Here’s a letter that I sent today to the Washington Post:
Reviewing Adrian Goldsworthy’s book on the fall of ancient Rome, Diana Preston notes that “Goldsworthy completed his book before the real extent of the world’s current financial crisis was known, but he quotes a complaint by the Emperor Diocletian that seems especially relevant and shows that human nature may not have changed much since Roman times: ‘There burns a raging greed, which hastens to its own growth and increase without respect for human kind.’ Goldsworthy sensibly concludes there’s nothing to suggest the United States must inevitably decline, but that it’s up to those at the top – our 21st-century emperors – to ensure it doesn’t” (“Rome Wasn’t Destroyed in a Day Either,” August 23).
How ironic for Preston to point to Goldsworthy’s quotation of Diocletian – a rapacious hypocrite whose reign serves as an ideal lesson in why bestowing power and glory on ‘leaders’ is a fool’s game. According to the Roman philosopher Lactantius, under Diocletian “tax collectors began to outnumber taxpayers, and, after exorbitant taxation sapped their initiative, farmers abandoned their farms and plowed fields grew up into woods. In a policy of terrorization the provinces were cut up into scraps, a multitude of governors and hordes of directors oppressed every region – almost every city; and to these were added countless collectors and secretaries and assistants to the directors. Judges seldom had civil cases before them: they tried (not frequently, but incessantly) condemnations, confiscations, and requisitions of every kind of property, and unbearable inequities in the imposition of taxes…. Diocletian’s boundless greed would never allow his own treasury to be tapped, so he constantly piled on new taxes and contributions in order to keep his personal hoard intact” [quotation found here].
Beware whenever those with power pompously decry the ‘greed’ of others.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
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Nicomedia
Is ignorance any excuse for the law? Legislation based on ignorance any excuse for the law? Is any legislation whatever any excuse for the law? Are legislators any excuse for legislation? Are elections any excuse for legislators?
Within the eyes of the law all men are equal. Does this bother the lobbyist and his pawn the the elected official? Did it bother Boss Tweed, Hitler, Capone, Diocletianus, the people you voted for? Do you vote for them because you like to secretly imagine yourself as being one of them — imagine yourself as an imperator, a king who owns armies of slaves?
Whoah
!
Yep. Miners, merchants and farmers of the era recoiling at price laws and the totally debased coinage spotted that the barbarians up the road paid in gold.
It’s scary how we now have nearly all the ingredients of a downfall based on ordinary people quite naturally looking out for themselves.
Those Roman times (bad for ordinary people – boom times for bureaucrats) are also well laid out in Schuettinger and Butler’s Forty Centuries of Wage and Price Controls.
No greed compares with that of governments’.
Defining greed as the desire for unearned wealth, then I suggest that the state is a manifestation of greed. It is institutionalized greed.
Every corporate entity in America has to prepare a Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) each year that, I am told, if one is skilled enough as an accountant to decipher the truth contained in them, one finds that such entities as the Federal Government and every State each is sitting on a pile of wealth that would blow our minds and none of them in reality would need to collect another tax, possibly forever.
I am not a skilled accountant, so I leave the truth of this to someone who knows more about it than I do.
But, why tax if that is true?
I can see where the power hungry elites could think that if we cantankerous common folk ever were told we were free of taxes, who knows we might actually think we are free of government as well?
And, then as pointed out in the quotes above, the elites could also look at those vast sums as “theirs”, and why spend theirs when they can spend our.
vidyohs:
Every corporate entity in America has to prepare a Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) each year that, I am told, if one is skilled enough as an accountant to decipher the truth contained in them, one finds that such entities as the Federal Government and every State each is sitting on a pile of wealth that would blow our minds and none of them in reality would need to collect another tax, possibly forever.
What exactly does that mean? I’m not passing any opinion on it whatsoever. I’m genuinely curious as to what you’re saying because I don’t get whatever it is you’re saying there.
More to my original reason for posting however, what about Goldsworthy’s book? I know he’s not a newcomer to the study of ancient Rome, and had recently thought about buying some of his stuff, but hadn’t yet.
Anyone here read him?
“Beware whenever those with power pompously decry the ‘greed’ of others.”
-Prof. Boudreaux
I loved this line.
Great Letter
I completely agree on the diagnosis of Diocletian (well… I’m trusting your history on that, I’m not particularly familiar with him).
But I am very intrigued by that quote about greed “hastening to it’s own growth”. Very Minskyesque, don’t you think?
Wonderful!
There is nothing new about greed–it is everywhere and always. This is why it is essential that the power of government be constitutionally limited — very limited. That concept has a very small group of adherents anymore, unfortunately. As we are frequently reminded in this blog, the fact of the existence of greed is also the genius of free enterprise: greed is channeled and directed toward the peaceful service of one’s fellow man in pursuit of profits. Attempts to abolish greed or pretend it doesn’t exist — such as liberalism and socialism–have no chance at success simply because of the nature of homo sapiens.
I teach high school American Government and we just discussed this topic of the supposedly “greedy” people and the abuse of power by the government today in class (relative to the supposed “financial crisis”). Most of the students did not get the idea because they have not had their economics class yet. I find it very frustrating to try to teach about government when the level of economic ignorance is so high. Surely the economic ignorance of the general populace is one of the major reasons why we have so many clamoring for more government intervention.