• Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    5 hours ago

    Even if this statistic wasn’t bullshit, this comic has an inherent cruelty to it that ironically feels very American

  • Tattorack@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    27
    arrow-down
    5
    ·
    9 hours ago

    Uh, yeah, not like this.

    If you’re sitting around waiting for the empire to fall, then it’s never going to fall. Empires fall because people make them fall.

    And it’s going to be achieved with blood…

    • Bahnd Rollard@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      5 hours ago

      Also, ask when Rome fell, historians wont agree on any specific date. They were never the top of the town afterwards, but the fall was more of a gradual multi-century tumble punctuated by hitting every rock on the way down.

    • Coding4Fun@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      4 hours ago

      Not exactly true. USSR, felt without a single drop o blood, most because it’s economic opening movement started too late. US government is taking actions that are isolating US commercially, increasing its debt and losing relevance in the world’s diplomacy.

    • fox2263@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      15 hours ago

      Indeed. The empire you left to make your own with blackjack and hookers was nearly double that. If you want to be facetious too, then probably triple.

      • kerrigan778@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        43
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        19 hours ago

        It’s straight up not a thing, there is no number of years which tends to correspond to the life expectancy of empires

        • daydrinkingchickadee@lemmy.mlOP
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          12
          arrow-down
          19
          ·
          17 hours ago

          We’re talking about the average life expectancy of an empire. It’s a fairly straightforward calculation if one has all the data ready.

          • essell@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            20
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            13 hours ago

            Sure, we could also work out the average life expectancy of a mammal.

            But, would it really be useful, predictive or meaningful, given the variety and variability of the conditions the data emerges from?

          • silasmariner@programming.dev
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            30
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            15 hours ago

            It’s not really that straightforward though, is it? Firstly is it a mean or a median average? What counts as an empire? When do we date the rise and fall of specific empires? These are not questions with straightforwards answers. Would Hitler’s Germany count as an empire? How many Roman empires were there?

              • AppleTea@lemmy.zip
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                11
                ·
                9 hours ago

                Do you count the Byzantine as separate or the same as Rome?

                Your talking about structures comprising huge numbers of people across multiple generations. There is no clear “death”. Just the gradual shifting from one set of conditions to another. Pick any line in the sand, declare it to be the “end” of an empire, and you’ll still find people living under its rules, speaking the language, and using the currency well afterward.

                Hell, look at Britain. No longer the globe-strangling power that they were, but it’s still the same country with the same rules and government and money.

          • _g_be@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            13
            arrow-down
            5
            ·
            17 hours ago

            It being an average number, pulled out of it’s context, doesn’t necessarily mean anything beyond just the average

  • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    81
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    19 hours ago

    I hate to be nitpicky about a meme but I love to be nitpicky. This claims is based on bullshit statistics that the author made up or bent to his will. The Ottoman empire alone shows this to be incorrect but Rome too stands out. Besides, what would an arbitrary amount of time have to do with the collapse of complex economic systems. Its bullshit idealism and I hate seeing it.

    I am begging the US to collapse though

    • pjwestin@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      7 hours ago

      Also worth pointing out that, while America may be 249 years old, no one would consider it an empire for the majority of that time. Its debatable, but I would argue we didn’t really reach an empirical level of power until the late 40s, when we started taking over what was left of the British Empire’s influence over the middle-eas5.

    • LwL@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      6
      ·
      16 hours ago

      Average. It’s just an average. I haven’t verified whether the number is accurate (and often it’s probably debatable what qualifies as an empire and at what point it fell) but some empires lasting way longer does nothing to disprove 250 years being the average lifespan.

      The second part of what you said is still entirely correct of course, that number has no real predictive capabilities for the collapse of the USA.

      • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        19
        ·
        edit-2
        15 hours ago

        It isn’t though, I have seen the original source of this claim and its bs. The author just picks and chooses when empires begin and end so that it fits their claim. I would concede the point if it were ever actually an average.

        • LwL@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 hour ago

          I mean yea that doesn’t surprise me in the slightest honestly, even outside of the number itself being pretty meaningless in the first place it’s very fuzzy what the actual dates are.

    • comfy@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      16
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      1 day ago

      When someone says “death to America”, they aren’t saying “death to Americans”. A government/state is a regime, not all it’s people, despite how much as nationalists love to stoke that sort of patriotism. So I have no problem with the slogan, I call for the fall of the US imperialist regime.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_America#Interpretation_and_meaning - has some confirmations from various Iranian politicians and a travel writer.

      • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        9
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        15 hours ago

        Usians: “hate the government not the people”

        Usians when hearing someone else say “hate the government not the people” about USA: “we’re gonna kill you”

        • comfy@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          edit-2
          9 hours ago

          Where is that constraint coming from? “Death to [x]” is a statement of a desire.

          “Death to Americans” would be a call for the deaths of citizens. Obviously Iran doesn’t consider the typical American citizen to be oppressing them, so they are not interested in calling for that.

          Someone yelling “death to America” could still be supporting the death of George W. Bush or Donald Trump, who are Americans. It could even involve combating many in the US military. That’s still very different from calling for “death to Americans”, because the target is the regime, not its citizens simply for being citizens.

          But I still think you’ve raised an interesting discussion to have so I’ve tried to answer it.


          In an ideal world, regime change. Relatively peaceful dissolution is preferable and possible (consider the death of the Soviet Union).

          However, given the ruthlessness of the people with the most power in the US, I suspect they would gladly kill millions of Americans before even considering a peaceful surrender. People are shot by the state in regular protests, let alone one directly threatening the state (case in point - Jan 6 had a protester killed by police). So unless some interesting lucky opportunities open up (such as a military coup), the USA will (continue to) kill Americans to maintain stability, regardless of whether those opposing the USA kill a single American.

          Given that situation, it sounds like any resistance to the US is bad because will likely involve deaths of innocent people. Yes, but the other side of the story is that to do nothing ‘‘also’’ results in the deaths of innocent people. To the people running the show, it’s completely normal to oversee the constant atrocious social murder of many thousands each year through poverty, artificial scarcity of food and medication, healthcare denial and other neglect in the name of profit. We overproduce enough food to feed everyone, there’s enough land and property to house everyone.

          To do nothing is to allow many Americans to keep dying each day from easily preventable deaths. To fix that system will most likely kill many Americans in the process. You can almost simplify it down to a trolley problem - there’s no clean solution whichever choice you make. But, for each of us, there is a correct decision.

          • jaupsinluggies@feddit.uk
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            8 hours ago

            Maybe it’d be a good idea to use a word other than death, which is clearly being misinterpreted to mean killing people. “Dissolution of [x]” obviously isn’t as snappy, but it’s an improvement at least in terms of accuracy of intent.

  • DarkCloud@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    62
    arrow-down
    9
    ·
    edit-2
    1 day ago

    Of course this is incorrect, go look up an empire and see.

    … Roman empire got over 1000 years, Ottoman’s got 623 years, Mongol empire only got 162.

    …and Italy, Turkey, and Mongolia are still around, they’re just not empires anymore. They’re Nations.

        • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          7 hours ago

          Sure, but that doesn’t change there will be outliers at both ends. And the lower end would likely have far more. So no matter the average, it would be on lower end of the max.

          So if an empire and only one lasted to 1000, but others 5 years, or even days. It makes sense that an average around 250 is entirely possible.

          • IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            6 hours ago

            if you want to go into statistics, normal average are useless for these things, as many empires last a few years, while others can last thousands. they don’t fall in a normal distribution, you might need a geometric mean.

            but also, empire is such a vague term. did the Roman empire fall around the 5 century? or do you count Byzantium as the Roman empire?

            Did England start with the Norman invasion? or was it from before and the Normans were just a new dynasty?

            it’s something that’s practically impossible to count, what’s an empire? when it started/ended? and on top of that no normal distribution.

            • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              3 hours ago

              I don’t disagree, there isn’t a great way to quantify the data, I’m just making a discussion out of the main comment seemingly missing what an average is by talking about edge cases on the high end. Also their 3 examples, which I assume are the only 3 high end cases. Already have a massive discrepancy.

              1000 and the next closest being ~600, it infers that long empires are few and far between.

              • IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                3 hours ago

                there’s no average, that number was literally made up for some bs theory of empires.

                it isn’t because it’s an “average” it’s literally made it, and it’s impossible to get, as whatever definition of empire will miss so many “empires”.

                it’s multiple layers of bs.

                • SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  3 hours ago

                  No one’s arguing that dude, but that doesn’t mean people can’t point out and talk about someone who missed what an average is as well.

    • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      arrow-down
      14
      ·
      1 day ago

      You do know what average means in this context, right? You divide the sum of the empires’ years by the number of empires.

      • Skua@kbin.earth
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        38
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 day ago

        The actual paper the number comes from (Fate of Empires by John Glubb) is complete bullshit, though. Even the cherry-picked examples it uses, which are limited strictly to the surroundings of the Mediterranean, don’t use any kind of consistent criteria for when an empire starts or ends. He tries to count “Alexander (and his successors)” as one coherent entity and then picks an end year in which all of them had either already collapsed long ago or would not do so for many decades to come. He cuts centuries off of the Roman Empire’s lifespan by just saying that the empire was unstable and getting invaded a lot (and ignoring the Eastern Empire entirely). HIs reckoning of the “Arab Empire” includes three separate caliphates, and the end date isn’t even the actual end of any of them

        Other than that, no, it does not attempt to find an average in the sense of a mean lifespan. It actually does argue that 250 years for an empire can be compared to a human living 70 years.

      • HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        edit-2
        23 hours ago

        Then it wouldn’t be reasonable to assume the US would collapse right at the average (mean) though. If the majority of empires collapsed at the same age (the mode) it would be different, but the mean tells you very little about when any particular empire will collapse.

        The mean number of children per household is a decimal, that doesn’t mean any households have partial children.

    • eldavi@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      1 day ago

      these where the first versions of empire that existed on this world and full of equal parts flaws and dumb luck as a result

      the modern hybrid euro-colonial versions also have flaws and luck on their side, but, more importantly, they learn and adapt from each other and, as a result, have a pattern that we can now identify.

  • Evilsandwichman [none/use name]@hexbear.net
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    edit-2
    21 hours ago

    It’s funny to imagine our descendants in whatever America becomes defending the empire by saying it wasn’t America’s fault it collapsed, it was Israel’s; hopefully though one of the things they admit is it’s also because of culture war idiocy and other arbitrary, fabricated social divisions; EDIT: Also the empire’s insistence on capitalism and wasting the talents contained in around 350 million people; China capitalizing (haaaaa, see what I did there?) on their population with excellent access to really good education and health services has turned their one billion people into its most powerful asset, meanwhile in America humans are also an asset, but in the form of slavery (wage slavery and actual slavery).

  • reallykindasorta@slrpnk.net
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    13
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    1 day ago

    Despite all the and suffering it has caused and will cause, Trump admin has at least handed us the beginning of a breakdown in US hegemony as trust has eroded with other nations who are all busy pivoting away from it right now.

    Unfortunately upon breaking the gridlock, other nations are scrambling to maintain the status quo rather than leaning into the future by redoubling commitments to address human and climate crises before it’s too late for the humans.

  • Bloomcole@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    6
    arrow-down
    7
    ·
    14 hours ago

    Real empires go for much longer.
    The US will not be more than a shitstain in the pages of history.