Aestu wrote:
Grats on reading something off Google, or some political editorial, and becoming an instant expert. So let me set you straight:
Actually, I (mis)remembered most of it from one of my college history classes. The professor spent a huge chunk of time on Rome and the similarities between Roman policy and our own current policy. I did double-check myself with a search to make sure I wasn't making huge inaccuracies, but I can understand how me not being a staffer for the BBC would call for claims that I can't know anything unless I find it on the internet.
Aestu wrote:
First off, the reason the grain distribution became necessary in the first place was that after the Punic Wars, small-scale farming was no longer possible or economical because small farms were unable to compete with massive latifundae owned by the rich and worked with slave labor. The Senate made the decision they weren't going to change this (see: the Gracchi, or Cato's treatise on farming), so the status quo endured. Then as now, it was not so simple as "get a job". There were simply no opportunities for a poor person to make his own means.
If I recall correctly (and I'm not going to check myself on this, since you seem to take exception to anyone verifying their facts), this was touched on in my history course. The grain subsidy was bad policy because there actually were opportunities available, but because those opportunities didn't match the experience of displaced farmers, they weren't forced into new professions. The subsidy was an "easy fix" that didn't cause hate and discontent by forcing people into a new profession or forcing them to leave Rome for better opportunities on the frontier.
Aestu wrote:
Second off, your chronology is wrong. Grain handouts spiraled in the years AFTER Caesar, and the one who really set the precedents in this regards was his adoptive son Augustus, who conquered Egypt and used it as a source of grain handouts.
Jubbergun wrote:
While Caesar reduced the number of eligible recipients by roughly half, he did not abolish the program in its entirety, and after his death it eventually reverted to its previous state.
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Did you read what I wrote, or did you just write a seven page treatise on Roman fiscal policy and hope that it disagreed with what I said? I only ask because what you say seems to be eerily similar to what I said, but you seem to think I didn't.
Aestu wrote:
Caesar was, contrary to what you believe, big into handouts, and this was the major reason he was able to become a successful politician. On several occasions he threw banquets for literally every man in Rome, and handed out grain and olive oil upon returning from his conquests. He paid off the debts of individuals to buy their loyalty, and paid for this in turn by selling his own political loyalty to Crassus, the richest man in Rome.
I don't disagree with any of that, and I don't think pointing to Caesar shaving excess off one program sets him up as a fiscal conservative. I stuck with the grain subsidy because:
1) it's easy to understand/relate to
2) it was probably one of the oldest Roman social programs
3) it illustrated how once an entitlement is initiated, it grows to ridiculous proportions and becomes abused
My point (or at least one of them) was that entitlements are bad because they continue to grow, cause people to become dependent upon them, and (though I don't think I touched on this) rob the economy of the capital needed to grow the very opportunities that needed to avoid such programs in the first place. My point was not "Caesar was an awesome and principled leader who was great with government finance." More proof that you didn't read (or didn't understand) what I wrote and instead want to quibble over minor historical details tangential to what is actually being discussed.
Aestu wrote:
Third, Caesar, although an agent of handouts, did attempt to do what most Roman - and American - politicians refused to do, which was spend government funds on state work projects. Plutarch describes how before his death he intended to create a WPA system, employing thousands of Romans to dig a new tributary for the Tiber, drain swamps, and build an enlarged and improved harbor accessible to Rome. All that came to an end with his death, but if that had come to pass, Roman history would have been very different because their society would have been stabilized and the poor would have had economic opportunities. So really this proves the validity of government having a proactive role in ensuring the public welfare - contrary to your interpretation.
I'm sorry, where in "my interpretation" is there any mention of infrastructure projects not being a role of the government? It's bad enough that you're not reading what I did write without inserting things that I didn't.
Aestu wrote:
Fourth, you don't understand Rome's relationship with the world at large. The Roman Empire was not one big, happy family and the relationship of Rome to its dominions was not the relationship between DC and the 50 states or between America and NATO. The Social War was one of Rome's most brutal and hard-fought conflicts, and what the war was about, was Rome's continued exploitation and oppression of other Italian communities. Other communities could not compete with Rome on an even footing because of imperial oppression, and like I said back then it wasn't as simple as "get a job" because life was even less fair than it is now.
Again, more tangential arguments against points not made that are in no way relate to the salient points being discussed.
Aestu wrote:
Fifth, immigration was part of the solution and not the problem for Rome. Rome made a point of attracting immigrants because their skills and knowledge, although it competed directly with that of their own citizens, proved invaluable to their success as a civilization. Rome became great because they had a huge population, and the reason they did, was because they encouraged (sometimes forced) people to emigrate. Much of what we today think of as Roman culture is borrowed from other cultures that were integrated into Roman society. Ovid, for example, one of the best Roman writers, borrowed heavily from listening to Judaean immigrants; Aesop, whose stories are still popular today, was an immigrant from Hispania. Roman architects were trained by Greek and Etruscan experts. So to say that Rome would have been better off if they had shut off immigration is to turn the truth on its head.
Saying that "immigration was good" while arguing that "entitlements were necessary because there were no opportunities" is retarded. Further, every instance of integration that you point to involve what we would refer to as a "white collar" profession. This is hardly an argument against how an influx of immigrants competing with the domestic population for jobs and subsisting off of social programs was harmful to the Roman populace.
Aestu wrote:
Sixth, your comment about Hadrian shows you really don't understand how the imperial system worked or why it came undone. An imperial system is all about taking resources from one part of a large empire and giving it to another. This is how an empire operates. The Roman empire was grossly differentiated in terms of local regions' resources, challenges, burdens, etc, and saying "everyone look out for themselves" would be the exact antithesis of what the entire was all about, which was Rome pulling the strings to keep everything going.
That everything was for the Glory of Rome is not in question (and yet again, I'm not sure who said it was or why you seem to think it is), the point was that the more centralized authority becomes, the less wisely it is used.
Aestu wrote:
Hadrian is today regarded as one of the best and wisest emperors. However, he was very unpopular in his own time, and he ruled in a period when Rome's power was at its greatest extent yet never more precarious and troubled. When Hadrian came to power, the Republic had been dead for nearly 300 years - the causes that undid it lay in the distant past.
Hadrian had the wisdom to see what many other Roman leaders refused to see, which was that in order to survive and function, the Roman empire needed to stop thinking in terms of expansion, stop believing it could grow its way out of problems, and instead focus on consolidation. He understood that knee-jerk military responses were destroying the empire. Hence he built huge defensive fortifications and took steps to establish a fixed border.
That's all very nice, Easy-E, but completely irrelevant to what was being discussed.
Aestu wrote:
Ultimately, and contrary to your interpretation, what drove Rome's fall was militarism and greed, and not the fact that the government handed out grain, but the fact that the government refused to make the changes in Roman society that would have prevented the destabilization of the state, for the same reason that you and people like you don't want to do it today, which is blithely saying, "people should help themselves, if we do nothing it will work itself out", without really understanding how the other half lives or the insurmountable challenge they face.
Rome spent huge sums on their military, and like America they found that having a huge military meant they were drawn into conflicts that could have otherwise been avoided: the Jugurthan War, the Hispanic Wars, the Jewish Wars, the Mithridatic Wars, the Macedonian Wars, the British Wars, on and on the list goes. In the long term, the militarism of the Roman economy limited the scope of their productivity as Rome became focused only around maintaining their global military presence at the cost of fixing social problems at home. Militarism also proved a major ingredient in the political problems that undid the empire as more and more the military became not an instrument of Roman freedom but the tail wagging the dog. In the long run, their military proved to be the problem and not the solution.
The Roman middle class continued to grow and not shrink into the Imperial period, after representative government was dead and gone, but what really undermined Roman power in the long run was the lack of attention paid to the problems of the lowest class, because of the same basic false assumption you make which is that government doesn't have a responsibility to help stabilize society and the economy.
You can't blame the military when its main purpose was to conquer new lands to plunder to pay for the excesses at home. As you point out, at least in reference to Caesar, it was not uncommon to buy the goodwill of the people with largesse. Then you go on to remind us...
Aestu wrote:
An imperial system is all about taking resources from one part of a large empire and giving it to another. This is how an empire operates.
The profligate spending on entitlements and the cost of corruption necessitated the need for the expansion in order to conquer new lands and people to pay for it. If you want to blame militaristic expansion (which itself was costly) for the eventual fall of the empire, it's fine to do so as long as you acknowledge the factors that drove the expansion in the first place. You don't just want to put the cart in front of the horse, you want to forget the horse altogether.
In short, you're just disagreeing to be cantankerous, you obviously didn't really read what I wrote, and were just looking for an excuse to type a 4000 word diatribe about ancillary topics not properly related to the points being made to show us how smart you are.
Your Pal,
Jubber
