0:00

Howdy everybody, CJ here, and welcome

0:02

to Another Dose of Dangerous History. This

0:06

episode is going to feature the audio of a

0:08

talk I gave a little over

0:10

a month ago as I'm recording this intro. So

0:13

this was at the

0:16

March 2023 Self-Reliance

0:19

Festival in Tennessee that

0:22

I attended and was a speaker

0:24

at, and my topic

0:27

in this talk is going to be

0:29

the decline and fall of empires

0:32

and in particular some of the things,

0:34

unfortunately, pretty much all negative, that

0:36

tend to happen

0:39

and that tend to be inflicted by

0:42

ruling oligarchies on empires

0:44

that are in decline and collapse mode.

0:48

So this was a really neat event, I would definitely

0:50

be happy to go again in the future

0:52

if I were invited again as a speaker. It's

0:55

in a fairly rural area of middle

0:58

Tennessee and most

1:01

of the presenters were very

1:03

like practical nuts and

1:05

bolts stuff,

1:06

you know, homesteading, prepping,

1:10

self-defense, self-reliance,

1:12

all those sorts of things.

1:15

And then there's me giving the grand historical

1:17

perspective from the

1:19

perspective of somebody who thinks

1:21

too much. But it seemed to be

1:23

a well-received talk. I got a lot

1:26

of compliments and conversations

1:29

afterward by people, so

1:31

that was cool. And I have a bunch of thank yous

1:34

regarding this event. So

1:36

first off, thanks first and foremost

1:38

to Nicole Soss for

1:41

inviting me and helping to

1:43

arrange the logistics and all that stuff.

1:46

She basically organizes

1:48

and runs the event

1:50

and big thanks to John Willis of

1:53

SOE Tactical.

1:54

He hosted the event on his compound,

1:57

which was a really cool place, and

1:59

he was a great host.

3:59

at Renegade University. And I realize

4:01

I probably should have plugged it

4:03

like at the end of my speech

4:05

so that the attendees of the event

4:08

might have gone and signed up for it to

4:10

hear a bunch more about the topic that I spoke on, but

4:13

I'm such an absent-minded idiot

4:15

that I forgot to do so. So I'm doing

4:17

it here.

4:19

And there's a lot more ears here anyway. There

4:22

were maybe a couple

4:24

hundred people listening to me speak in

4:26

person, thousands of people

4:28

that are gonna download this episode even

4:30

within just a week of it being published.

4:34

I'll also include a link in the show notes to

4:37

the page about hiring me as a speaker.

4:39

If you would like to have me give some

4:41

sort of a talk or presentation to

4:43

your group or event or whatever, I

4:45

have a contact page specifically for

4:48

that

4:49

on my website and there will be a link

4:51

to that in the show notes as well. It'll say something like

4:53

hire CJ to speak at your event.

4:56

And then lastly, I do have one Indiegogo

4:59

shout out to give. So big

5:01

thanks to Todd for recently

5:04

throwing in a contribution to my

5:06

ongoing Indiegogo campaign to keep

5:09

the DHP afloat.

5:12

And reminder, as always, you can

5:15

help me out and keep this thing going by

5:17

giving a one-time contribution through Indiegogo.

5:20

Of course, one of the most helpful ways you

5:22

can help to support my work and get all kinds of perks

5:25

and bonuses in return is to sign

5:28

up for a regular contribution via Patreon

5:30

or Subscribestar. And there's a bunch of other

5:32

ways that

5:34

you can throw me a few shackles and keep me

5:36

doing this thing

5:37

called

5:38

dangerous history. So anyway, enough

5:40

introductory yammering from me. I will now

5:43

turn it over to myself.

5:45

Speaking on what to

5:47

expect when your empire is collapsing,

5:50

at the March, 2023 Self-Reliance

5:52

Festival in Tennessee.

5:54

["Shelter

6:17

Okay, so my

6:20

apologies for making

6:23

your lunch break a

6:25

working lunch break. Now,

6:27

whenever I speak at events or anything

6:29

like that, I always end up being scheduled

6:32

right before lunch. I don't know why it

6:34

always happens, but anyway,

6:37

I'll try

6:37

to make it interesting if I can.

6:40

So imagine if

6:42

you were born in London in 1897.

6:49

The same year Queen Victoria

6:52

celebrated her,

6:55

what is it, diamond Jubilee, I think, 60

6:58

years on the British

7:00

throne, which of course

7:02

at that time included not just the UK,

7:05

but various colonies, provinces,

7:07

and dominions scattered across the world.

7:10

In fact, the sun never

7:12

set on the British Empire.

7:16

You controlled not just all of the British Isles,

7:18

but you controlled the Cape

7:21

of South Africa. You were colonizing

7:24

Australia, New Zealand,

7:26

Canada was part of your empire. On

7:29

top of that, scattered islands and outposts

7:32

around the world, the Suez

7:34

Canal in Egypt, and

7:36

of course the crown jewel

7:38

of the British Empire, India. The

7:42

sun never set on the British Empire. London

7:45

was the financial and

7:48

many other types of capital of

7:50

the world. The British

7:54

Navy ruled the waves and

7:56

was larger and more powerful

7:59

than the British. the next two navies

8:01

in the world combined. Even

8:04

though you had lost a little bit to

8:07

the United States and Germany in recent decades,

8:10

still in many ways,

8:12

England was the workshop of the

8:14

world. In 1899,

8:18

while you were still a baby, the British

8:21

fought a nasty war in South Africa

8:24

known as the Boer War. And

8:26

while it was kind of a mess and it cost

8:29

your empire a lot, ultimately at the end

8:31

of it all, in 1902 you

8:33

emerged victorious with control

8:36

of even more pieces of South Africa than before,

8:38

including the world's most productive

8:40

gold and diamond mines. It

8:43

seemed like this might be the

8:45

one empire that would finally

8:47

beat the spread and

8:49

not fall to

8:51

decline and fall like every single

8:53

other empire in human history.

8:55

Then in 1914,

8:58

when you would have been 17 years old, and

9:00

by the way, you have terrible timing, World

9:03

War I broke out and

9:07

your leaders, the

9:09

rulers of your government, decided to use

9:12

the pretext of the German invasion of Belgium

9:15

to jump in on that one, even though

9:17

the initial stages of that war had nothing

9:19

to do with any sort of attack or threats

9:22

on Britain.

9:25

There is a very good chance you would have fought

9:27

in that war, either as a volunteer in

9:29

the first couple of years or perhaps as a draftee

9:32

in the latter

9:32

years of the war. Assuming

9:34

you emerged from that war not dead,

9:38

you would have, if you were paying attention, started

9:41

to see little cracks and problems

9:43

in the empire. Some of it started even during

9:46

the war, like

9:47

for example, the Irish

9:50

launched yet another rebellion

9:53

to break free of British control in 1916. While

9:56

that rebellion was brutally crushed,

9:58

they came back a few years later. with a much more

10:01

well thought out guerrilla warfare strategy and ultimately

10:05

one status as a self-governing free state within

10:07

the British Empire by the early 1920s

10:10

and were on the path

10:11

to becoming a completely independent republic

10:14

by the 1940s. Your

10:16

empire emerged on the winning

10:18

side of World War I and on paper

10:20

reached its peak after World War I in terms

10:23

of land, people, and resources, picking

10:26

up additional possessions in Africa as

10:28

well as a

10:30

lot of territory in the

10:32

Middle East at the expense of the

10:34

declining Ottoman Empire. On

10:37

paper you would have looked at your empire

10:39

in the 1920s and 30s and said, wow, this

10:42

is even more impressive than it was

10:44

when I was a little baby. But

10:47

sometimes appearances can be deceiving and while

10:49

you were on the winning

10:51

side of World War I, it was an extremely

10:53

costly and Pyrrhic victory and

10:56

while you picked up all these additional territories,

10:59

many of them were not going to be easy to hang

11:01

onto and are going to end up

11:03

costing you more to hang onto than

11:06

they bring you back in terms

11:07

of resources and wealth. Also,

11:11

something not as noticed as it

11:13

should have been at the time, World War

11:16

I resulted in the United States overtaking

11:18

you as the financial

11:20

juggernaut of the world because

11:23

your empire emerged from World War I, owing

11:25

the United States government and banks

11:28

a lot of money. You would have experienced

11:31

a rough time of it in the interwar years, including

11:33

the slump, which is what the Brits called the

11:35

Great Depression,

11:37

and then of course you would have had World War

11:39

II. And again, you would

11:41

have emerged from this war on the winning side,

11:45

but it was even more of a costly, weakening

11:47

Pyrrhic victory than your victory in World

11:49

War I was. And in

11:52

short order, dominoes

11:54

would have started to fall in the process of what

11:56

we now call decolonization.

11:59

its independence primarily through the

12:02

nonviolent resistant campaign of Gandhi.

12:05

Ireland would become a fully independent,

12:08

self-governing republic in the late 40s and the

12:10

dominoes continued to fall from there.

12:13

You lost control of the Suez Canal

12:15

in the aftermath of World War II.

12:18

You've lost India, the crown

12:20

jewel of your empire, and the things

12:22

continue to fall away over the course

12:24

of the 1950s and 1960s. So

12:28

when you were reaching your

12:30

70s, most of the British Empire

12:33

was gone, including the African

12:35

colonies, most of the colonies in

12:37

Asia. So that

12:39

by the time you reached,

12:42

oh, about 85 years old, the

12:45

British Empire was reduced to not

12:48

even all of the British Isles because you lost

12:50

most of Ireland, and a handful

12:52

of little outposts and things around the world,

12:54

and also theoretically the Commonwealth

12:56

Dominguez like Canada and Australia that

12:59

still put the Queen on their money, but

13:01

that's about it, you know, otherwise they're basically

13:03

sovereign nation states. And

13:06

then you would have seen the last little hurrah of empire

13:09

in 1982 at the age of 85 if

13:12

you were still alive with the big

13:14

win to hang on to the Falkland Islands

13:17

at the expense of Argentina.

13:20

This is an empire that went from defeating

13:23

Napoleon,

13:24

defeating the Germans twice to, yeah,

13:28

we beat Argentina and kept

13:30

these little, you know, bat guano islands

13:33

or whatever. This shows you

13:35

that in the span of one person's lifetime,

13:37

an

13:38

empire can go from being a dominant

13:42

hegemonic superpower to

13:43

being at best kind

13:46

of a mid-rate power player, no

13:48

longer a military or financial superpower,

13:51

no longer ruling the waves, no

13:53

longer controlling most of the key

13:55

choke points of trade and commerce. So

14:00

Empires throughout history

14:03

rise and fall. One thing that

14:05

all empires have in common, none of them

14:07

last forever. For the

14:09

sake of argument and to save time, I'm

14:11

going to assume that an audience at an event

14:14

like this is more likely

14:16

than the average people walking around out there

14:18

in zombie land to

14:20

already agree with me on two kind

14:23

of basic claims. One is

14:25

the

14:26

United States of America is an empire.

14:29

Two is the United States

14:32

of America currently is very

14:34

much an empire in serious decline

14:37

and has been for a while. And

14:41

I'm someone who believes that if

14:44

things are going bad and falling apart

14:46

and there's not really any

14:48

realistic way to fix it in

14:50

reality grown-up land, your

14:53

best bet is to admit you have

14:56

a problem, come face to face with

14:58

it, and try to manage the

15:00

crash as best you can. Now

15:03

unfortunately, like most imperial

15:05

elites, in fact almost all imperial elites throughout

15:07

history, ours currently

15:09

either don't realize

15:11

this or they do, but they're pretending publicly

15:14

they don't. And

15:16

so we're in a situation sort of like a plane

15:18

that is just definitely going down

15:21

and the pilots are up there saying, well,

15:25

if we just believe hard enough in

15:27

the exceptionalism of this plane, it

15:29

can magically keep flying. And

15:33

maybe we'll hit a few knobs

15:35

in the cockpit or whatever and that'll do it. And

15:38

unfortunately, they're not doing the right thing, which would be, what's

15:41

the least destructive way I can crash

15:43

land this baby? So I'm

15:46

going to run through things

15:48

that you see commonly in

15:51

empires when they're declining and collapsing.

15:55

Whether it's ancient empires or more modern

15:57

ones, a lot of the big picture stuff that happens

16:00

is basically the same, just

16:02

with different technology and different

16:05

scenery and all that sort of stuff. So,

16:09

these are kind of like my ten

16:12

things that you're likely to see in an empire

16:15

that's going through decline and collapse. These

16:17

are in no particular order, and

16:20

all of them kind of will reinforce

16:22

the rest. It sort of turns into like a downward

16:25

spiral of each thing

16:26

makes the other things worse.

16:30

The first one is, uh-oh,

16:32

hopefully there's a dry erase marker. I feel like I'm back

16:35

teaching in the classroom like

16:37

I did for 16 years in

16:40

teaching college history.

16:42

Every morning, no matter what happened,

16:44

the first dry erase marker I would pick up

16:47

that morning would be the one that's about to die.

16:50

So, guaranteed, guaranteed.

16:53

So, number one, if you can't read it, wars

16:56

get stupider. They

16:59

also tend to get more frequent, by the way. If

17:01

you look at empires that are like on the rise,

17:04

that are the rising empires, they

17:06

usually fight

17:07

fewer wars than empires on the way down.

17:11

As counterintuitive as that sounds. Empires

17:13

on the rise, leaders tend

17:15

to be a little bit more careful about picking

17:18

their fights. And so, they

17:20

tend to fight fewer

17:21

wars, and they tend to fight wars

17:23

that are much more likely to win and where there's a lot

17:25

more upside if they do win. Whereas

17:28

empires and decline, it's the other way around. They

17:30

fight more wars, they tend to fight

17:32

wars where there's more likelihood

17:34

you might not win, and

17:37

they tend to pick fights

17:40

where even if they do win, there's

17:42

not a lot of upside. It's like a costly, pure

17:44

victory that costs more

17:46

than whatever it is you win in terms of resources,

17:49

wealth, etc. So,

17:51

it seems like, to me, from

17:54

what I can tell, that imperial

17:56

ruling classes,

17:58

whether they consciously think this, or not,

18:00

it's sort of there. This idea of

18:03

they don't want to admit it out loud, but

18:06

somewhere deep down they kind of realize they're

18:08

flying a plane that's maybe gonna go down.

18:11

But somehow they convince themselves

18:14

that if they just pick a few fights with people,

18:17

they can flex their muscles, stomp the crap

18:19

out of some other empires or other nations or whatever,

18:22

show the world they're still badass, they've

18:24

still got their mojo, and that's

18:26

it, they can make their empire great again. This

18:30

is like when the aging

18:32

over the hill heavyweight champ decides

18:35

he's gonna step back into the ring one more time and

18:38

try and win that belt one more time. Every

18:40

now and then there's a freak like George Foreman who

18:42

can do it. Most of the time

18:45

though, it's a bad idea. So

18:47

you're gonna see a lot more wars that

18:50

are just dumber,

18:52

they're more irrational.

18:54

They're wars that are less necessary,

18:57

they're wars of choice.

18:59

Again, they're wars where you're less likely

19:00

to win and even if you do, it's such a costly

19:03

victory that you didn't really win anything.

19:06

And so you see this in many different

19:08

places, you see it with the Soviets

19:11

deciding to invade Afghanistan in 1980. You

19:15

see it with the British and

19:17

a lot of the wars they fought in their waning

19:19

years, particularly the wars of decolonization.

19:23

You also see it on display in

19:25

World War I.

19:28

Most of the empires that went into

19:30

World War I thought

19:32

it was gonna be a super easy, barely an inconvenience

19:34

victory. They would make their empire great

19:37

again, turn around, decline and show

19:39

the world they were still bad ass. Most

19:41

of the empires that went into World War I did

19:43

not come out of World War I.

19:46

And a lot of the empires going into World War I were empires

19:48

that were already in serious decline. So the Ottoman

19:50

Empire,

19:52

the Austrian Empire,

19:54

the Russian Tsarist Empire, the Romanov Empire.

19:56

Those leaders went into that war,

19:58

they all thought, oh for sure I'm. gonna win, it's

20:00

gonna be super easy, and I'm gonna win

20:03

all this cool stuff and resources, and

20:05

I'm gonna show the world and my own people that

20:07

my empire is still strong and in its prime,

20:10

and well those empires

20:11

didn't make it, they didn't survive the war.

20:13

So very often empires pick fights

20:16

where instead of turning around

20:18

the decline it speeds it up. And

20:22

even the British by the way, like I said

20:24

in my intro, the British won

20:27

World War I and World War II in terms of they were on the side

20:29

that won the war technically, but each of

20:31

those wars weakened their empire in

20:33

significant ways rather than making

20:35

them stronger. Second

20:38

thing, economic problems

20:41

increase as an empire

20:44

is in decline.

20:46

The economy of a declining empire tends

20:49

to be more about rent-seeking than

20:51

it is about increasing productivity

20:54

and even increasing resources. Rent-seeking,

20:57

if you don't know that term in an economic context,

21:00

that means you're just trying to

21:02

grab for yourself a bigger piece

21:04

of the existing pie. Very

21:07

often in these situations it's actually

21:09

a shrinking pie rather

21:11

than trying to grow the pie overall

21:13

like by you know increasing productivity.

21:16

And so in declining empires very often

21:18

what you see is a scramble of

21:21

elites becoming ever more kleptocratic

21:24

trying to grab more on

21:26

the way down of a shrinking pie.

21:31

And they're doing this at the same time

21:33

very often they're fighting more wars

21:34

and they're often engaging in

21:36

increased welfare state programs by the way too which

21:38

I'll get to.

21:40

And how do you finance more wars

21:43

and more welfare state programs if

21:46

your economy is stagnant or even

21:48

declining? Usually they

21:50

do it through a combination of two things. Number one,

21:53

just ever-increasing taxation which

21:57

economics 101 that's only going to make this

21:59

worse. And then another one that as

22:01

far as I know, the Romans were the first to discover,

22:04

which is monetary inflation.

22:06

That's the other way. Because sooner or later

22:08

with taxes, you hit a wall where

22:10

people can't pay anymore and start to

22:13

resist and evade a lot more.

22:14

And so what do you do if you still want to fight a

22:17

bunch of wars and build monuments

22:19

and hand out free bread to poor people so they

22:21

don't think about revolution? Well, create

22:24

more money.

22:25

And the Romans figured this out by diluting

22:28

the silver content of their coinage, which

22:30

is called the denarius. And they gradually,

22:33

over the course of their decline, just kept adding

22:35

more and more, you know, tin or whatever to the denarius.

22:38

Hey, look, we got more coins. We can spend on all

22:40

we want, not even jack up taxes. But

22:42

of course, what does that do? Well, it just makes the

22:45

purchasing power of each denarius that much lower.

22:49

And so very often you get into this downward spiral

22:51

of economic decline where everything

22:54

the elites are doing to try and turn the

22:56

coin around

22:57

is actually speeding it up. Just like with the wars, everything

23:00

they're doing to try and fix the situation

23:02

is actually making it worse and speeding it up.

23:05

And you can get into really serious problems

23:07

here. There's a cycle that often

23:09

occurs where a government engages

23:12

in monetary inflation. This

23:15

leads to rising prices. Very

23:17

often, rulers do not say, wow,

23:20

let me stop doing what I'm doing because it's causing the problem.

23:22

Instead, they use something else to try

23:24

and treat the symptoms that makes everything worse.

23:26

So very often a government

23:29

experiencing inflation resorts to

23:31

price controls.

23:34

Great. We'll just decree that stuff

23:36

only costs so much now. Problem solved.

23:40

Except that leads to

23:42

shortages.

23:43

Because if you're artificially holding the price

23:45

of stuff below what it really should be, well,

23:47

whoever's in charge of producing and selling

23:49

that stuff isn't going to do it anymore. Because why would

23:52

you, you know, why would you grow wheat and

23:54

bring it to the market and sell it if you're going to be losing money

23:56

on every bushel you sell if you're a Roman farmer?

23:59

And so you typically.

23:59

end up with shortages and then when that happens

24:02

you often end up with things like

24:04

rationing and other controls

24:07

and then very often people are trying

24:09

to,

24:09

if they're producing these goods they're trying to avoid bringing them

24:12

to market so very often governments will then turn

24:14

to things like anti-hoarding laws

24:16

and that sort of stuff. So you see that for example happening

24:19

in the late Roman Empire from about late

24:21

200s or only 300s onward this cycle

24:24

of

24:24

monetary inflation, price inflation,

24:27

price controls, shortages, anti-hoarding

24:30

laws and essentially economic

24:33

authoritarianism.

24:35

Part of the problem as I mentioned

24:37

briefly before is

24:39

welfare state programs also tend

24:41

to proliferate

24:42

during periods of imperial decline

24:44

and basically what this is is the state

24:48

trying to keep the population docile,

24:51

loyal and obedient. So as

24:53

the Roman Empire declined they kept getting

24:56

more and more generous in what they

24:58

would offer to poor people in terms of handouts,

25:00

benefits, the famous bread and circuses

25:02

and all that.

25:03

The British actually did something similar.

25:06

It was actually during

25:08

World War II that the British government

25:11

laid the foundation for the welfare

25:13

state that they still have today. During

25:16

World War II and by the way

25:17

this is not coincidence that it happened during World

25:19

War II because they were trying to figure out how to keep

25:21

people loyal and supportive of the war

25:23

effort and essentially they were

25:25

buying their loyalty by saying hey if you

25:27

help us win this war we'll give you all these new

25:29

welfare programs as goodies as a thank

25:31

you. So there was something created

25:34

during the war called the beverage report which was an official

25:36

government report that basically said alright

25:39

we need socialized medicine,

25:41

we need

25:42

all these different social programs

25:44

and whatever and then that was implemented right

25:47

after the war when the labor party

25:49

got voted back into office.

25:52

Obviously that only exacerbates your fiscal

25:54

problems figuring out how to pay

25:56

for that while your economy is in serious decline.

25:58

Another one

26:00

you see very often increased authoritarianism

26:03

at home Empires

26:06

whether it's officially or unofficially

26:09

there's always a difference between what?

26:12

You know historians and political scientists who study Empire what

26:14

they would call the the core or the

26:16

center and the periphery

26:18

and sometimes That's literally physical

26:21

right like the the fringe frontiers of the Empire. It's

26:23

different than in the the metropolis

26:26

Sometimes it's just political You know sometimes

26:28

it's just a matter of certain places are

26:31

not going to have the same political and economic

26:33

power within the Empire as others right

26:35

so you know it's very different if You're

26:40

you know out on the frontiers of the Roman Empire

26:42

versus if you're like right in the city of Rome or

26:45

right in central Italy

26:47

Typically the way empires operate

26:49

whether it's official policy or not in

26:51

practice It's usually this way where they're

26:53

they tend to be more authoritarian the

26:56

further out on the frontiers. They are of their Empire

26:58

and Usually

27:01

they'll start off doing authoritarian things out

27:03

on the frontier that they would never dream

27:05

of trying to do back home You know in the Metropolis

27:09

Center

27:10

but sooner or later those

27:13

authoritarian methods and practices and

27:15

things Start to filter

27:17

back home back to the center. There's

27:19

a saying to sum this up It's called the Empire

27:22

always comes home and So

27:25

to give you an example The British

27:28

for a long time had a very free

27:30

society at home They

27:33

you know if you were like in the 1800s

27:35

Britain was a very low-tax society

27:37

unless there was a major war going on like against Napoleon

27:40

Otherwise very low taxes pretty free

27:42

market and believe

27:44

it or not Huge amount of freedom

27:47

to do things like carry around guns in London If

27:50

you go back to the 1800s the British

27:52

cops were carrying sticks But a citizen

27:54

could just you know pack a revolver and

27:56

walk around Well guess

27:58

what as the British? Empire starts to decline,

28:01

more and more of those authoritarian things that previously

28:04

would have been unthinkable at home start to filter

28:06

back. And a lot of it, again, ties into

28:08

war. So for example, very

28:10

early on in World War I, the British government passes

28:13

something called the Defense of the Realm Act

28:15

in 1914.

28:17

And the Defense of the Realm Act was essentially

28:20

the first building block of creating

28:23

a domestic surveillance

28:25

and police state apparatus in

28:28

the home territory of the UK.

28:30

The British had previously run operations like

28:32

this in India, in Kenya,

28:36

in other places that were the fringe of their empire. They

28:38

did all sorts of authoritarian, police

28:40

state, surveillance state type things.

28:42

But now they're starting to do it at home.

28:44

Also, by the way, in the immediate aftermath of World

28:47

War I is when the British first started

28:49

to pass major gun control

28:51

legislation at home. Again,

28:54

there had often been strict rules like

28:56

you don't want the natives getting access to guns

28:59

if you're in an African colony or an India or something

29:01

like that.

29:02

But the British people at home had a pretty

29:04

strong right to be armed prior

29:06

to, I think it was 1921 or 22,

29:08

immediate aftermath of World War I.

29:10

And again, it was connected to the war. They

29:13

essentially used, they

29:15

were motivated by the fear of number one, Irish rebels

29:18

and number two, communist revolutionaries

29:20

in the UK. And so they decided to start passing

29:22

gun control. That was the beginning of the draconian

29:24

gun control that the UK has today.

29:27

In the United States, there's an interesting case.

29:30

I would recommend anybody interested in this. Go

29:33

look up a book. It's a big dense book, but

29:35

it's very good. By a great historian

29:37

named Alfred McCoy, the book is called

29:39

Policing America's Empire.

29:41

And what you find is a lot

29:44

of authoritarian police state type

29:47

procedures and things that eventually

29:49

come home to the United States.

29:50

A lot of it originated in the

29:53

US counterinsurgency campaigns in the Philippines

29:55

at the turn of the last century. And again,

29:57

things that would have been considered unthinkable.

30:00

to do back home in the lower 48, they

30:03

do them for generations in the Philippines, and then

30:05

eventually those practices filter

30:07

back home. And you can see

30:09

this, by the way, you can see each

30:12

significant increase in things like police

30:14

militarization at home here

30:16

was preceded by messy

30:19

counterinsurgency campaigns somewhere

30:21

far away, where those sorts of things were considered

30:23

okay to do, but eventually they come home. So,

30:26

for example, in the aftermath of the Vietnam

30:28

War, there's a significant spike in

30:30

police militarization in this country.

30:31

That's when we get our first SWAT teams and a lot

30:33

of other things that we associate with

30:36

the modern militarized police.

30:39

Possibly the only empire I'm aware

30:41

of that didn't get more authoritarian as it was declining

30:44

was the Soviet Empire, and a lot of that is just

30:46

the bizarre exception of Mikhail Gorbachev

30:48

being a decent guy and not

30:51

wanting to be a tyrant. And so, Gorbachev

30:53

was actually making the Soviet

30:55

system freer

30:57

in the latter days of the Soviet

30:59

Empire, but that is abnormal. Typically

31:01

that is not what an empire in serious decline

31:04

is likely to do.

31:06

Next one, average quality

31:09

of your leadership declines

31:12

drastically and noticeably. I

31:16

know, sounds crazy.

31:21

But just as a theoretical proposition, use

31:23

all the imagination you have, leaders

31:28

tend to become, on average, there's

31:30

the occasional individual exception, but

31:32

leaders tend to become

31:34

more corrupt and less

31:36

competent as the empire declines.

31:40

And yeah, and you see this, whether it's

31:43

Rome,

31:44

whether it's the Soviet

31:46

Empire, whether it's the latter

31:48

days of the Ottoman Empire,

31:51

almost any empire you could think of, especially if it went through kind

31:53

of a long protracted decline, you can

31:55

see the average quality of leadership just going

31:58

down and down. And part of it is that. that

32:00

kleptocratic impulse I mentioned before, where

32:02

leaders more and more are just fighting over, getting

32:05

bigger pieces of a shrinking pie as the empire

32:07

falls apart. Empires

32:10

always have a certain amount of corruption baked into

32:12

how they operate. But when an empire is

32:14

rising and kind of strong and healthy, the

32:16

corruption is kept within practical

32:18

limits where the corruption is not gonna

32:20

destroy the whole system. But

32:23

empires in serious decline, the corruption

32:25

just goes totally off the reservation, way

32:28

out of hand, way out of proportion to where it

32:30

actually can be a fatal threat to

32:32

the system itself continuing to operate and survive.

32:36

In addition to leaders tending to become less

32:39

competent and more corrupt as an empire declines,

32:41

another thing that happens,

32:44

and again, this might shock you, but just use

32:46

your imagination as best you can, very

32:50

often, not always, but very often, the average

32:53

age of leaders noticeably

32:55

increases. So you

32:57

go from an empire where a lot of

33:00

your top leaders are maybe like 40s, the

33:03

older ones are 50s, to

33:05

where they might be in their 70s,

33:08

or even older. Yes, every

33:10

other empire has their own kind of boomer

33:12

generation, I guess, that just won't

33:15

leave, that won't retire. So

33:18

you see this, for example, in the latter years of the Soviet

33:20

Union, where prior to Gorbachev coming

33:22

in, he was kind of young and unusual in many ways

33:24

when he came in, but prior to Gorbachev, you had

33:26

a succession of Soviet leaders who were all

33:29

very old, senile, barely

33:31

knew what was going on,

33:32

and surrounded by yes men telling them they were

33:35

brilliant and awesome and the greatest

33:37

leader ever. So Leonid Brezhnev

33:39

is a great example of this, and then there were a couple

33:41

of other leaders that served briefly after him, where

33:44

they would come in, what was it, Chernenko

33:48

and,

33:49

oh, one other guy, and Dropov, that

33:51

came in after Brezhnev finally died,

33:54

and they would come in, take over, and

33:57

within a year or two, they'd be dead. because

34:00

they were that old and unhealthy and whatever when they came

34:02

in. To the point where Ronald

34:04

Reagan actually joked about this. By

34:06

the way, Reagan, everyone was like, oh, is he too

34:09

old to be president?

34:10

I believe he was what, 67 or 68 when

34:14

he was elected to his first term? That's

34:17

a decade younger than all of our recent

34:20

contenders for the presidency, right? But everybody

34:22

back then was like, oh my God, is Reagan too old? Now

34:24

it's like, hey, 79, he's still got

34:26

a couple good decades left in him. And

34:30

I think part of it is that

34:32

as empires grind along and

34:34

get bigger and more complicated, and

34:36

the bureaucracy gets bigger and more complicated

34:39

over time, it's

34:40

just sort of the natural tendency. More

34:42

and more, in order to rise through the ranks

34:45

of the state, it's all about

34:47

just corruption, nepotism,

34:50

and how long are you there? Whereas

34:53

when an empire is not so burdened

34:55

with excessive bureaucracy and complexity

34:57

and all that, there's more opportunity for younger people

34:59

to rise to high positions if they're competent.

35:02

But increasingly, it's just about how

35:05

many great corruption connections do you have, and

35:07

how long have you stuck around? I

35:09

don't know if you can imagine any leaders

35:12

currently who fit that description, but

35:16

maybe if you try hard enough, you could think of one.

35:19

Next thing, quality of military

35:22

tends to decline. And there's

35:24

a lot of different ways this can happen. Part

35:27

of it has to do with the increasing inefficiency

35:29

and corruption of the system itself, the state

35:31

that actually creates and funds the

35:33

militaries. Part of it has to do

35:35

with the kinds of wars that these empires

35:37

are fighting. Increasingly, they're not the kinds of

35:39

wars that your best people are eager to go sign up

35:41

for, as it becomes obvious

35:43

that these messy, nasty wars I

35:45

talked about before, these stupid wars. Partly,

35:48

it has to do with

35:50

if you start off with something like citizen

35:52

soldiers, over time,

35:54

it stops being that, whether it's Rome, United

35:56

States, whatever. You start off with this ideal of

35:58

the citizen soldier. who is not a full-time

36:01

professional soldier, but

36:03

has some training, does do some militia practice,

36:05

whatever it is, and then in time of war,

36:06

drops his plow, picks

36:09

up his weapon, and goes out. Eventually

36:11

that becomes a separate professional cast.

36:15

It becomes a career. And then,

36:17

like with the Praetorian Guard in Rome, they become

36:19

a separate little government within the government

36:22

unto themselves.

36:24

So very often you end up with

36:26

militaries where the loyalty is not

36:29

to the state, the nation, the empire as a whole,

36:31

but instead to whoever's paying you, whoever

36:34

happens to be your general,

36:35

whoever happens to be your local kind of warlord

36:38

or whatever like that.

36:39

Another thing that often happens is increased

36:42

resort to conscription. And

36:44

obviously that creates problems. So in general, morale

36:48

and motivation start to be problems

36:50

more and more. Troops become less

36:53

reliable and trustworthy. And

36:56

another thing that happens, I

36:59

think in many cases, is that

37:01

an empire gets to a point where it's no

37:03

longer fighting

37:05

near peer competitors. And

37:07

so that tends to make their military complacent,

37:11

conservative in the sense of not keeping

37:13

up with innovations and all that.

37:15

And as with the political leadership, more

37:18

and more, how do you become a general

37:20

in a declining empire's military? Less

37:23

to do with merit and more to do

37:25

with time served,

37:27

connections, corruption, politics,

37:31

et cetera. So

37:34

by the way, there's an interesting meme I've seen going

37:36

around.

37:37

It shows General Dwight Eisenhower

37:40

in his full military getup with

37:43

all his decorations and everything. And then

37:45

next to him is, I think it was Petraeus in

37:47

his military getup. And Petraeus has like 10

37:51

times as many ribbons and medals

37:53

and decorations as Dwight Eisenhower.

37:55

And on the meme, under Eisenhower, it says

37:57

won a war. Under

38:00

betrays it says lost a war. And

38:03

I think the meme said something like, this

38:05

is what happens in a participation trophy society.

38:10

My thinking was real

38:12

gangsters don't gotta flex because

38:15

they know they got them.

38:17

Next thing, infrastructure deteriorates.

38:21

As the economy declines and

38:24

the fiscal situation becomes more and more of a problem

38:26

and there might be hyperinflation, all these sorts of things, one

38:29

way or another, the infrastructure is not getting

38:31

properly maintained. Whether it's

38:34

roads, bridges and aqueducts of

38:36

the Romans or whether it's, I don't know,

38:39

train tracks that run through Ohio.

38:42

But basically things just start to degrade.

38:44

New infrastructure isn't being built as much. I

38:47

mean, just think about it. Can you imagine today's

38:49

US government building

38:52

the interstate highway system and

38:55

getting it done as quickly as, how about this? Can

38:58

you imagine today's US government

39:00

building the Panama Canal and

39:03

getting it done quickly and a little bit under

39:06

budget? See, I can imagine

39:08

senile leaders about to keel over a lot easier

39:11

than I can imagine something like that. That's fantastic. That's

39:14

flying pigs. And

39:17

you see this as well with the Soviet

39:19

empire, right? You have things like the

39:22

Chernobyl meltdown, for example,

39:24

and other instances of the Soviet infrastructure

39:26

just falling apart, not being properly

39:29

maintained, all that sort of stuff in the 1970s and 80s.

39:33

Next thing I'll mention, culture

39:36

degenerates for

39:38

lack of a better term. And

39:41

here, I think a big part

39:43

of the problem that leads to cultural degeneration

39:45

during a declining empire is

39:48

those economic motives of a shrinking

39:50

or stagnant economy, increased inflation,

39:54

economic instability, they tend to

39:56

create a high time preference population.

40:00

People just get incentivized

40:02

Naturally logically

40:04

to think more in terms of you know what I'd rather just

40:06

consume and have a good time now

40:08

Because things just keep getting worse every year

40:11

my therapist

40:13

defined depression as rumination

40:16

without hope Whether

40:19

they admit it Explicitly or

40:21

not people often can kind of tell when there's their

40:24

system their country their empires in decline And

40:27

it tends to make more of a high-time preference Society

40:30

and then this then bleeds over into other behaviors

40:32

not just economic behaviors where people

40:35

increasingly become more about

40:37

Instant gratification rather than about

40:39

perhaps sacrificing now for the sake of a

40:42

better tomorrow If you think tomorrow is going to be worse

40:44

no matter what you do Who cares

40:46

have a good time today? You

40:48

see this in the elites as they're being kleptocrats

40:52

and looting everything

40:53

they'll engage in more blatant conspicuous

40:55

consumption

40:57

And if you've ever watched any of like our Hunger Games Political

41:00

or Hollywood events that that's what

41:02

you're looking at you're looking at conspicuous

41:05

consumption Also, by

41:07

the way, and I'm not sure why this is there's an increased

41:09

tendency for societies

41:11

in serious decline

41:15

To have people suddenly get super obsessed

41:17

with gender and with blurring

41:20

gender norms and everything I don't know you

41:22

know if there's a real good explanation for why this is but it's very

41:24

common

41:25

in a declining Empire And

41:27

I'll try and wrap up as quick as I can here increased

41:31

political crises

41:34

this can be in the form of increased

41:37

political instability at home political crises

41:40

Constitutional crises, you know governments

41:43

being overthrown or nearly overthrown And it

41:45

also can take the form of increased rebellions

41:48

out in the provinces as people who have

41:50

not been happy in the Empire Realize

41:52

the Empire is weakening and take their opportunity

41:55

as the Irish did

41:56

To rebel when their overlords seem

41:58

to be losing their power and strength. Next

42:02

one, private sector

42:04

crime tends to increase. So

42:08

you have a state that's

42:10

increasingly being predatory on you

42:12

by taking more of your taxes, being more authoritarian,

42:15

all these things.

42:16

And at the same time, that state is

42:19

no longer doing as effective of a job as they used

42:21

to, of like keeping you safe from bandits

42:23

and pirates and thieves and whatever. And

42:25

in an extreme case, this can turn into what they call

42:28

anarcho tyranny,

42:29

which I would argue is what you have, say, in San Francisco,

42:31

where if some guy

42:34

comes into your store and walks out with 500 bucks

42:36

worth of stuff,

42:37

the authorities won't do anything. But

42:40

if you use a baseball bat to

42:42

stop that guy from stealing stuff out of your store, you

42:45

get in trouble. They'll come after

42:47

you if you, you know, miss a few

42:49

bucks on your taxes, but

42:51

they're not going to do a good job protecting you when,

42:53

I don't know, some crazy

42:54

guy is shooting up your kid's school.

42:57

And then the last thing I'll mention real quick is just

43:00

what tends to happen in the aftermath

43:02

of an empire. It can go a lot of different ways.

43:05

You can have a full-on collapse into a dark age,

43:08

as happened to the Romans or the Mycenaean Greeks or

43:10

others.

43:11

I don't think that's very likely in

43:12

today's world unless there's something as drastic as like

43:14

full-blown nuclear war. But you

43:17

can end up in the situation where there's a revolution,

43:20

like for example happened to the Czarist Empire

43:23

overthrown by the Bolsheviks. You

43:25

can end up in a situation where the empire

43:27

loses its colonies, but the home

43:29

government remains intact, as for example

43:32

happened to the British. Or

43:34

you can end up in various combinations

43:36

like what happened to the Soviets. And basically

43:40

I've come to believe that sort of the last straw

43:42

for a collapsing empire, and this is my closing

43:44

thought, that the last straw for

43:47

a collapsing empire is actually narrative.

43:51

Empires live on narrative, and

43:54

the narrative of the empire and all the good it does

43:56

and why you should support it and believe it and why it's the

43:58

best empire ever, never

43:59

lines up 100% with the reality.

44:03

But

44:03

as with the corruption, there's limits, right?

44:06

And so

44:07

if you were looking at the narrative of the American

44:09

Empire in 1965, it wasn't that far

44:13

off from reality. But

44:15

if you're looking at the narrative of the American Empire

44:17

today, all

44:19

of the rhetoric about why the American

44:22

Empire is the greatest thing, they wouldn't call the American

44:24

Empire, but why, you know, the US and

44:26

is a force for good in the world and the liberal

44:29

rules based economic world order and

44:31

all this sort of thing, and all the things that it's supposedly

44:33

bringing you and us as regular people in the cheap seats,

44:37

that narrative is becoming so

44:40

far divergent from what your

44:42

own eyes tell you when

44:44

you walk around and look

44:46

at a certain point, the

44:48

narrative can't stand up

44:51

to the evidence of reality.

44:53

Same thing happened with the Soviet Empire.

44:55

They had all this rhetoric of communist utopia

44:58

and it was never that obviously.

45:00

But over time it got even more and more divorced,

45:04

more and more the opposite of what all the rhetoric

45:06

said. And eventually when the narrative

45:08

completely collapses, that's very

45:11

often the last straw of that empire. Thank

45:13

you for listening and I appreciate your time.

45:20

Thank you, CJ. We do have a question

45:23

from the online folks that

45:25

I was going to ask you real quick before you departed.

45:28

And the question was, based on your opinion,

45:31

what are some of your predictions for the next 10

45:33

to 20 years?

45:36

I know it's an easy one.

45:39

Yeah. Well, there's a lot of ways it can go. My

45:42

preference would be for

45:45

the American Empire to collapse like the Soviet Empire,

45:47

meaning largely non-violence,

45:50

just sort of political disintegration. I

45:53

believe that's the best case scenario.

45:56

It can go out in a blaze of glory.

45:58

There are two.

46:01

variables in the American

46:03

Empire collapse that did

46:05

not exist. I mean, there's a lot

46:07

more than two, but two very big ones that

46:10

are different. One is the

46:13

world has never been globalized like it is today,

46:15

and one empire has never dominated the entire world

46:18

to the extent that the U.S. empire has dominated the world

46:20

since

46:20

World War II. So we're

46:22

in uncharted waters as far as what does that look like

46:24

when an empire that's that dominant, because

46:27

the U.S. empire is much more dominant even than the British empire

46:29

ever was.

46:30

What does that mean for how the collapse plays

46:32

out? I don't know. We're

46:35

in uncharted waters. And the second one, which

46:37

is even scarier to me, is we've

46:40

only ever had one empire collapse since

46:43

nukes were invented, and

46:45

that was the Soviet empire.

46:47

And when I look at the Soviet empire collapsing, I

46:49

go, it is a freaking

46:51

miracle that no nukes went

46:53

off as that empire was collapsing, whether

46:55

on purpose or by accident, right? I mean,

46:58

it is a miracle no nukes went off

47:00

anywhere as that thing fell apart. Are

47:02

we going to be lucky enough to have a second

47:05

nuclear superpower empire fall apart

47:08

with no nukes going off? Given

47:11

our current leaders and their

47:14

reckless hubris and

47:16

their stupid aggression and interventionism,

47:20

including trying to provoke a

47:22

nuclear two-front World War III as far as

47:24

I can tell, that's what they're trying to do, I don't

47:27

know. So I'm not saying

47:29

nuclear World War III is super likely, but I'm saying it's

47:31

a possible outcome. Political

47:34

just fragmentation, probably

47:36

your best outcome. Currently

47:41

I don't see anybody in a high

47:43

position of power who could be a Gorbachev

47:45

figure, who could kind of preside over a

47:47

relatively peaceful and orderly

47:49

collapse of this thing. So

47:52

yeah, I don't know. And

47:55

for that, everybody else who's presenting

47:57

here, they're doing all these very practical nuts and bolts

47:59

things. Teaching you homesteading stuff, self-defense,

48:02

excuse me, all that kind of stuff. Listen

48:04

to those people. I'm

48:06

giving you the egghead big picture,

48:09

kind of like what to expect

48:11

when your empire's collapsing. What

48:14

do you do about it? I don't know. I

48:16

don't know. Good luck. Good

48:19

luck.

48:25

All right. At the risk of CJ losing

48:27

his voice entirely, let's take maybe

48:29

one or two questions from the audience and then

48:31

we can get on with our date. Does anybody have

48:33

a question for CJ?

48:36

Yeah. Okay. So the question is, what

48:39

evidence do I have that some of the

48:41

people in high positions are

48:43

aware that the US empire is in

48:45

serious decline? Honestly,

48:48

I don't have any paper

48:50

trail documentary evidence. I can't point

48:52

you to like, oh, here's this leaked Pentagon

48:55

memo where they kind of said, look, yeah, we all

48:57

know this has fallen apart. Yeah.

49:00

Yeah. Yeah. Honestly, it's

49:03

sort of just a gut feeling that

49:07

I don't think everybody who's high up

49:09

in the system,

49:10

even currently, is completely

49:12

stupid and incompetent.

49:14

I think some of them are competent, but then the question

49:16

is competent at doing what? Right? So

49:19

they might be very smart and very competent, but their number

49:21

one goal is

49:22

I'm going to try and enrich myself and my family

49:25

and my people as much as I can

49:27

on the last, you know, yeah, exactly.

49:30

Exactly. Stock market rules for Congress,

49:33

war profiteering by the military industrial complex

49:35

companies, those sorts of things.

49:37

And I think also

49:40

that even in the minds of the people

49:42

who see what probably we all see

49:45

of what this is, I think they still

49:47

believe that they can kick the can down

49:49

the road

49:49

another generation or two. I

49:52

think that's what the smarter ones believe. And

49:54

they think, you know what, this is going to blow up, but

49:56

can I kind of like duct tape and baling wire

49:59

this thing together?

49:59

So that it'll it'll you know grind on

50:02

through another generation all

50:04

make a fortune on the way out Maybe you know retire

50:06

to Belize or whatever and

50:08

it'll be somebody else's problem

50:10

And it just becomes a question of how

50:13

long can you keep kicking that can down the road? How

50:15

long can you keep you know running

50:17

up another 10 trillion dollars of debt

50:19

to fund this thing? Honestly, I'm

50:22

surprised they've kept it together

50:24

as long as they have I Thought

50:27

a decade ago It's gonna happen

50:29

So yeah, I

50:32

was wrong about how how skillfully they

50:34

could use chewing gum and duct tape

50:36

and baling wire

50:37

On this rickety Empire, but yeah, they did

50:40

so any other questions Yes

50:45

The question is has there been an empire in decline

50:48

that has turned the ship around successfully

50:52

Only in a very short term sense I've

50:54

never seen one that did it long term

50:57

and my proof for that is that no Empire has ever

50:59

lasted forever

51:00

And it also depends on what you mean by turn

51:02

it around. So one example I didn't

51:05

dig into here is Diocletian

51:07

a Late Roman

51:10

Emperor around 300 AD Diocletian

51:13

wanted to make Rome great again. He He

51:16

succeeded in terms of holding

51:19

the Roman state together and

51:21

in some ways strengthening

51:24

the state but in doing

51:26

so he inflicted so much economic

51:29

damage on the Empire and Rashed

51:31

it up the authoritarianism so much

51:34

That I would argue in the long run He

51:37

you know helped to speed up the decline even though in the short

51:39

run. He kind of made the state strong

51:41

again and

51:42

Diocletian by the way interesting

51:45

figure. He was the first Roman Empire to say he wanted

51:47

to be called by the title of Dominus

51:50

Which is Latin for Lord it is

51:53

the title that slaves would use to

51:55

address their master example

51:58

of increased authoritarianism even in the symbolic

52:00

side.

52:01

So, yeah. Now, there have been

52:03

empires that have sort of bounced

52:05

back, but they bounce back in a different

52:08

form where they're not the same thing.

52:09

So for example, you can look at the

52:12

Persian Empire, the ancient Persian Empire, or the

52:14

ancient Chinese Empire. Both

52:16

of those kind of rose and fell multiple times,

52:19

but when they would rise again, it was a different

52:21

dynasty.

52:22

And it wasn't really the same thing, even though it might be a

52:24

lot of the same territory and some of

52:26

the same, you know, culture and things

52:28

like that. So, yeah. Or

52:30

another example would be, you know, Alexander

52:33

and the Macedonians taking over Greece after

52:36

kind of golden age, Hellenic Greece

52:37

had declined and fallen apart. So,

52:40

yeah. All right. Thank

52:42

you, CJ. Everyone give them a big round of applause.