Reply to: Chico

[AlfredJPruffock]

I think Sulla started the rot.

Not to mention the decadent Emperor Egalabalus, the first Transvestite Emperor.

[voron]

Ummm I really don't see how that follows ...

Well it seemed very reasonable to me

[Jabberwocky]

I was there!

Anyway, as I am really Spod, Churchill, DimPrawn, LB and Voron, I have the combined intellect of the UK's brightest technology talent to draw on.

Ummm I really don't see how that follows ...

[John Galt]

So then Chico, we have a 5 page thread and you have still managed to avoid answering my question. YOU stated that all men are made in God's image - if this is the case any killing of another human being equates to the wanton destruction of your God

Think carefully before you cut and paste, sorry I mean answer

[mcquiggd]

How the fecking hell do you know this stuff, if you aren't doing a quick google?! You're a C++ programmer, not Andrew Roberts!

Or he plays Rome: Total War. Excellent game.

[Spartacus]

How the fecking hell do you know this stuff, if you aren't doing a quick google?! You're a C++ programmer, not Andrew Roberts!

I was there!

Anyway, as I am really Spod, Churchill, DimPrawn, LB and Voron, I have the combined intellect of the UK's brightest technology talent to draw on.

[sasguru]

blah bl.ah hic. if you're so hard then think. i'm to drunk togove a tulip

[Board Game Geek]

The spread of wealth in a modern society

Is there such a thing ?

It seems to me that wealth is not so much spreading around, as more being deliberately funnelled in to the hands of the few and the powerful, including governments. This has many repurcussions for the have nots, and I forsee a time when the have's will suffer the consequences of their greed.

Argue all you like about every man being equal and having the same opportunities...that's idealistic claptrap.

The maths is simple...deprive people of food and they starve. Deprive them of water and they thirst. Deprive them of money and they are deprived of everything else, material and immaterial. No money = no hope.

Is there an answer ? Yes. Are we unselfish enough to change our thinking and our lives to place others first instead of ourselves ? Are we heck !

We are constantly having to work harder in order to survive, and maintain our lifestyles. And when we are working to survive, our key priorities are to ourselves and our immediate responsibilities. This leaves no room for altruism. In fact, it effectively sabotages it. Break the cycle, and we can change direction. But to break the cycle require colossal effort, and the world is not economically or even spiritually mature enough to embrace such change on a monumental scale.

Governement is about control and interference in our lives. Instead of being an elected body, to oversee the smooth running of our lives, it has turned in to a spiteful Nanny, who knows best, and must invent new ways in which to stifle our freedoms and cull our spirits. The more freedoms Nanny takes away, the more we rely upon Nanny to provide for us. Nanny is no longer a benign entity who looks after our best interests, but a cranky parasite, that we have elected. The irony is absolute.

We crafted these chains that fetter us.

The limit of our potential was fashioned by our own hands. We are masters of our own demise.

And deep down, we know it is wrong. We scream and kick at the injustice of it all. Then turn over for another caning, because the old saying holds true.

"Better the Devil you know, than the Devil you don't"

[sasguru]

Good ...

...about time the tone was raised from Chico's puerile rantings

[EternalOptimist]

Hang on you lot, if you start talking about real things that happened BC Chico will have nothing to misinterpret

[sasguru]

Hmmmm

Flipping heck, you sure you guys are mere contractors. I'm impressed.
Threaded, I agree with you that the decline of the Roman empire is being mirrored. I disagree with the reasons though. The spread of wealth in a modern society is drastically different to the Roman model.
I think it's just a fundamental truth that all great civilisations decline when people stop being simple and martial and become soft. The archetypal example of this isn't even Western. In India the original warrior caste, the Kshatriyas, were supplanted by the book readers, the Brahmins.

And so it goes ....

[voron]

Originally, yes, but after the Marian reforms the average legionary was much more likely to come from the head count rather than be a land owning equestrian expected to provide his own equipment. These new recruits saw an army career as a means to obtain land as part of the spoils of war. Of course, this lead to the general acting as patron to thousands of clients all with military training and who owed their primary allegiance to their former commander rather than to the state, hence ultimately to the series of civil wars that wracked the republic and initiated its transformation into the empire.

How the fecking hell do you know this stuff, if you aren't doing a quick google?! You're a C++ programmer, not Andrew Roberts!

[threaded]

Yes, my point. The land that was being offered to the soldiers was supposed to be owned by the state, but the rich families had a grab on it and were not too happy about letting go. So these soldiers who previously were independant citizens found they had to support their general whatever it was he was up to. So essentially their votes meant nothing only how much a politician could afford to spend on getting elected counted.

[Spartacus]

Originally, yes, but after the Marian reforms the average legionary was much more likely to come from the head count rather than be a land owning equestrian expected to provide his own equipment. These new recruits saw an army career as a means to obtain land as part of the spoils of war. Of course, this lead to the general acting as patron to thousands of clients all with military training and who owed their primary allegiance to their former commander rather than to the state, hence ultimately to the series of civil wars that wracked the republic and initiated its transformation into the empire.

[threaded]

I think the fall of the republic is very similar to what is happening in the western world now. A small number of families owned most things and controlled just about everything. Unfortunately these families were not the type who are good at governance and a little too greedy. This greed fuelled disenfranchisement: in Rome the soldiers were originally also landowners, yet the price of land kept increasing and mortgage payments eventually outstripped the ability of an ordinary soldier to pay.