fall of the Western Empire is an incredibly complex thing, with many causes. If you want an overview of what actual historians think, try here. If you want to post in that subreddit though, be aware that they do not tolerate Slashdot style bullshit, or the sort of crap that the usual subreddit does. They're serious, which is what makes that subreddit so good. Answers must be from somebody who really knows the subject, explanatory, and backed by references. Otherwise you will have your comment deleted, and a third offense will get you completely banned. The complete rules are here.
If you just want to shoot the breeze and engage in idle speculation and name calling, there are other history subreddits here.
There is no concrete proof to this theory, isn't it? Oh wait...
You have foiled my plan to bring down the Western world through the introduction of Smart watches!
I came
I saw
I concreted
Cryonics - Keep cool and carry on.
Economic growth was from the deposiling of conquered peoples. By the 2nd century there were just poor, wild peoles beyond borders. Not much incentive to conquer.
"What [Caesar] was counting on is concrete," said Davies, who mentioned that the people of ancient Rome became used to politicians erecting buildings to show off their power, similar to the building projects of the Pharaohs in ancient Egypt. "One could even say that it played a significant role in bringing down the Republic."
OK they invented concrete. Concrete was cheap. It was durable, 1000 years of rain would not wash it away. They gave it a Latin name meaning ash-rock or something. So the rulers embarked on grandiose projects. Then? Why did it fall? Why did the Empire survive for 400 years after they started these grandiose projects? It makes no sense.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I understood the Colosseum was built out of large stone blocks, held together with huge iron clamps, with maybe a dab of mortar her and there. It was in use by the church for years, although not for religious purposes.
The only reason the Pantheon survives to this day is because it was converted into a church in the 7th Century. Plenty of other buildings both postdate the Pantheon and were made of concrete didn't survive.
The real reason behind the downfall of the Roman Empire might not have been lead contaminating in the water, which is the most popular theory
As a one-time historian, I can assure you that is NOT and never has been the "most popular theory." It's one of those old fringe theories that most historians regard as little more credible than "aliens did it."
The Roman Empire "fell" for the same reasons that every other empire has peaked and eventually declined--because empires inevitably overextend; run into military, economic, and social problems; and decline. There was nothing fucking magical about it.
They made their water pipes out of lead. I seriously doubt the impact of concrete was anything nearly as devistating as large portions of their population losing double digit points off their IQs and/or going insane. Pure lead is pretty stable and not that dangerous (as compared to other forms of lead like we use to put in gasoline) but using it in your water pipes is just crazy
Let me correct several points, some of which have already been pointed out by other posters:
1) Davies, who is an excellent scholar and shouldn't have to be associated with bizarre out of context fundamentally broken articles like the one linked from the summary, says that construction of public concrete buildings was a political tool used by Pompey and Julius in an escalating bid for political power. She points out that this was a factor in the end of the Roman REPUBLIC because Julius and later Augustus eventually collected enough power to bring about the establishment of the Roman EMPIRE. So while TFS, and indeed the terrible article in the ridiculously trashy "International Business Times," state that concrete led to the downfall of the empire, their source instead says that concrete was one of many factors that led to the FORMATION of the empire. In otherwords, TFS and TFA both state exactly the opposite of what the source stated.
2) This statement about concrete contributing to the founding of the Roman Empire has been present in high school textbooks for at least a hundred years. It's not news.
3) The real news that prompted the article is also misrepresented. French scholars recently published a paper pointing out that the level of lead in Roman drinking water wouldn't have had significant side effects. Both TFS and TFA state that the previous theory on the fall of the Roman Empire was that it was due to lead poisoning. This isn't even remotely accurate. Yes, crackpots have published claims that lead poisoning led to degenerate Romans. In no way has it ever, not even for a moment, been accepted by scholars as "the cause" of the Roman Empire's fall. There is no single cause of the fall of the Roman Empire. It wasn't an asteroid or aliens or disease - it lasted for a ridiculously long time and eventually fell apart over the course of about 1500 years. The number of scholars who believed that the Roman Empire "fell" because of lead poisoning was similar to the number of paleontologists who believe the dinosaurs died out because of Noah's flood.
It's too bad that the simple debunking of this crackpot theory in the study published by the French team was reported in the International Business Times by such an unintelligent reporter, and even worse that Slashdot picked the story up without recognizing the inaccuracies that any 8 year old with a 100 IQ would be able to detect.
A couple months ago Slashdot went through a transition. It became useless for awhile because every article was flooded with complaints about the new site design, but I think that there was a simultaneous shift toward poorer editing and lower quality story submissions. Maybe the cleverer Slashdot posters did what I have and mostly stopped paying attention. I've spent 10 years laughing at the people who post about how Slashdot declined since the good old days, but recent evidence shows that the decline is real and undoubtable. Perhaps the editors suffer from lead poisoning.
Or concrete.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Poor journalism contributed to the downfall of every empire.
The summary credits concrete for the fall of the Roman empire, but since the text says it was introduced into Roman building by Pompey in 55 BC, and then picked up by Julius Caesar in 48BC-- that is, just before the Romans became an empire-- it looks more as if it is crediting concrete with the ascendancy of the Roman empire. The fall of the empire wouldn't happen for several centuries yet.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Who really killed pax romana?
Actually, the premise that the Roman Empire fell because Julius Caesar began thinking like a king seems a bit wrong. The Empire was established after he died, after all, and lasted for hundreds of years after his death.
Yes, now that I look at the article more critically, the actual claim was "One could even say that it [concrete] played a significant role in bringing down the Republic."
The writer apparently confused the fall of the Roman Republic with the fall of the empire.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
When I looked a slashdot this morning and found an "interesting" article. Not necessarily news for nerds and not really stuff that matters, but hey I like history so I thought "this will be fun to read".
However the article itself can best be described as a shit nugget. I have no idea how one could postulate that concrete caused the downfall of Rome based on that lame attempt at filling columns with text. I suspect some clueless editor clipped out the part that actually presented the argument.
Thanks again slashdot!
Why are people so reluctant to blame (or praise) the downfall of Rome on Christianity? Instead we have these dubious fanciful theories: lead, concrete, too much sex, etc. Its also worth recalling Gibbon on the signs of a decaying culture:
"Concern with displaying affluence instead of building wealth;
Obsession with sex and perversions of sex;
Art becomes freakish and sensationalistic instead of creative and original;
Widening disparity between very rich and very poor;
Increased demand to live off the state.”
As bedtimes stories goes, that one sucked hind tit.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
I think that I remember reading in Livy that Rome was to last 1,300 years - 100 years for each eagle seen in a ceremony for Romulus. The Western empire continued for a time after the split that was sufficient to satisfy the prophesy.
It's the only thing from Rome that hasn't fallen.
Better yet read this:
Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. J.B. Bury with an Introduction by W.E.H. Lecky (New York: Fred de Fau and Co., 1906), in 12 vols. Vol. 1. Monday
Gibbon's classic work, still the greatest prose work in the English language IMHO, was originally published in 1776.
It is available, free of charge, at the Online Library of Liberty Website at this URL.
They have several different formats including: an HTML version converted from the original text, EBook PDF a text-based PDF created from the HTML, Facsimile PDF, an image-based PDF made from scans of the original book, and a Kindle E-book. OLL has many other classics of political theory and history available fro free downloads.
First Paragraph:
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
The article itself quotes historians saying "One could even say that [concrete] played a significant role in bringing down the [Roman] Republic" due to concrete being used in Pompey and Caesar's civic building programs, then starts the title of the article "Downfall of the Roman Empire", which was a completely different sequence events that started centuries later.
The awkward truth of the matter here is, at the time she wrote the article, the author didn't realise that the historians quoted were describing the events that lead to the birth of the Roman Empire and not the death.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
in the Tenth century . . . (ba-doom boom!)
...surely it was concrete.
But did lead poisoning lead to beta?
The concrete used by the Romans was apparently much better that the ones we use today. Since the Roman formula has been rediscovered, does that mean that todays diverse republics will be replaced by the Empire, and if so which Empire? Russian? Hegemon? Sith?
First the religious nutcases took over in 325AD, and then the Romans were defeated by the Turks and lost 1/3rd of their empire, that is what happened.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Here's the distinction: the economy doesn't need to grow, for the GDP (and various things derived from that, such as taxes and certain companies revenues) to grow. The "Broken Window Fallacy" is an objective fallacy, in that going around breaking things is obviously a net loss to the economy as a whole, but it can still be subjectively good, where the windowmaker sees good times and the government sees excellent tax revenue from taxing windows. Of course, it's just wealth-redistribution, where everyone (either through owning buildings or through paying window insurance) is subsidizing this.
As long as people are ok with giving out that subsidy (and most people are), then you can keep writing $10 checks to buy windows, where the window maker makes $3 profit per window and pays $0.60 in taxes, which funds various things that voters want. Sure, the voters might be better off spending the $10 on things they want instead, but thus 10-dollars-becomes-60-cents is "merely" inefficiency from their point of view (they don't see it as corruption, just overhead), and people are willing to tolerate a lot of that, especially if you couple it with efficiency gains that come with technological advance. (The big picture is always horrible, but it's a lot less horrible than you immediately think it should be. Tech is wonderful.)
After the singularity, we'll be able to keep our current standard of living (or a slight decline) but be able to afford to break a billion windows per day. Except the analogy breaks down and the windowmaker is actually your ISP, who is also in the entertainment (circuses) business (and energy is the modern version of "bread").
The concrete theory is nonsense as others are pointing out. I figure the Empire fell apart because holding a vast territory is harder than acquiring it. In the expansionist phase, each new conquest brings spoils and fills the coffers. When the Empire got to be a certain size, when it entered maintenance mode, the Legions shifted from a profit center to a cost center.
The "debasement of currency caused their downfall" is just part of the modern libertarian myth making. The debasement of currency in a collapsing empire is an effect not a cause. It's an effect of supporting some feature of society that the leaders feel compelled to support.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
. . . to understand what happened to the Roman Empire, read this incredibly mentally elegant, and short, paper by Prof. Joseph Tainter (the author of the classic, Collapse of Complex Societies). Hint: it is fundamentally what has, and will continue, to be the collapse of Amerika: http://dieoff.org/page134.htm
There is a good argument that the Roman Empire succumbed to an energy crises: They couldn't get enough firewood to even keep their cookfires going. Those famous Roman Roads were hauling firewood from as far away as Northern Gaul and the Danish coast. It was expensive and not the least timely. The hills around Rome were denuded of trees, and Romans spread out. Soon there was a lack of cohesiveness in Roman Society.
Pompey and Caesar were not the only rulers to make the mistake of thinking that public works construction was equivalent to productive employment; this fallacy is prevalent even in the USA today. Infrastructure on the other hand, such as the roads and harbor, greatly increased the trade in the area.
And lastly, concrete was used in Egypt a couple thousand years earlier than it was employed in the Roman Empire.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
> it claims that the fall of the *REPUBLIC* was hastened by concrete.
It doesn't really explain what concrete had to do with anything, other than building a few buildings and bridges.
The empire grew as long as there were new peoples (i.e. slaves and material resources) to be conquered at the periphery. This works for a while, but the area of a circle grows much faster than the circumference. You have to defend and maintain everything within the area of your empire, while the flow of peoples and goods coming in from the periphery shrinks in proportion as the empire grows.
So, Rome reached it's limits. Slowly. Its army eventually failed due to lack of resources and money. Without military force, the remaining group of rulers (i.e. Romans/invaders) developed the art of religious coercion and control, and the Roman empire eventually became the Holy Roman empire.
And the money continued to flow to Rome, for centuries....
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
A famous quotation by Nobel Prize winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli upon reading a poorly written paper: "It is not even wrong".
And so it is with this summary and the TFA and with the original paper.
To start off with the academic paper discussed is arguing that concrete led to the downfall of the Roman Republic NOT the Roman Empire. In other words she is claiming that it led to the rise of the Roman Empire. She argues that the availability of concrete to facilitate major engineering projects under Julius Caesar "weakened the entire political system" because it was such an awesome spectacle (apparently). As a theory of historical causality it is more than a bit daft. It seems a bit like claiming Albert Speer weakened the Weimar Republic.
Then bringing up the monocausal "lead poisoning brought down the Roman Empire" is the brain-child of the newspaper reporter who is sensationalizing, err, "covering", the academic paper. It has nothing at all to do with the concrete/Caesar/Republic thesis, but the reporter heard of this once and concludes that it was "widely believed by academics" and just threw it in for the hell of it (possibly it is the only thing she knows about Rome). This is hogwash. Any monocausal theory about the fall of Rome is going to be treated skeptically by modern historians, who have no shortage of good reasons for accounting for the end of the empire. The lead poisoning theory got a lot of press, but was never taken seriously by the community of historians, and it was debunked by other scientists pretty quickly (sure there was lead over-exposure about, but nothing like what the theory posits, and the Romans were well aware that lead could be bad for you).
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
A Monty Python reference for those who didn't know.
From Life of Brian; a fun movie.
The quote is from a meeting of the People's Front of Judea where "Reg" the leader rhetorically asked "What did the Romans ever do for us?" Followed by some discussion of all the things the Romans did do...
Reg: All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Attendee: Brought peace?
Reg: Oh, peace - shut up!
Reg: There is not one of us who would not gladly suffer death to rid this country of the Romans once and for all.
Dissenter: Uh, well, one.
Reg: Oh, yeah, yeah, there's one. But otherwise, we're solid.
Concrete contributed to the rise of Rome, and this part of Rome remains today because concrete laid by Romans is still being used in 2014.
Slashdot is written in Roman Latin letters. Hundreds of millions of people speak modern versions of Rome's Latin language. The language of modern science and medicine is Latin.
Did Rome really fall or are we Roman?
lead contaminating in the water, which is the most popular theory
Is this subtle sarcasm, lampooning how TFA tries to blame the fall of an empire on yet another side issue, or just plain ignorance of the theories surrounding the decline of the Roman empire?
Fine slashdot fare, if I ever saw it.
It would be better to say, "the fall of Rome was caused by the introduction of Slashdot. Polling shows that..."
So many things wrong with this article. First of all the entire premise that concrete stood the test of time. Simple stone is probably more durable. Concrete might have been easier to work work, and cheaper.
Anyone who has visited any of these ancient sites or knows any history would tell you that most of these ancient buildings dating back to antiquity have been almost entirely rebuilt and restored in more less modern times. Between the weather, wars, earthquakes (and other natural disasters), looting, etc... there isn't much left regardless of building material of ancient sites. Much of the Colosseum for example was destroyed in wars, earthquake, and building it on an unstable foundation. One of the more sad stories is that much of the ancient ruins were destroyed by the Vatican, as they were pagan, and were an excellent source of Marble and Bronze. I guess concrete might have more survival traits, not because it was strong, but because it wasn't very valuable. Iron at the time was very expensive for example as well, and iron rods were used to peg large stone blocks together in the Colosseum, and of course what happened was people would dig out the rods and sell them, which of course weakened the structure even more, etc... Another non concrete but HUGE structural undertaking near the later years of the Roman empire was of course Hadrian's Wall. A massive wall that spanned Britain. Where is it now? It is too massive to simply disappear... Unless of course the rock was valuable as a building material, and it was looted into non-existence. Anyway if you look at what concrete was used in the construction of the Colosseum, it was used primarily to mortar bricks (which was probably a bigger breakthrough) together and apply marble vernier which of course all got stolen eventually anyway.
So if it could stand the test of time (which it couldn't really), the only thing that saved it was that it couldn't easily be stolen and re-purposed for something else. Unless the author is just talking about what the Roman leadership perceived it to be eternal in which case they are talking about the feelings and insights with probably zero record of anyone ever saying anything like that, so complete fabrication, otherwise known as fiction.
Also the lead idea is silly as well. There were a whole host of reasons why the empire fell, and if lead factored into it at all, it would have played a very insignificant role.
Dr. Davies is talking about how the Roman Republic and the rise of Caesar as an emperor was caused by concrete. The fall of the Roman Empire has nothing to do with concrete.
The author of the study said concrete had a role in bringing down the Roman *republic*, i.e. in the transition to the empire. The author of the article misunderstood this point as he apparently thinks republic and empire are synonyms. The Roman empire fell some 400 years after the republic ended.
"been lead contaminating in the water,"
Huh? Do they mean lead CONTAMINATION in the water, or lead contaminating the water, or something else? Who knows? They're Americans...
Bread and circuses (i.e. panem et circenses) killed the Roman Empire.
... in the name of writing something worth reading ... provide some details about how you think I've erred).
The citizenry looked at it as easier to stop working and live off of other people than to get a job.
Very similar to the way the US is becoming a nation of disability fraud, food stamps, and the ACA.
(I realize people on \. are going to disagree with this, which is OK, but please
Archaeologists always get a good laugh out of these prime-mover theories. They're great for attracting public attention, but the reality is that sociopolitical collapses are much more complex than most researchers want to appreciate.
The first question that you should always ask about a collapse-theory is if the target actually disappeared at all, or did it transform through time into something else?
but no American wants to hear the truth.
Get off my concrete.
It makes sense. North of Rome? Germanic crazy people. West? The Atlantic Ocean. South? A thin border on the mediterannean hard up against one giant fucking desert. North east? Britain, the north of which was inhabited by such a crazed bunch of assholes the Romans built a fucking WALL to keep them out. When Welsh tin production peaked in 320, there was no point in hanging around. East? Palestine, Mesopotamia, Persia, India, China - you know - REAL civilisations. REAL money to be made. Not these crazy Pict or Celt peasant fuckers. Societies with cities and gold and stuff.
So, once they divided Roman around 310, it was basically like pulling the plug. The place drained pretty fast. If you had any money you got the fuck out and moved east. Roman didn't fall. It's method of acquiring resources met the law of diminishing returns. Its response was typical: increase the complexity of the society. Eventually, the centre collapses under its own weight. Tainter's book "Collapse of Copmlex Societies" spells it out pretty clearly. The rest is in the records. Rome didn't fall. It was sold out and abandoned.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
>They could make a car for $1M that had a useful live of 1M miles.
Get a dodge with a cummins engine for a fraction of the price :)
link
LOL nice! armchair historians telling others what to think.
"Go to reddit to get your view of history defined from you by a bunch of losers with an agenda, careful though, if you alter their agenda at all you may be banned"
I think i'll stay on slashdot where freedom of speech, free thinking, and subjectivity are not frowed upon, especially banned.
Additionally, I wonder how many people opt for the 6 year loan vs. the 3 or 4 year one not out of financial necessity, but simply for the flexibility it offers?
I've definitely done that on a couple of car loans in the not too distant past, because there's no penalty for early payoffs and you can designate how much additional principal you'd like to pay down on any given payment, if you pay more than the minimum.
With e longer loan, you get to decide if you'd like to pay the smaller payment or pay some extra (giving you the equivalent of paying on the loan if it was for a shorter term).
This is so ignorant I don't even know where to begin, you need to look up Manifest Destiny, the War with Mexico (how it started), and the Trail of Tears. This crap is basic, 6th grade history stuff, the fact you seem so ill informed is disturbing.
The cliff notes, for the truly lazy, are: Manifest Destiny was the slogan/battle cry of those who felt god (Yes, I shit you not god) had decided that Americans (read this as "white people", because that's what they meant) for ordained to fill up all of America and were the justification of every westward expansion after The Louisiana Purchase. We treated the native americans especially savagely, hell, the Cherokee tried to fit in by abandonning their own culture to live as blacksmiths, coopers, tradesmen, etc. and we still kicked their asses out. Hell, we have journals of military personel expressing how disgusted they were with the dishonorable actions of the US in the events that were used to justify the War with Mexico.
It's pretty horrifying, please educate yourself and stop sugarcoating what happened.
The Romans found out that when you go all fat and corrupt, muscular barbarians invade you.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Founding the Empire was the first step towards the downfall of the Empire, if concrete caused the Empire to be founded (which is a pretty dumb theory) it would be correct to say that concrete caused the fall of the Empire.
"Rome" persisted for 1,500 years after their discovery of concrete, until it's final fall in 1453. Along the way, it saw off the tax-averse Germans that immigrated into the West, Persians, Arabs, Kievan Russians, the Germano-Franks returning again as "Crusaders", and diverted the Mongols into attacking the Slavs and Islam. Not bad, and not really indicative of anything to do with concrete. Or lead.
Da Blog
How did this make it to Slashdot? The article provides no explanation at all why concrete led to Rome's downfall. Why did I waste my time reading this?
"The concrete used by the Romans was apparently much better that the ones we use today."
False. It's a nice myth of antiquity, of the good old days being better than today but it is totally false.
Today's concrete is far better than what was produced in the past. Of course, I'm not talking about crappy badly done concrete but the good stuff that is used in most good engineering works. Sure, you can point to a government bid sidewalk falling apart but that is meaningless anecdotal evidence in this discussion. That's politics and greed, not materials science and chemistry.
"One could even say that it played a significant role in bringing down the republic."
How? Because Pompeii had no access to the revolutionary building material and Cesar was able to politically leverage the prestige of his new construction projects to such an extent that he was able to dissolve the Senate?
Seems pretty unlikely.
'I don't know what it's called. I just know the sound it makes, when it takes a man's life.' ~ Four Leaf Tayback
And don't forget the "Holy Roman Empire" that persisted in the north, long after Byzantium was overrun by Turks. One could make the argument that Kaiser (German spelling of "Caesar") Wilhelm as the last Roman emperor.
Well, and slightly further to the east, the Tsar (a different spelling of "Caesar") lasted nearly as long.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
When was that the most popular theory about the downfall?
Furthermore, Julius Caesar and Pompey lived around 500 years before the downfall.
Roman overlords.
Did the concrete magnetically attract Huns? Did it make for a terrible system of selecting Emperors? They vaguely seem to be saying that because they could build more permanent things that they felt more kingly? It seems that Cesar was building things out of blood and mud when he decided to come back to Rome with an army in tow.
Unless there are some writings that say, "Wow Cesar just came back from the concrete factory and instead of doing a poetry reading he stabbed the masseuse." I just don't think the connection is very good. All kinds of things were changing at the time. Also the Roman empire proceeded to get better and better at concrete for the next 400 years.
The best explanation I have heard for the fall of the Roman empire was that the climate was nice and warm during the rise of the empire and then it got cold and it collapsed. Part of the collapse was that hoards of people deeper in the continent were pressed for food resources and started marching to better cultivated roman lands; which themselves weren't doing all that well.
Roman cement was better than what we have.
Roman cement poured 2000 years ago to create a seawall is still standing, and looks like it was poured yesterday.
The best 'modern' cement --Portland-- lasts at best 50 years. Galling is a term used to describe when the concrete 'pits': sloughs off, chips, cracks, and breaks from the surface. A study from about 2 years ago suggests that one of the ingredients of the Roman cement was an aluminium alloy, which forms a much stronger chemical bond resulting is physically stronger concrete. Oh, and concrete is a mix of cement and either sand or gravel or both.
Typical interent article, a small kernal of an interesting thought blown up into "major find". In this case, the small kernal of an idea is tough to find. The internet is becoming full of these articles, to the point it has caused me to reduce my time on the internet. I find my signal/noise ratio falling rapidly. Not worth the time.
While it can be frustrating that people can't take 1+1 and get 2, the psychology of it is that people are generally irrational. The wierdest thing is that when you get into an adversarial argument with people, they are more likely to reinforce their original belief than to ponder on new evidence. There are better ways to present information to people than the way you described. All that happens when you do that is they think you're a dick and ignore anything you present in the future unless they see you as an authority figure.
Aim to describe, educate, and communicate. Talk about the idea rather than focusing on the correction and you'll reach more people than if you take the current approach. Maybe you don't want to reach more people, but think about why you don't want to reach more people. Isn't that just a rationalization, justifying your way of thinking and way of life without wanting to learn the circumstances or mental capacity of those around you, limiting their ability to understand as easily as you? Its rationalizing the irrational negative feelings for others, the same exact behavior you despise of others.
I think a lot of it comes from the motivation for communicating. I approached it how you did when I was younger, but fortunately landed with a good company that taught me a lot about myself and let my strengths as well as limitations show through so I could see where to improve (communication). When I was younger, I communicated to find like minded individuals and to reaffirm my way of thinking and beleifs. Now, I communicate to share, learn, and educate.
And where does the money come from to purchase the increased value of stocks?
So, what you're trying to say here is that you don't understand economics, right?
Money is not value. Money is a medium of exchange.
On a day to day, personal-finance level, it is so ingrained in our thinking that money is value that it's hard to keep in mind that it isn't actually value in itself. It is an amazingly useful tool for keeping track of the flow of value, but keep on reminding yourself that what economics is actually about is the flow of goods and services.
Now, the questions of money supply, velocity of money (that part is just as important. Money is only valuable when it flows!), the relation of money and debt, and so forth-- all interesting questions, but irrelevant to the point that economics is not a zero-sum game. If you think economics is a zero-sum game, you are basically assuming zero productivity. The whole point of a correctly functioning economic system is to insure that productivity is not zero.
If the productivity of a corportation goes up-- that is, they're making more product, which they sell for money-- then the value of that corporation goes up. (Well, it would in a rational market. Real world markets are only slightly rational). This is a positive sum result. They are not removing value from people who buy their product-- although they are taking money-- because these people are getting value (or, what they perceive as value).
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Caesar had his time. The Roman's fell because of the Cross and change to the fabric of Roman society. Rome was once the center of the world. The Roman highway connected the known world. The same for the United States. We have been the dominant power in the world for more than 50 years. We connected the free world. The United States still has a large roll to play. The focus of the world will shift back to the Middle East, where the judgement of all nations will be held.
Stocks aren't value;
Correct. Stocks are statements of fractional ownership of corporations. And corporations themselves only have value if they produce goods, or own assets, or have a perceived value.
The only value common stock has is as a trading medium to another person so that you can make money by speculation.
No. If you own a stock, you own a fractional share of a corporation. If that corporation makes a profit, you own a share of that profit. This manifests, in the simplest case, as a dividend. It is not a zero sum game.
Here's a quick thought experiment. Suppose you own 100 shares of Hardwood Corporation, a corporation which buys and sells lumber. The corporation puts all its assets into buying, say, oak. It has a huge warehouse full of nothing but oak, and this is all that it owns. Since oak has value, the corporation has value; in this case, an easily quantifiable value based on the price of oak.
The warehouse now burns down, and all its contents. (It is not insured). The value of the corporation (and its stock) is now zero. The value changed from non-zero to zero. Clearly, this is an example of a negative-sum situation. (A negative sum is, of course, not a zero sum).
The NYSE doesn't price stocks based on corporate performance; it prices them based on what people are buying and selling for.
Yes, that's a tautology: it is the definition of a price, what people buy and sell for.
That's why we have Price to Earnings and such measurements:
"Earnings" is the non-zero-sum part of the situation.
to show how much more valued a stock is than the actual value of the company it's named in.
Well, close. "Earnings" is income per unit time (per quarter, say). Knowing this does not, per se, tell you the value of the company, although it's part of the calculation. Projected earnings is more important... but also more subjective. But a company could make no earnings at all and still have value, for example, because of its ownership of property, which has value.
OH, by the way: I'm filing Chapter 13 bankruptcy. All that common stock you're holding that's worth $30,000? It's canceled, and you get nothing. Have a nice day.
Exactly. An example of non-zero sum.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Just another useless academic justifying tenure in order to never have to work another day in their life, ever.
How many Angels can dance on the head of a pin?
"Another d-mn'd thick, square book! Always, scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh! Mr. Gibbon?"
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
Or something like that.
False. It's a nice myth of antiquity, of the good old days being better than today but it is totally false.
Today's concrete is far better than what was produced in the past. Of course, I'm not talking about crappy badly done concrete but the good stuff that is used in most good engineering works. Sure, you can point to a government bid sidewalk falling apart but that is meaningless anecdotal evidence in this discussion. That's politics and greed, not materials science and chemistry.
[Citation needed]
Mine is
The most common blend of modern concrete, known as Portland cement, a formulation in use for nearly 200 years, can’t come close to matching that track record, says Marie Jackson, a research engineer at the University of California at Berkeley who was part of the Roman concrete research team. “The maritime environment, in particular, is not good for Portland concrete. In seawater, it has a service life of less than 50 years. After that, it begins to erode,” Jackson says. The researchers now know why ancient Roman concrete is so superior.[...]the findings, which were published earlier this month in the Journal of the American Ceramic Society and American Mineralogist, are considered so important[...]
link
1) Portland is only a simple concrete, there are many other improved modern varieties which are widely used and a lot better than any Roman concrete.
2) Marie Jackson gave her opinion, not fact. The very fact that she failed to account for all the better versions discounts her opinion.
It's a myth. A fun myth, but a myth. I hope you don't believe pyramids sharpen razors...
an amazing dichotomy. i'm more likely to believe the christians ended the roman empire
The article is shitty and the summary is shittier. The article states that the fall of the Roman REPUBLIC may have been influenced by the use of concrete and then for some reason goes on to talk about how lead poisoning may not have been a significant factor in the fall of the Roman EMPIRE, a totally unrelated topic. Then the summary goes and conflates the two and leads to an incredibly misstated post.
Perhaps it would help this discussion if I clarified my position. Here's the crux of the argument (which is part of a larger thesis and which has nothing whatsoever to do with the decline of the Roman Empire): Throughout the Mediterranean, the four and a half centuries of the Roman Republic (ca. 509–44 BCE) were years of rapid urban development. It was in a city’s interests to have grand public buildings, both for its own essential functioning and to vie with other states in terms of urban image. Construction was perceived as the responsibility and the hallmark of ruling elites who, through their initiatives, gained visibility and legitimized their status. In Rome, where the political elite strove constantly to engage the voting public, visibility enhanced electability, and as a result it was all but irresistible for even the most committed Republican to exploit architecture in self-advancement. To control such impulses, checks and balances were set in place. Literary and epigraphical evidence suggests that, by constitution or consensus, the only men authorized to commission public buildings were elected officials–specifically aediles, censors, consuls (usually as triumphatores), and occasionally praetors–and they did so on behalf of the res publica; a privatus could not deploy his own resources on state construction. Unlike monarchs of the eastern Mediterranean, moreover, Roman magistrates labored under close constraints. For one thing, they had only a year in office, at most 18 months as censor; for another, the senate seems to have watched over their use of state resources. These constraints conditioned their building projects: in general plan and inception (though not completion) a single, discrete structure was feasible; a massive orchestration of urban space, of the kind realized by Hellenistic kings and later emperors, who had the resources of the state at their disposal and could reasonably anticipate the fullness of their reign to accomplish their goals, was not. In theory at least, the system controlled state architecture tightly enough to prevent individuals from exploiting it to threaten the system. And from one perspective, the history of Republican architecture in Rome is the history of politicians developing strategies to maneuver within these constraints. Enter concrete. As deployed in Rome, for politicians it was a game-changer. Its component elements–fist-sized pieces of aggregate, and mortar strengthened by pozzolana from the Alban Hills–were easily available and inexpensive, and relatively unskilled (for which read cheap) laborers could work it faster than masons could cut and dress stone. As used specifically in Republican Rome, the radical significance of this visually lackluster building fabric, and the likely reason for its rapid ascent as a material for public building, is that, quick and economical, in one sweep it neutralized the primary determinants on magistrates’ construction ambitions: time and money. So even despite their short terms and senatorial oversight of funds, on appreciating concrete’s architectonic strengths politicians could conceive not just buildings of moderate size but monumental, self-aggrandizing urban initiatives. Only on being freed from Republican constraints, that is, could they exploit the material’s malleability. With concrete they could work on a scale that, though possible using cut stone, would have been prohibitively time-consuming and expensive for a Republican magistrate. Concrete allowed them to think–and build–more like Hellenistic kings. In the decades that followed, the material revolutionized Romans’ tolerance and expectations with regard to what a single politician could build in the city; it overwhelmed the constraints on architectural propaganda. It was with Pompey, and then Caesar, that the transgressive potential of concrete was fully realized. Their extraordinary construction ambitions, both realized and projected, helped them to craft an image of unending abstract authority, an