Those of us on the Right often see and talk about current events and then the parallels from past history and cultures – something that we NEVER see the Left do (outside their lens of oppression and race). Why? Because there’s nothing new under the sun – almost everything we see today someone or people have done in the past. The kick is to learn from those mistakes from the past – and don’t do it again! But alas, the Smart People of the Left refuse to see (and more important, understand) that certain things bring civilizations down. But, they blithely believe that THEY are finally the ones that can make it work.
Interesting article about the Romans: “How Roman Central Planners Destroyed Their Economy” and it ends with a quote from Von Mises (emphasis mine):
Finally, as, again, Ludwig von Mises concluded, the Roman Empire began to weaken and decay because it lacked the ideas and ideology that are necessary to build upon and safeguard a free and prosperous society: a philosophy of individual rights and free markets. As Mises ended his own reflections on the civilizations of the ancient world:
“The marvelous civilization of antiquity perished because it did not adjust its moral code and its legal system to the requirements of the market economy. A social order is doomed if the actions which its normal functioning requires are rejected by the standards of morality, are declared illegal by the laws of the country, and are prosecuted as criminal by the courts and the police. The Roman Empire crumbled to dust because it lacked the spirit of [classical] liberalism and free enterprise. The policy of interventionism and its political corollary, the Fuhrer principle, decomposed the mighty empire as they will by necessity always disintegrate and destroy any social entity.”
Go read the whole thing and ponder upon: what did we see from then and what is the parallel of today?
Update: a little more from Cafe Hayek:
In years of peace Diocletian, with his aides, faced the problems of economic decay. To overcome depression and prevent revolution he substituted a managed economy for the law of supply and demand…. To ensure the supply of necessaries for the cities and the armies, he brought many branches of industry under complete state control, beginning with the import of grain; he persuaded the shipowners, merchants, and crews engaged in this trade to accept such control in return for government guarantee of security in employment and returns…. In 301 Diocletian and his colleagues [joint rulers of an administratively divided empire] issued an Edictum de pretiis, dictating maximum legal prices or wages for all important articles or services in the Empire…. The Edict was until our time the most famous example of an attempt to replace economic laws by governmental decrees. Its failure was rapid and complete.
