• Tattorack@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Uh, yeah, not like this.

    If you’re sitting around waiting for the empire to fall, then it’s never going to fall. Empires fall because people make them fall.

    And it’s going to be achieved with blood…

      • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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        4 hours ago

        No, Tattorack is correct. Material conditions decaying makes it easier to topple, but Materialists know that without the working class organizing and acutally overthrowing the system, it won’t fall. The system still has to be killed and replaced, otherwise it will linger on.

    • Bahnd Rollard@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Also, ask when Rome fell, historians wont agree on any specific date. They were never the top of the town afterwards, but the fall was more of a gradual multi-century tumble punctuated by hitting every rock on the way down.

    • Coding4Fun@lemmy.ml
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      23 hours ago

      Not exactly true. USSR, felt without a single drop o blood, most because it’s economic opening movement started too late. US government is taking actions that are isolating US commercially, increasing its debt and losing relevance in the world’s diplomacy.

      • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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        4 hours ago

        The USSR wasn’t an Empire, which played into that. Further, the reforms it introduced weren’t because it opened up too late, but because they played against the socialist system of planning. The PRC’s approach to economic reform retained full state control and is focused on unity, rather than disunity, which is why it’s working.

        • Coding4Fun@lemmy.ml
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          2 hours ago

          Neither is US. The empire reference is related to the imperialist state policies. Not the same but similar to that was the policies of USSR with other countries of the Soviet block and what Kzar Putin is trying to do with th Baltic’s today.

          Your point of view about the Glasnost, Perestroika and consequently the dissolution seems more from the structuralist point of view (which is valid and revelvant for the dissolution), while my argument is more from the economic point of view.

          In a very pragmatic way, the closed economy model of USSR imposed many of the issues that deepened the structural problems (like you mentioned) and accelerated the dissolution. Based on Gorbachev own opinion, the Chernobyl disaster was the start of the dissolution: combination of a repressive internal policy creating a fertile environment for corruption, burocracy and inneficiency, together with an outdated industry caused by isolationism.

          US seems to be doing the same: closing its economy, negationism, losing diplomatic relevance, …

          Although a completely imbecile, Elon is right in one point: there is only one party in US right now, and it is not even remotely aligned with what the Americans need/desire. Same type of structural corrosion that brought the Soviet block to dissolution.

          • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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            1 hour ago

            The US is absolutely an Empire, it practices imperialism, by which it extracts vast wealth from the global south. The USSR didn’t do that.

            Further, I’m absolutely focused on economics. The Soviet economy slowed, but was still growing. The dissolution of the USSR was multifaceted, complex, and not boiled down to one failure. Further, its conditions are entirely different from the US, which is a decaying Empire, the fruits of imperialism are diminishing and disparity is rising.

            I’m a Marxist-Leninist, economics are core to my analysis.

        • Coding4Fun@lemmy.ml
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          2 hours ago

          Along of it history, yes. During its dissolution, unless I am missing something, there was no fight.

    • fox2263@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Indeed. The empire you left to make your own with blackjack and hookers was nearly double that. If you want to be facetious too, then probably triple.

        • daydrinkingchickadee@lemmy.mlOP
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          2 days ago

          We’re talking about the average life expectancy of an empire. It’s a fairly straightforward calculation if one has all the data ready.

          • essell@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            Sure, we could also work out the average life expectancy of a mammal.

            But, would it really be useful, predictive or meaningful, given the variety and variability of the conditions the data emerges from?

          • silasmariner@programming.dev
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            1 day ago

            It’s not really that straightforward though, is it? Firstly is it a mean or a median average? What counts as an empire? When do we date the rise and fall of specific empires? These are not questions with straightforwards answers. Would Hitler’s Germany count as an empire? How many Roman empires were there?

              • AppleTea@lemmy.zip
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                1 day ago

                Do you count the Byzantine as separate or the same as Rome?

                Your talking about structures comprising huge numbers of people across multiple generations. There is no clear “death”. Just the gradual shifting from one set of conditions to another. Pick any line in the sand, declare it to be the “end” of an empire, and you’ll still find people living under its rules, speaking the language, and using the currency well afterward.

                Hell, look at Britain. No longer the globe-strangling power that they were, but it’s still the same country with the same rules and government and money.

          • _g_be@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            It being an average number, pulled out of it’s context, doesn’t necessarily mean anything beyond just the average

  • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    I hate to be nitpicky about a meme but I love to be nitpicky. This claims is based on bullshit statistics that the author made up or bent to his will. The Ottoman empire alone shows this to be incorrect but Rome too stands out. Besides, what would an arbitrary amount of time have to do with the collapse of complex economic systems. Its bullshit idealism and I hate seeing it.

    I am begging the US to collapse though

    • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Also worth pointing out that, while America may be 249 years old, no one would consider it an empire for the majority of that time. Its debatable, but I would argue we didn’t really reach an empirical level of power until the late 40s, when we started taking over what was left of the British Empire’s influence over the middle-eas5.

      • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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        4 hours ago

        The US has always been a settler-colony, but it became more Imperialist after World War I with the inter-ally debts. It became world hegemon after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, however.

    • LwL@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Average. It’s just an average. I haven’t verified whether the number is accurate (and often it’s probably debatable what qualifies as an empire and at what point it fell) but some empires lasting way longer does nothing to disprove 250 years being the average lifespan.

      The second part of what you said is still entirely correct of course, that number has no real predictive capabilities for the collapse of the USA.

      • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.ml
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        1 day ago

        It isn’t though, I have seen the original source of this claim and its bs. The author just picks and chooses when empires begin and end so that it fits their claim. I would concede the point if it were ever actually an average.

        • LwL@lemmy.world
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          20 hours ago

          I mean yea that doesn’t surprise me in the slightest honestly, even outside of the number itself being pretty meaningless in the first place it’s very fuzzy what the actual dates are.

  • DarkCloud@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Of course this is incorrect, go look up an empire and see.

    … Roman empire got over 1000 years, Ottoman’s got 623 years, Mongol empire only got 162.

    …and Italy, Turkey, and Mongolia are still around, they’re just not empires anymore. They’re Nations.

        • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          Sure, but that doesn’t change there will be outliers at both ends. And the lower end would likely have far more. So no matter the average, it would be on lower end of the max.

          So if an empire and only one lasted to 1000, but others 5 years, or even days. It makes sense that an average around 250 is entirely possible.

          • IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            if you want to go into statistics, normal average are useless for these things, as many empires last a few years, while others can last thousands. they don’t fall in a normal distribution, you might need a geometric mean.

            but also, empire is such a vague term. did the Roman empire fall around the 5 century? or do you count Byzantium as the Roman empire?

            Did England start with the Norman invasion? or was it from before and the Normans were just a new dynasty?

            it’s something that’s practically impossible to count, what’s an empire? when it started/ended? and on top of that no normal distribution.

            • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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              22 hours ago

              I don’t disagree, there isn’t a great way to quantify the data, I’m just making a discussion out of the main comment seemingly missing what an average is by talking about edge cases on the high end. Also their 3 examples, which I assume are the only 3 high end cases. Already have a massive discrepancy.

              1000 and the next closest being ~600, it infers that long empires are few and far between.

              • IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world
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                22 hours ago

                there’s no average, that number was literally made up for some bs theory of empires.

                it isn’t because it’s an “average” it’s literally made it, and it’s impossible to get, as whatever definition of empire will miss so many “empires”.

                it’s multiple layers of bs.

                • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
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                  22 hours ago

                  No one’s arguing that dude, but that doesn’t mean people can’t point out and talk about someone who missed what an average is as well.

    • davel@lemmy.ml
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      2 days ago

      You do know what average means in this context, right? You divide the sum of the empires’ years by the number of empires.

      • Skua@kbin.earth
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        The actual paper the number comes from (Fate of Empires by John Glubb) is complete bullshit, though. Even the cherry-picked examples it uses, which are limited strictly to the surroundings of the Mediterranean, don’t use any kind of consistent criteria for when an empire starts or ends. He tries to count “Alexander (and his successors)” as one coherent entity and then picks an end year in which all of them had either already collapsed long ago or would not do so for many decades to come. He cuts centuries off of the Roman Empire’s lifespan by just saying that the empire was unstable and getting invaded a lot (and ignoring the Eastern Empire entirely). HIs reckoning of the “Arab Empire” includes three separate caliphates, and the end date isn’t even the actual end of any of them

        Other than that, no, it does not attempt to find an average in the sense of a mean lifespan. It actually does argue that 250 years for an empire can be compared to a human living 70 years.

      • HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml
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        2 days ago

        Then it wouldn’t be reasonable to assume the US would collapse right at the average (mean) though. If the majority of empires collapsed at the same age (the mode) it would be different, but the mean tells you very little about when any particular empire will collapse.

        The mean number of children per household is a decimal, that doesn’t mean any households have partial children.

    • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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      2 days ago

      these where the first versions of empire that existed on this world and full of equal parts flaws and dumb luck as a result

      the modern hybrid euro-colonial versions also have flaws and luck on their side, but, more importantly, they learn and adapt from each other and, as a result, have a pattern that we can now identify.

    • comfy@lemmy.ml
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      2 days ago

      When someone says “death to America”, they aren’t saying “death to Americans”. A government/state is a regime, not all it’s people, despite how much as nationalists love to stoke that sort of patriotism. So I have no problem with the slogan, I call for the fall of the US imperialist regime.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_America#Interpretation_and_meaning - has some confirmations from various Iranian politicians and a travel writer.

      • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml
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        1 day ago

        Usians: “hate the government not the people”

        Usians when hearing someone else say “hate the government not the people” about USA: “we’re gonna kill you”

        • comfy@lemmy.ml
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          Where is that constraint coming from? “Death to [x]” is a statement of a desire.

          “Death to Americans” would be a call for the deaths of citizens. Obviously Iran doesn’t consider the typical American citizen to be oppressing them, so they are not interested in calling for that.

          Someone yelling “death to America” could still be supporting the death of George W. Bush or Donald Trump, who are Americans. It could even involve combating many in the US military. That’s still very different from calling for “death to Americans”, because the target is the regime, not its citizens simply for being citizens.

          But I still think you’ve raised an interesting discussion to have so I’ve tried to answer it.


          In an ideal world, regime change. Relatively peaceful dissolution is preferable and possible (consider the death of the Soviet Union).

          However, given the ruthlessness of the people with the most power in the US, I suspect they would gladly kill millions of Americans before even considering a peaceful surrender. People are shot by the state in regular protests, let alone one directly threatening the state (case in point - Jan 6 had a protester killed by police). So unless some interesting lucky opportunities open up (such as a military coup), the USA will (continue to) kill Americans to maintain stability, regardless of whether those opposing the USA kill a single American.

          Given that situation, it sounds like any resistance to the US is bad because will likely involve deaths of innocent people. Yes, but the other side of the story is that to do nothing ‘‘also’’ results in the deaths of innocent people. To the people running the show, it’s completely normal to oversee the constant atrocious social murder of many thousands each year through poverty, artificial scarcity of food and medication, healthcare denial and other neglect in the name of profit. We overproduce enough food to feed everyone, there’s enough land and property to house everyone.

          To do nothing is to allow many Americans to keep dying each day from easily preventable deaths. To fix that system will most likely kill many Americans in the process. You can almost simplify it down to a trolley problem - there’s no clean solution whichever choice you make. But, for each of us, there is a correct decision.

          • jaupsinluggies@feddit.uk
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            Maybe it’d be a good idea to use a word other than death, which is clearly being misinterpreted to mean killing people. “Dissolution of [x]” obviously isn’t as snappy, but it’s an improvement at least in terms of accuracy of intent.

  • reallykindasorta@slrpnk.net
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    Despite all the and suffering it has caused and will cause, Trump admin has at least handed us the beginning of a breakdown in US hegemony as trust has eroded with other nations who are all busy pivoting away from it right now.

    Unfortunately upon breaking the gridlock, other nations are scrambling to maintain the status quo rather than leaning into the future by redoubling commitments to address human and climate crises before it’s too late for the humans.

  • Evilsandwichman [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    It’s funny to imagine our descendants in whatever America becomes defending the empire by saying it wasn’t America’s fault it collapsed, it was Israel’s; hopefully though one of the things they admit is it’s also because of culture war idiocy and other arbitrary, fabricated social divisions; EDIT: Also the empire’s insistence on capitalism and wasting the talents contained in around 350 million people; China capitalizing (haaaaa, see what I did there?) on their population with excellent access to really good education and health services has turned their one billion people into its most powerful asset, meanwhile in America humans are also an asset, but in the form of slavery (wage slavery and actual slavery).