American Empire VS Roman Empire : monetary history repeats itself
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Uploaded by marcchabotyt on Sep 27, 2009
this is a short montage of a one hour and twenty minutes lecture
by Joseph Peden at the The Ludwig von Mises Institute.
.
http://mises.org/story/3663
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Inflation and the Fall of the Roman Empire
Professor Joseph Peden's lecture Inflation and the Fall of the Roman Empire given at the Seminar on Money and Government in Houston, Texas, on October 27, 1984.
The original audio recording is available as a free MP3 download.
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la vérité sur la bureaucratie romaine:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c45FtDhdDoY
translation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGtBovI735I
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now I've been asked to speak on the theme of Roman history, particularly the problem of inflation and it's impact. My analysis is based on the premise that monetary policy cannot be studied, or understood, in isolation from the overall policies of the state.
Monetary, fiscal, military, political, economic issues are all very much intertwined. And the reason they are all so intertwined is in part due to the fact that the state, any state, normally seeks to monopolize the supply of money within its own territory.
Monetary policy therefore always serves, even if it serves badly, the perceived needs of the rulers of the state. If it also happens to enhance the prosperity and progress of the masses of the people, that is a secondary benefit; but its first aim is to serve the needs of the rulers, not the ruled. and This point is central, I believe, to an understanding of the course of monetary policy in the late Roman Empire.
historians of prices in the Roman Empire have come to the conclusion that despite all of this inflation, the price of gold, in terms of it's purchasing power, remained stable from the first through the fourth century. In other words, gold remained, in terms of it's purchasing power, a stable value whereas all this coinage just became increasingly worthless.
What were the causes of this inflation?
The size of the army, I think I indicated already, had increased, doubled from the time of Augustus to Diocletian, and the size of the civil service I indicated also. Now, all these events strained the fiscal resources of the state beyond it's ability to sustain itself; and the debasement and the taxation were both used to keep the ship of state going, frequently by debasing, then by taxation and then often simply by accusing people of treason and confiscating their estates.
One of the odd things about inflation is, in the Roman Empire, that while the roman state survived — the Roman state was not destroyed by inflation — what was destroyed by inflation was the freedom of the Roman people, and particularly, the first victim was their economic freedom.
Rome had basically a laissez-faire concept of state/economy relations. Except in emergencies, which were usually related to war, the Roman government generally followed a policy of free trade and minimal restriction on the economic activities of its population. But now under the pressure of this need to pay the troops and under the pressure of inflation, the liberty of the people began to be seriously eroded — and very rapidly.
We could start with the class known as the decuriones, the decurions. This was your prosperous, small and middle-landowning class who were the dominant elements of the cities of the Roman Empire.
This class, in the mid-3rd century, was assigned the task of collecting the taxes in the municipality that were being assest by the central government. The central government could no longer collect its taxes effectively, so they made the decurion class collectively responsible for getting revenues and passing them on to the imperial government.
The decurions, of course, had as much difficulty as anyone else in doing this, and the returns were, again, frequently inadequate. So the government solved that problem by simply passing a law that any taxes that decurions could not collect from others, they would have to pay out of their own pocket. That's known as the incentive method for the tax collector. [laughter]
As you can well imagine, as the crises became greater and the economy was disrupted by civil conflicts and invasions and the effects of inflation, the decurions, strangely enough, no longer wanted to be decurions. And they began to abandon their lands, abandon their cities, and escape to wherever they could find refuge in other larger cities or other provinces. But they were not to be allowed to do that with impunity, and the law was then passed that any decurion discovered somewhere else was to be arrested, bound like a slave, and carted back to his hometown where he was restored to his dignity as a decurion. [laughter]
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Awesome!
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@dfnurhidayat Wrong. America is a distraction and the "fall guy" from the truth. If elite can brainwash you into thinking "I hate America", they win. The foreign policy is not an american majority, and decision can be made because no one can agree. So if we cant agree, we both lose.
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@LordLindsey12 /sigh. You people give me no hope in humanity. I should stop wasting my intelligence on someone so devoid of intellect, so I hope you get raped by a jew for the sake of irony.
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@NicoleNa666 The zionists/jews are out in full-force protecting their masters, AND I LOVE IT!!!!
Keep commenting so that EVERYONE can read the article that exposes the past murders by the zionists, and the future that this planet will INEVITABLY face if these psychopaths get their "Final-War!" I LOVE HOW THESE "PEOPLE" ARE TERRIFIED OF OTHERS SEEING THE TRUTH! I LOVE IT! It means that little ole' "ME" is making a difference!
w(dot)zioncrimefactory(dot)com
/jew-world-order Jesus loves u! -
@LordLindsey12 Oh, you're Christian? Not too much of a difference between radical Islam and radical Christian. Although you people are supposed to be rare as we live in a developed world.
How in the fuck would Jews do 9/11? How fucking non-sensical and blind do you have to be to think that? I've read the article, and honestly it's fucking shit. How am I supposed to take the article seriously when you say shit like "communism is jewish". You anti-semetic dumbfucking ignorant bastard.
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@NicoleNa666 I am a CHRIST-LOVING CHRISTIAN, not a CHRIST-HATING jew.
Why don't you address the article instead of using useless and non-sensical insults that aren't even true? I know that it's because if you read and address the issues of who is really destroying our world in-order to create the "jewish-Utopia" then your games of control and divide-and-conquer would disappear with everyone who sees the truth as it is. READ THE ARTICLE. w(dot)zioncrimefactory(dot).co
m/jew-world-order PEACE -
@LordLindsey12 You crazy Islamic retards always blame the Jews on everything. Just shut the fuck up already you invalids.
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TREA$ON! $tarving u$ for harve$t
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I don't know if I can get past the strong LonG Island accent..
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Who REALLY runs our world? search "israel Did 911" and search "ZionCrimeFactory" for proof.
"US Rep. McKinney has accused the pro-Israel Lobby in America (AIPAC, ADL, etc) for ruining her political career.She refused to sign the pro-Israel pledge from Congress and took a pro-Palestinian stance. Because of this, she said “war was declared” on her by them. In 2009 she told TIU's Ognir that “more than 99% of Congress work for Zionist-Israeli interests.”
w(dot)zioncrimefactory com/jew-world-order
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AMERICAN IS NOT WORLD POLICE, BUT WORLD TERRORIST!!!!
dfnurhidayat 1 month ago 8
The hardcore reality of todays war against inflation involves walking up to the guy at the bottom and saying he will have to take less and less of the pie while at the same time giving more and more to the guy at the top.
lordnuck33 7 months ago 2