Going through some old messages, I ran across this.


Which got me to thinking, "What are the signs of social collapse? Historicly speaking?"

Thats a great quote!

What have been the social conditions and events leading up to the demise of the great civilizations? Look at the last 50 years of the empire in question.

I think that when a significant portion of the population no longer obeys a significant portion of the laws and shows no respect for law enforcement, that's a pretty good indicator.

Our "War on (some) Drugs" is a good indicator, but check [url=icteesside.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0001head/page.cfm?objectid=12047134&method=full&siteid=50080]this out[/url] if you want to see what impending social collapse looks like.

We're pikers by comparison.

One of the common themes of history is that when a country's money supply gets into trouble, look for a war to crop up.

Our currency has dropped 15% against the Euro in the last few months, and has fallen against most other currencies as well.  Hmmm.

BTW, Sweep, I think you're thinking of the Romans having used lead (as in, Pb, as in bullet material) for plumbing, not to mention for their wine vats.  There is some speculation that widespread lead poisoning led (heh, ok, "contributed") to their demise.

Kbaker, there is no way to follow all the laws of our country.  THere are over 15 million laws on the books right now, with more being added every day.  You have broken numerous laws in the past half hour.

If there are too many, then all of them start looking optional.

The only law I follow is "Do no harm to another"  

Yes, the sheer number of laws is a contributor.  When there are so many laws that no one can keep track of them, much less obey them all, it contributes to a lack of respect for legal authority.  This is especially true of laws passed that, because of human nature, [i]will not[/i] be obeyed.  Prohibition, for example, and the WoD.  It isn't just the people disobeying laws, it's the government passing laws that no one respects.  

How about this:
The Fall Of A Republic

When the thirteen colonies were still a part of England, Professor Alexander
Tyler wrote about the fall of the Athenian republic over two thousand years
previous to that time:


A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only
exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the
public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the
candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the
result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed
by a dictatorship.

The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred
years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from
bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from
courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to
selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy,
from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage.

Alexander Tyler