Is The Empire Doomed ???

Historian Peter Turchin identified “the degree of solidarity felt between the commons and aristocracy” as a key ingredient of the Republic of Rome’s enormous success. Turchin calls this attribute of social structure vertical integration, a term that usually refers to a corporation owning its supply chain.

In Turchin’s meaning, it refers to the sense of purpose and identity shared by the top, middle and bottom of the wealth/power pyramid. One measure of this vertical integration is the degree of equality/inequality between the commoners (shall we call this the lower 90% of American households by income?) and the Power Elite aristocracy (top .5%, or perhaps top .1%).

The vertical integration of the Roman Republic’s social strata is striking. In his book War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires, Turchin tells this anecdote:

“Roman historians of the later age stressed the modest way of life, even poverty of the leading citizens. For example, when Cincinnatus was summoned to be dictator, while working at the plow, he reportedly exclaimed, ‘My land will not be sown this year and so we shall run the risk of not having enough to eat!'”

Can you conjure up the image of any presidential hopeful in a field actually working to grow food for his/her family?

Turchin goes on to say this vertical integration is a feature of all successful empires:

“(This) lack of glaring barriers between the aristocracy and the commons seems to be a general characteristic of successful imperial nations during their early phase.”

Once the barriers between commoners and the Elite become impassable, the Empire is doomed. As noted in Following in Ancient Rome’s Footsteps: Moral Decay, Rising Wealth Inequality (September 30, 2015), military service was a distinguishing feature of the Elites and landowning commoners of Rome.

You can read the rest @
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/10/when-the-aristocracy-leaves-the-commoners-in-the-dust-the-empire-is-doomed.html

One's initial thought might be that since the US also is going in this direction (building a huge gap between the top and bottom), our empire is doomed.

But this time the oligarchs, bankgangsters, and the living dead (a.k.a. corporations) have a plan. They are intentionally causing the empire to fail so that it can be replaced by another more to their liking. That's one of the chief goals of TPP, TTIP, and TISA.

The nation state and the "old" empire are dead - long live the market state and the new empire.