How Concrete Contributed To the Downfall of the Roman Empire 384
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."
Economic reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Economic reasons (Score:5, Informative)
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Maybe it's one of those "You start dying as soon as you're born" philosophical things. Or before you're born.
Fall of the republic [Re:Economic reasons] (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Fall of the republic [Re:Economic reasons] (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Economic reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. Haven't read the article, but if the premise is that Julius Caesar began having a bit too regally and that lead to Rome's fall, then it was a pretty odd collapse, that had this whole three century middle period where Rome reigned supreme in most of Europe, Asia Minor and North Africa. Rome didn't even reach its greatest extent, geographically, until two centuries after Caesar's death.
There are as many theories as to why Rome fell as there are as to why WWI started. At the end of the day, it was a combination of economic collapse (in particular, the debasement of coinage), bad government, poor succession rules that meant the military played too much of a role in an Emperor's rise and fall, climactic changes in Eurasia that meant lots of angry hoards of people from the Asian Steppe began their first major incursions over the Urals, and finally, in a last ditch effort, the later Emperors cutting the empire to pieces and hiring a bunch of unreliable and upwardly mobile German mercenaries to fill out their dwindling legions.
It should also be reminded that Rome did persist for a thousand years after Romulus Augustulus was deposed in the West; in the form of the Byzantine Empire.
Re:Economic reasons (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Economic reasons (Score:4, Informative)
The closest the Papacy ever came to recreating Rome was apparently the idea being thrown around of the Pope becoming a temporal head of a renewed Roman empire, since the bulk of Western and Central Europe had been Christianized by the 8th century. In the end, Charlemagne came along, and it seemed more supportable to make him the King of the Romans.
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Sharing initials hardly makes a reasonable argument. There's a better argument for a good deal of Christ's iconography being lifted from the cult of Alexander the Great, which was very big throughout the whole Greco-Roman world at the time. I don't realy see any connection between Jesus and Julius Caesar at all.
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Yeah, except that Jesus' name in Greek starts with an "I" and in Hebrew and Aramaic with a "Y".
Weird AC post, for sure. Every day, a new conspiracy theory.
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Personally I've always suspected Christianity played a role as well. It seemed to me that pre-Christianity religion wasn't that big a deal in Rome, when the Roman's encountered a population with a different god the Roman's basically said a) everyone had to follow the Roman state religion, and b) your god is part of the big Roman pantheon, congrats you're following the Roman state religion!
Emperor Elagabalus [wikipedia.org] even got away with replacing Jupiter with his god at the top of the pantheon and marrying the head of
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The empire was having some pretty severe probls before the Edict of Milan. The divisionof the Empire, for instance, was first attempted by Diocletian, to try to reform serious administrative and political shortcomings, and he was seriously anti-Christian.
Fall of the Republic, birth of the Empire. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Err, no really (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
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I blame the crazy and feckless more than I blame the sedimentary medium used to construct things.
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The victors always write history. Caligula and Nero were not so crazy as is often told. However, they both were contemptuous of the Roman Senate, which is what brought them down in the end, and which is why the historic writings about them paint them in the light of craziness.
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Endless factional infighting combined with ever more rebellious provinces and incursions from surrounding regions did for the western roman empire.
Sure. But one of the reasons for all that fighting and rebelliousness was stupid/insane leadership at the top, and a big reason for that was lead, which was used in pipes, cooking pots, cups and pitchers. Analysis of Roman bones has found sky high lead levels [wikipedia.org], especially among the upper classes. Rather than ONE cause, there were lots of interrelated causes.
This "concrete" theory doesn't make sense to me. The Roman Empire lasted for centuries after their major monument building years, or more than a thou
Re:Err, no really (Score:5, Interesting)
Better military technology and practice and the ability to bring together greater manpower than the enemy. That and the fact that once people were living under roman rule it was actually quite nice so long as you didn't do anything stupid like raise a rebellion. To build an empire you need a strong military - to keep it you need to keep the citizens well fed and well off by allowing free trade. And the romans managed both.
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r.e. What did the Romans ever do... (Score:3)
A Monty Python reference for those who didn't know.
From Life of Brian [imdb.com]; 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
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Because the Mexicans were so delighted to cede Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California to the U.S. in the 1840's? Besides, the phrase "manifest destiny" dates from that era, and it certainly indicates imperial ambition.
Re:Economic reasons (Score:5, Informative)
The Romans lasted from 400 BC to (arguably) 1400+ AD (given that you include the Byzantine Empire, which was what they called the eastern half of the Roman Empire after the Empire split).
If you don't want to include the Byzantines as Roman, then the Romans last from about 400 BC to 400 AD (when the Empire split).
When the USA gets a couple centuries older, we'll be HALF as old as the Romans were when they split into East and West. And one fifth as old as they were when they finally disappeared.
Note that I'm combining the Republic and Empire and East/West Empires into a single "Roman" label. Some people might think that innappropriate or misleading....
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I don't think it's inappropriate at all. First of all, the first steps towards a proper empire occurred during the Republic. And in the East, while Byzantium slowly became heavily Hellenized, there was no sharp dividing line. Byzantinium was the Eastern Roman Empire.
You're actually not going far enough. (Score:4, Interesting)
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[...] the Byzantine Empire, which was what they called the eastern half of the Roman Empire after the Empire split).
Common mistake. As it was ruled by direct succession of Emperors from Rome itself and under the same laws (though developing, of course), and much of the same society, peoples, etc., the peoples of Byzantium called their Empire...Rome. So did their eventual conquerors and the proto-states of Today's Turkey, and various languages call Greek-speaking Turks and Greeks "Rum" or "Roman". Colloquial Greek itself still calls Greek-speakers "Romeyka", meaning "Roman" since they are (or like to think of themselves a
Re:Economic reasons (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
For some reason people are obsessed with finding a single reason for the disintegration of the Roman empire but the truth is that there were many causes: the incompetence of emperors, the decline of the Roman military, the increasing military sophistication of the barbarian tribes, separatism among those barbarians that were absorbed, the fact that the influx of barbarians became to great for the empire to absorb, pandemics and warfare that destroyed the tax base which in turn magnified the military problems and it also caused governmental organizations and institutions to collapse, the list goes on and on. Another point is that much of the Roman world never really disappeared, it just came under new management. Although you saw urban decline in many parts of what used to be the empire a lot of Roman culture survived. A whole lot of stuff went up in flames but many of the barbarian kings that took over the various parts of the western empire often went out of their way to make sure to preserve as much as possible of the Roman governmental bureaucracy, industry, trade and educational institutions as they could. The more archaeologists research the 'dark ages' the more clear it becomes that they weren't actually as dark as we used to be taught in school.
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Roman civilization persists to this day. The Romance languages, the civil code that is dominant in Europe, Latin America, Quebec and New Orleans, even the European Union itself, I would argue is the latest attempt by the Europeans to restore the Pax Romana.
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the civil code that is dominant in Europe, Latin America, Quebec and New Orleans
Institutionalized bribery was a Roman invention?
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Part of it is our increasing addiction to soundbites. Part of it is finding a soundbite cause that (just by chance mind you) matches current political/philosophical bugaboos.
Re:Economic reasons (Score:5, Interesting)
And the individuals bugaboos. Everyone wants to see the empire's fall as due to their own personal dislikes. Ask the libertarians, they'll blame overregulation. Ask the conservatives, they'll blame socialism. Ask the liberals, they'll blame polluted water or corruption.
You can see it in a more recent event too - the early troubles at the Jamestown colony. It's recent enough to be very well documented, but already we are seeing a number of disparate accounts circulating in popular awareness, one of which (Originating in a Fox column, now persisting as a circular email and blog post) claims that the colony was founded on a system of collective ownership and farmers didn't see any point in farming if the rest of the community would just steal their crop, so they starved to death until a panicked switch to a private-property system and free market economy brought about greatly increased production and prosperity. It's a bunch of lies with a hint of truth mixed in, Dan Brown style, and any real historian would laugh at it - but it still persists, because the myth tells people what they want to hear: A good morality tale, supporting their own particular morality.
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For some reason people are obsessed with finding a single reason for the disintegration of the Roman empire but the truth is that there were many causes
and by Roman empire they mean the western empire.
The eastern empire survived in more or less recognizable form into the fifteenth century.
Re:Economic reasons (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know that anyone thinks lead caused the downfall of the Roman Empire. I think it is attributed as 'one of many factors'. I think the more immediate cause of the downfall of the Roman Empire, was the invasion of the Huns, who conquered one germanic tribe, took their land, and promised them freedom if they would then conquer the next tribe over, for them. This triggered a cascade of refugees, of which the Vandals came to Northern Italy, starving. The Senate voted to tell them 'come halfway to Rome, stop, and we will give you humanitarian aid' [food]. They then gave the contract for the food to a senator who was expected to embezzle most of the money. He embezzled it all, and the Vandals went through the whole Roman empire looking for food, and picking up slaves who walked away from their jobs to join the Vandals. Thus, the Empire lost its labor force. After that, since it still was the crown jewel for despots, it got conquered continuously.
Kindof like Iraq, kindof like Poland, Kindof like Lithuania, kindof like what'll happen to Russia, kindof like what's happening to the US.
oh, and ---- almost forgot.
No, monuments weren't first introduced to later Rome with concrete. Nor were big buildings. Come to think of it, nor were concrete buildings. All of that long predated Rome.
Horrible article. 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..."
beta Re:Economic reasons (Score:3)
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..."
Growth right; Building wrong (Score:2)
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It wasn't permanent growth that did the Romans in economically. It was an economy based on and entirely dependent on slavery. The Romans themselves did nothing, everything important was done by slaves including some of the most famous engineers. You can't sustain an economy forever based on slavery, at some point it's going to collapse because you don't know how to do anything anymore.
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"Nal komerex, khesterex".
--- John M. Ford, The Final Reflection
Other Econoimic reasons... (Score:3)
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 co
Re:Economic reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
Phantoms are chasing phantoms - with credit.
Re:Economic reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
Planned obsolescence and subscription services that didn't exist for most people 30 years ago are helping to keep things afloat
They certainly give the illusion of markets growing. In real terms, I don't think the economy is growing; we are still living in a closed ecosystem, so at some point we will hit the ceiling and experience a catastrophic breakdown, unless we learn to curb our delusions about unlimited growth. The question is only when it will happen - but there is still an absurd reluctance to even consider the question, so we don't know if it might be tomorrow or perhaps in 500 years.
Re:Economic reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want specifics, then how about just two possible scenarios:
1. Major disruption in the supply of semiconductors. If war were to break out between China and N.Korea against S.Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, the entire world's production of semiconductors could be disrupted or shut off. Best case in such a scenario is that only critical equipment would be supplied until foundries could ramp up production in other countries. But ramping up semiconductor production isn't as quick or straight forward as hiring a few good managers, engineers, or production staff. It could take years to rebuild our semiconductor infrastructure, presuming we could afford the wait. Unlike many other technologies, this isn't one that we can throw together in a garage. The supply chain for semiconductors is incredibly complex, and given China's near domination of rare earth elements, any geopolitical standoff involving China could cause a major ripple effect across the global economy. Shortages of microchips could be weathered in the short term, but if dragged on for a year or more there could be real problems affecting any device that required a chip to function properly. These days, that's just about everything, from cars to home appliances to industrial automatic, ovens, furnaces, machine tools, etc. If our entire planet had to retool for analog controls and paper-based IT, it could lead to a long-term economic decline that could thrust us into a multi-century dark age, presuming civilization doesn't collapse entirely.
2. Peak Oil. I don't think I need to elaborate on this scenario, as it has been extensively discussed elsewhere.
More likely than not, a crisis in the supply of oil or microchips, rare earth elements, or oil could result in shortages of all three critical resources. I think that the OP's comment regarding our closed ecosystem is valid. If our population is sustainable and we are not too heavily dependent on technology or geopolitical stability, then we can weather a crisis and come through in tact. But if we are completely dependent oil, technology and a global supply chain just to feed our massive population, then we could be facing some serious trouble when the next big crisis hits. In this scenario a regional catastrophe could trigger a global catastrophe.
We still live on a physical planet and have physical needs. Just because we have a growing economy in arts and entertainment, and new apps to help us manage our social lives does not mean we do not face serious growth risks in the physical economy (ie human ecology).
Re:Economic reasons (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone who ever argues with me otherwise (oh and there are loads of idiots that do) gets redirected to dev/null.
While I happen to agree with you, I voraciously listen to NPR's intelligence squared [npr.org] because an intelligent debate is great to educate you on viewpoints other than your own. Maybe, for your own sake, you should reconsider?
Re:Economic reasons (Score:4, Insightful)
Democracy or even Debate does not mean that someone else's ignorance is as good as my facts. There are some things there just isn't any intelligent debate ABOUT, and even pretending to listen offers a veneer of legitimacy they simply do not deserve. Like vaccines and autism. Vaccines do not cause autism, they have not, and never will cause autism. There is no possible legitimate thing anyone could ever say that supports the idea vaccines cause autism, and merely by listening you're legitimising their bullshit more than they deserve.
Sometimes the proper response is to just tell people to sit down, shut the fuck up, and LISTEN to the facts.
Re:Economic reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes the proper response is to just tell people to sit down, shut the fuck up, and LISTEN to the facts.
And who gets to decide what "the facts" are? You're very language betrays the conceit that you are somehow omniscient, because how else can you know that someone else's knowledge is "ignorance" and your's are "facts".
I too believe the anti-vaccine BS is ... well is exactly that, BS. But the moment anyone presents me with real evidence to the contrary I'll happily change my posisition, because I realize that any given human being only has a limited amount of knowledge available to them, and therefore that I must always be open to new knowledge.
Re:Economic reasons (Score:4, Insightful)
Stock market is a zero-sum game (wealth transfer vehicle).
Economy is not a zero-sum game (you can definitely destroy things, so you can definitely create things).
Most people somehow think that the stock market is the economy, and that the stock market reflects actual business performance. We live in a world of ignorance and bullshit.
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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.
Oh, you're right. Basically all stocks pay dividends, and stocks which pay dividends aren't discounted in value by the value of the dividend. It's not like the spot price of a stock rises subtly as it approaches dividend ex date and then drops suddenly after the ex date.
And of course that money comes out of nowhere. It's not injected into the SECURITIES MARKET from other sources like company earnings. The company is doing well, and money just magically manifests due to the Jewon particles colliding w
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The economy is not a zero sum game so long as there's external input. When you exhaust the external input, in the form of exploitable resources, it's a negative sum game, since there's always some unrecoverable waste.
We live on a physical planet. Unless we change that, the economy must stop growing eventually. The exponential growth we expect has to end quite soon.
Re:Economic reasons (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that to an economist, the Second LIfe "Linden" is just as "real" as the fiat "US dollar", which is just as "real" as a gold certificate, which is just as "real" as a brick of gold, which is just a "real" as a hamburger, which is just as "real" as a tractor factory, which is just as "real" as a soybean farm.
For an economist information is an exploitable resource, as is microprocessor capacity and memory capacity. As long as more trade can take place for digital resources it will be conceivably possible to continue economic growth for a long time to come, even while a huge portion of the planet's population dies off in mass starvation.
For this reason I prefer to separate the concepts of "economy" from "physical economy" or "human ecology". What's good for the "economy" is not always good for the rest of us.
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Yes, it does. The whackadoodles who think exponential growth can go no forever like to say things like "oh, but we trade in ideas!" That's great, but it's based on an economy that deals in things like food. You can accumulate money as long as you can convince somebody what you're selling has value, but accumulating money isn't the same thing as growing an economy (even if it's often made to look that way). If you can't pull new value out of the ground, harvest it from the sun, create it by arranging ato
Re:Economic reasons (Score:4, Interesting)
Top that with the degradation of quality in what use to be considered durable goods
I'm not buying that model. Cars, which are the second most expensive purchase after a house, are lasting longer than ever. Sure, some durable goods are lasting less time then previously, but they also cost significantly fewer hours of labor to purchase so their hours of labor to useful life ratio is probably in the same ballpark.
Re:Economic reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
Top that with the degradation of quality in what use to be considered durable goods
I'm not buying that model. Cars, which are the second most expensive purchase after a house, are lasting longer than ever. Sure, some durable goods are lasting less time then previously, but they also cost significantly fewer hours of labor to purchase so their hours of labor to useful life ratio is probably in the same ballpark.
In 1974 you could buy a decent car for $2,500. A minimum wage job at the time got you $4,160 and a professional job $10,000. Back then a good car cost 1/2 of what a minimum wage worker made and 1/4 of a professional job. Compared to today, where minimum wage gets you $15,080 and a profession job $50,000, a price of a car should be $7,500 to $12,500.
There is no doubt that cars are more "durable" than before, but it's only because, compared to wages, we are paying 2 to 3 times as much for the same product.
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Computers aren't regulated nearly as much as cars are, which cuts down the price a lot. That is not to say cars aren't regulated for good reason, though. Apart from emissions control (which is a significant expense), the numerous safety features required in modern cars add considerable costs. Research and design also aren't free--it costs a lot of money to design a car, certainly much more than it used to, and those costs have to be defrayed in the sales of new cars.
Of course, one could also blame unionized
Re:Economic reasons (Score:5, Informative)
Top that with the degradation of quality in what use to be considered durable goods
I'm not buying that model. Cars, which are the second most expensive purchase after a house, are lasting longer than ever. Sure, some durable goods are lasting less time then previously, but they also cost significantly fewer hours of labor to purchase so their hours of labor to useful life ratio is probably in the same ballpark.
In 1974 you could buy a decent car for $2,500. A minimum wage job at the time got you $4,160 and a professional job $10,000. Back then a good car cost 1/2 of what a minimum wage worker made and 1/4 of a professional job. Compared to today, where minimum wage gets you $15,080 and a profession job $50,000, a price of a car should be $7,500 to $12,500.
There is no doubt that cars are more "durable" than before, but it's only because, compared to wages, we are paying 2 to 3 times as much for the same product.
Those boundaries (a minimum wage job vs a professional job) have changed a lot so its a lot more meaningful to look at median household or median individual income. In those numbers, in 1970 it was $6,670 and in 2004 it was $30,513 Average car price in 1970 was $3,900.00 and today it's just over $20,000. Thats a move from 58% of annual income (another misnomer because required expenses from that income have changed so much in the past 30-40 years, food, housing, taxes, etc have all shifted) to 66% of annual income, not a huge move.
Even if you took those numbers at face value and said "cars are definitely more expensive now" you have to also look at average car age rates, which reflect how much *per year* each person is spending on having a new car (or a used car if you prefer). That number has gone up from 5.7 years in 1970 to 9.0 in 2000 and its well over 10 as of 2011. So, each car purchased is basically lasting twice as long (taking into account just the time the cars are kept, not how reliable they are) as they were "back then". Even if the cars are 10% to 25% more expensive in real dollars or income fractions or whatever, we are definitely coming out ahead thanks to improvements in reliability, serviceability and quality.
Re:Economic reasons (Score:5, Interesting)
Those boundaries (a minimum wage job vs a professional job) have changed a lot so its a lot more meaningful to look at median household or median individual income. In those numbers, in 1970 it was $6,670 and in 2004 it was $30,513 Average car price in 1970 was $3,900.00 and today it's just over $20,000. Thats a move from 58% of annual income (another misnomer because required expenses from that income have changed so much in the past 30-40 years, food, housing, taxes, etc have all shifted) to 66% of annual income, not a huge move.
Even if you took those numbers at face value and said "cars are definitely more expensive now" you have to also look at average car age rates, which reflect how much *per year* each person is spending on having a new car (or a used car if you prefer). That number has gone up from 5.7 years in 1970 to 9.0 in 2000 and its well over 10 as of 2011. So, each car purchased is basically lasting twice as long (taking into account just the time the cars are kept, not how reliable they are) as they were "back then". Even if the cars are 10% to 25% more expensive in real dollars or income fractions or whatever, we are definitely coming out ahead thanks to improvements in reliability, serviceability and quality.
I'm not sure that is right. There is no doubt that people are holding on to cars longer, but the question is whether or not it is because they want to or can't afford to get a new one. Most likely, this is an artifact of longer financing terms. In the 1970s car loans were two years, sometimes three. Today they are five to six years. If you go to sell the car before the loan, you will be upside down (owe more on the loan than you can get for the car). As such, people hold on to the car longer.
It is true that the useful life of a vehicle is twice as long today as in the 1970s (say 200,000 miles vs 100,000), but that doesn't mean the original owner is driving it for those extra miles. One of the things that was an unintended (hopefully) consequences of the cash for clunkers is it wiped out the used car market. It isn't a coincidence that without late model used cars to hold down prices, new car prices escalated. What really happened was that the lower supply of good quality late model used cars caused those prices to rise (supply and demand) and that allowed the difference between new and used car prices to rise, too.
They could make a car for $1M that had a useful live of 1M miles. Even if it is the only car you would need to ever buy, if it cost more than you could afford, it doesn't matter how long it lasts.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... [wikipedia.org]
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Planned obsolescence and subscription services that didn't exist for most people 30 years ago are helping to keep things afloat. The consumer market is probably larger than ever before as far as income to consumer spending ratio.
We may not be growing as far as new consumers or new markets at a rate we were use to for a while but we are paying for services on a monthly basis that no generation before the baby boomers did and even the baby boomers are late arrivals to this party. Top that with the degradation of quality in what use to be considered durable goods and you'll see that the market is indeed growing.
The expansion of the consumer market has occurred through debt financing. That is fine in the short term, but is not sustainable in the long run. People regularly finance automobiles for six years while just a generation or two ago, a three years was the norm. People are carrying far more credit card debt than ever before and the purchases tend to not be for extravagance.
The only way for the consumer market to really grow is for the purchasing power of the individual to grow. Depressed wages and high unemp
Worst article ever... (Score:5, Insightful)
I am now dumber having read that article. Nowhere does it explain how concrete may have caused the downfall of the Roman empire.
Re:Worst article ever... (Score:5, Funny)
Pocket watches became very popular in the british empire late 1800's... by a century later the empire was a tiny vestige of it's former glory. Therefore pocket watches caused the downfall of the british empire!
Curse you (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Worst article ever... (Score:5, Interesting)
In fact it looks like they have it exactly backwards. What the academic actually said is that it led to the political downfall of the Republic, which was replaced by the Empire.
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I think this is a case of the ignorant editors at IBT slapping a title on this. The text of the article doesn't claim the Roman *EMPIRE* fell because of concrete, it claims that the fall of the *REPUBLIC* was hastened by concrete.
BIG difference.
Re:Worst article ever... (Score:4, Funny)
In other words, we didn't get a concrete answer.
Uh-oh! (Score:2)
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!
So much wiser (Score:2)
What a load (Score:3, Insightful)
...of bullshit. How this poorly written piece of crap got on Slashdot, I have no idea.
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How this poorly written piece of crap got on Slashdot
You must be new here.
And what will be our excuse? (Score:2)
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.
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Yes, Julius Caesar was the end of the Roman empire, I can see that.
Go read some history, then come back and try again.
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I'm all set to blame Jersey Shore.
Wow - talk about missing the point. (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Thank you!
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The historically literate person is saying that concrete helped in the transition from the Republic ... to the Empire.
Take your fancy liberal arts trivia to some other site. We don't need your kind around here. This is "News for Nerds" -- history was an elective.
Rediculous (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Rediculous (Score:5, Funny)
What made the concrete rediculous is the concentration of iron phosphates in the limestone used as a raw material for the concrete. At least some of this survived into the finished concrete, lending it a reddish colour, especially when it got wet. Modern concrete is prepared by a different process that effectively removes the iron phosphates, meaning modern concrete is no longer rediculous.
Honestly, get a spelling checker.
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Did you just squeeze a fun, informative fact into a gripe about spelling?
Re:Rediculous (Score:5, Funny)
Not a lot of hard evidence around to make a concrete conclusion. Were there more information it would cement my thoughts. What I see is a conglomerate of issues.
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Not a lot of hard evidence around to make a concrete conclusion. Were there more information it would cement my thoughts. What I see is a conglomerate of issues.
Now that's some stone-cold, solid reasoning.
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Admittedly, my thoughts started as somewhat liquid, but when fully formed, were solidified.
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Technically, Augustus founded the Empire, though he used his status as a Julian to pull it off; that and the fact that he was smarter and better connected than the other members of the Second Triumvirate.
Re:Ridiculous (Score:3)
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 [libertyfund.org].
They have several different formats including: an HTML version converted from the original text, EBoo
Maybe (Score:2)
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!
Mismatch of Subject and Article (Score:3)
So concrete allowed to end the Republic and start the actual Roman Empire.
Re:Mismatch of Subject and Article (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure I even buy that. The Republic had always been an unstable form of government, and I'd argue the real collapse of the Republic came about because of the expansion of Rome (remember here, Rome as a major imperial power began with the Punic Wars, over a century before Caesar's death). As Rome absorbed the Carthaginian empire, it grew very rapidly and the political structure of the Republic was never very good and dealing with this. Caesar was ultimately the symptom of the disease that had plagued the Republic for decades. If he hadn't tried to seize power, someone else would have, and let us remember that his attempt ultimately failed, but did pave the way for his nephew Octavius to push the whole way.
Ignoring Republic vs Empire (Score:2)
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,
How charmingly simplistic (Score:4, Informative)
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 [reddit.com]. 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 [reddit.com].
If you just want to shoot the breeze and engage in idle speculation and name calling, there are other history subreddits here [reddit.com].
The argument does not make sense. (Score:2)
"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.
Colosseum built out of concrete? (Score:2)
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.
Lead in the water a "popular theory"?? WFT?? (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Several Corrections from Someone in the Field (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Beta led to the decline of Slashdot (Score:3)
But did lead poisoning lead to beta?
it didn't fall. It was abandoned. (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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These days, most article editing is to make sure it follows the rules of English and that it has a coherent thought... fact checking is rarely done by anyone except the reader.
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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.
Good point.
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I read the synopsis, decided the premise was stupid(of the synopsis).. read couple of comments.
only then I check where the link lead to. explains perfectly why the article is so misinformed despite the articles source material. ibtimes(the fuckers with auto videos of unrelated shit everyone has read about a dozen times before)...
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I came I saw I concreted
Veni
Vidi
Vitrify