COMMENT: A reader has submitted this which is typical of each financial decline.
The cash seize by cities that are determined for taxes is escalating, legislation enforcement is not about defending however producing income. The confiscation of property obtained by way of unlawful means seems affordable, but given that is civil forfeiture, no proof is required. Homes, automobiles and different property that are suspected to be anyway related with felony exercise are being seized with out having to show something, offering an extra income for legislation enforcement businesses. Vehicles are confiscated as a result of an workplace “smells” one thing. The price of combating the confiscation is usually greater than the worth of the property or is greater than the sufferer can afford.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/08/12/130812fa_fact_stillman?currentPage=all
http://www.forbes.com/2011/06/08/property-civil-forfeiture.html
ANSWER: The explanation historical past repeats is fairly easy. Human nature by no means adjustments. For those who learn Edward Gibbon, who wrote in his “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” NOT for the historic occasion however for the actions, you will notice the identical patterns in human nature. It is sort of a Shakespeare play that’s carried out for hundreds of years. The story and plot stay the identical. Solely the actors change like Phantom of the Opera on Broadway for 25 years. New folks step into the function however the songs are all the time the identical.
Gibbon wrote in regards to the forms: “Suspicious princes typically promote the final of mankind, from a useless persuasion, that those that don’t have any dependence, besides on their favor, can have no attachment, besides to the individual of their benefactor.”
Edward Gibbon wrote of Commodus: Every
“distinction of each form quickly turned felony. The possession of wealth stimulated the diligence of the informers; inflexible advantage implied a tacit censure of the irregularities of Commodus; necessary companies implied a harmful superiority of benefit; and the friendship of the daddy all the time insured the aversion of the son. Suspicion was equal to proof; trial to condemnation. The execution of a substantial senator was attended with the dying of all who would possibly lament or revenge his destiny; and when Commodus had as soon as tasted human blood, he turned incapable of pity or regret”
(E book 1, Chapter 4).
If we quick ahead to Maximinus I (235-238AD), Gibbons wrote that “The cruelty of Maximin was derived from a distinct supply, the worry of contempt.” He used conspiracy as does the US at the moment the place the crime requires no proof of doing one thing, it’s merely an settlement to do one thing. You undergo the identical destiny as when you did the crime, and there are tons of crimes that everybody violates day-after-day, as identified within the e book Three Felonies A Day.
Gibbon wrote: “The darkish and sanguinary soul of the tyrant was open to each suspicion towards these amongst his topics who had been probably the most distinguished by their beginning or benefit. Every time he was alarmed with the sound of treason, his cruelty was unbounded and unrelenting. A conspiracy towards his life was both found or imagined, and Magnus, a consular senator, was named because the principal writer of it. With no witness, and not using a trial, and with out a possibility of defence, Magnus, with 4 thousand of his supposed accomplices, was put to dying. Italy and the entire empire had been infested with innumerable spies and informers. On the slightest accusation, the primary of the Roman nobles, who had ruled provinces, commanded armies, and been adorned with the consular and triumphal ornaments, had been chained on the general public carriages, and hurried away to the emperor’s presence. Confiscation, exile, or easy dying, had been esteemed unusual situations of his lenity. A few of the unlucky victims he ordered to be sewed up within the hides of slaughtered animals, others to be uncovered to wild beasts, others once more to be crushed to dying with golf equipment. Throughout the three years of his reign, he disdained to go to both Rome or Italy. His camp, often faraway from the banks of the Rhine to these of the Danube, was the seat of his stern despotism, which trampled on each precept of legislation and justice, and was supported by the avowed energy of the sword. No man of noble beginning, elegant accomplishments, or information of civil enterprise, was suffered close to his individual; and the court docket of a Roman emperor revived the concept of these historic chiefs of slaves and gladiators, whose savage energy had left a deep impression of terror and detestation.” (E book VII)
That is the person who merely declared all wealth belonged to the state. This impressed the collapse within the velocity of cash because it went into hiding. Hoards of cash buried from this time interval are nonetheless being discovered to at the present time. That is what destroyed Rome. It was not hyperinflation however deflation because the economic system merely imploded. That is what occurs when authorities hunts down its personal folks for cash.
