Elon Musk put his foot in his mouth on X this week about the Fall of Rome. While diving in to quickly rebut and set the record straight, I went down the rabbit hole of Elon’s catastrophist views on history as a series of civilizational collapses related to fertility. There is of course no evidence for such a version of history, but what is alarming is how his views on history inform his own personal and professional life.
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Biblio to sources here
Dr Bret Devereaux on the makeup of the Roman military: https://acoup.blog/2021/07/30/collections-the-queens-latin-or-who-were-the-romans-part-v-saving-and-losing-an-empire/
Dr Devereaux’s series on the Fall of Rome: https://acoup.blog/2022/01/14/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-i-words/
Wilson 2011 “Developments in Mediterranean shipping and maritime trade from 200 BC to AD 1000” https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236157707_Developments_in_Mediterranean_shipping_and_maritime_trade_from_200_BC_to_AD_1000
40 Comments
Two corrections:
1) as many people pointed out, I miffed and said the sun will overheat the earth in 500 Billion years, it's actually 500 MILLION years. These errors with numbers happen. Doesn't change the point of what I was saying.
2) socii did not gain Roman citizenship until after the Social War. Foreigners who served in the auxiliaries did gain Roman citizenship at the end of their service. However, in both cases, the pay, reward, and treatment were quite good, which contrasts with the later Roman treatment of foreign Foederati soldiers
Elon: Rome fell because of falling birthrate.
Also Elon: Falling birthrate in Japan was only possible because of modern contraceptives.
Hey, remember that episode of The Simpsons dedicated to Lisa not shutting up about how smart he was? I do!
Elons first mistake is viewing the term of “Roman” in a modern sense of a race, rather than identity. It’s routed in white supremest Eugenics
Thank you for sharing wisdom. I'm so sorry that Professor Flint has been subjected to the ignorance of powerful idiots.
Musk's wierd obsession has been evident for years now. When he talks about saving humanity, he means getting him and his harem to Mars. He doesn't give a shit about 99.999% of the humans on this planet.
The lede is kind of buried, but when Elon Musk refers to “population collapse” he refers primarily to white populations.
The socii werent granted roman citizenship upon completing service. The Italian allies (the socii) were fine with serving without getting citizenship cause they didnt care what happened in Rome. They were allowed to deal with their own affairs while profiting from roman conquests by being half of the army. Its only when the reforms of the Gracchi start affecting the socii that they start realizing they could benefit from roman citizenship cause they had no say in them having their land stripped from them by the gracchi reforms.
45:00 you are talking about how humans could destroy civilizations. I think it would be good for you to look into how other means of travel work. I strongly suggest checking out "Age of Disclosure", yes its about UFO's, but it goes deeply into technology we know we have and are currently trying to reverse engineer. When things begin to warp space and time, these are systems that could destroy the planet in an instant. Just blow a hole right through the earth… not to mention some asteroids don't really care about what you want, or think, sometimes they hit each other or get flung around in ways we could never predict… it only takes one of those events to wipe out the planet, and there have 100% been smaller asteroid hits we did not predict.
You're wasting breath on this moron. Only interesting thing to look at is why people keep believing him and why is he not in prison yet
lol, so, ultimately, in vastly simplified terms, the "fall of rome" shouldn't be attributed to immigrants or barbarians, but instead, it ought to be attributed to the rise of the catholic church 😂
6:54, hey Elon, if the Senate was "just for show" then why did they cloak up and murder Julius when they felt he wasnt doing his duties or listening to the Senate?
Just as the perceived authority of clergy was utilized to pressure people to behave and think in certain ways, the perceived authority of experts of humanities and social sciences are used to pressure people to behave and think in certain ways. In reality history has almost infinite complexity and resolution. People who try to claim that they can extract some predictive model from history and apply it today, are playing a fools game. You can read almost anything you want into history. You can find contradicting "patterns". So here both Elon and Dibble are playing a fools game. Claims of how Rome fell and how it didn't and whether it fell or whether it was a transformation, is mostly conjecture and often filled ulterior motives. Whether it was a fall or transformation is an encoding of some ideological framing.
37:08 If abortion is recent, why did Augustine have the opinion that abortion wasn't murder way back when the Roman Empire was still a thing!?
hated that ending song
Musk is literally a crazy fraud who wants to represent himself as being too smart and forward-looking and a savior of the human race. Delusional fraud.
Elon thinks He's Trajan. When really He's just Commodus.
If you want to close your X account in seconds, say the Romans can make a better rocket that SpaceX
he dont know about them goths
That's cute that the rome guy thinks Elon is running five companies.
Elon wants to go to Mars because he wants to create a "civilization" in his image.
Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein, two of the smartest people to have ever lived= not billionaires or even close to the equivalent.
Elon Musk and Donald Trump= billionaires. There is no such thing as meritocracy in wealth acquisition, especially in modern times.
Mr(?) XXY's baby mamas need IVF to conceive, so he's(?) probably the last person who should be banging on about fertility…
Elon is a freakazoid
Elon musk is a famous bulshitter
Anybody whose primary obsession is birth rates is probably not the kind of guy you want to listen to.
A daddy's money elitist with a penchant for buying political influence leading a parade of anti-intellectuals, autocratic billionaires and self-identified ruralites in the lamentation of the decline in litteracy, science, art, quality of life, social mobility and public works of an ancient empire is just a pearl of bitter irony. But it is fascinating to see Musk trying to violently contort his breeding fetish into an attempt on political ideology.
Trying to explain his b***** Mars save the planet when he doesn't give a f*** about people, is a very uphill battle.
44:16 you mean million, small but it bugs me
Rich people like Elon just want to have plenty of plebs to slave around and do their bidding. They know with less people labor is worth more so they want massive populations willing to work for pennies.
American tech-barbarians like to think they are running some kind of US empire, but the truth is the are just savage feudal lords ransacking US state.
Elon Musk is the barbarian immigrant tech-lord that came to plunder the dying US system (he bought US citizenship in 2002). I think this is one of the reasons US economy is plummeting. Bezos is an immigrant tech-lord as well (citizen since 2016). If you want parallels to Rome this thing writes itself. They are the barbarians that know no civility, have no conscience, no respect for justice and rule of law. All they know is greed, pumping their ego. They are far worse, far more savage then the Barbarians that overrun Rome. At least the roman barbarians cared for culture, education, rule of law, etc.
Some of the last saviours of Rome were "barbarians" 😂😂😂
Let’s remember before it fell it was ruled by despots, murders , pedos, and lunatics like the current regime. If the population went down it was because people starved. Children where not making it to their teens. Much like the regime wants now.
So, I'm only five minutes in. But I'll comment something showing my reflections. But my understanding is that the critical underlying issue was economic stagnation. The empire, when it was at its most powerful, had an economy that worked because of expansion. Taking and colonizing new land and people in order to drive growth and power to Rome. But, it got to the point where the burden of administering the land prevented further expansion. Starting the decline
This alone wouldn't be an issue, if the Empire had been able to reform it's economy. But that never happened. In fighting, crisis, plague and other issues prevented reform. Along with the inherent corruption of the Roman ruling class
Then, when the nearby gothic people's moved in, the western Roman empire was already crumbling from all theae issues that it just couldn't stand as one unit. Instead the fragmentation allowed the economic and political reforms to happen on a small scale across the previously united lands
Could we get a video exploring the decline of Sparta? Because it's fascinating how these… I'll be polite, people, never really talk about the decline of Sparta, it's always Rome
I watched the entire JRE #2136 episode and without a doubt, my favorite part was your rant @48:44 about the collapse of the upper crust of societies and the survival of the common people. Joe's laughter in the middle of the rant stood out to me, it is the legitimate reaction of the out of touch wealthy elite that refuse to give an inch of wealth and power because they are too good to give out anymore crumbs the the working class. This kind of hubris is what ends them. Even when you point this out to them, the lesson goes over his head just like any joke made by other guests and comedians that doesn't involve stool humping.
Awesome rant!! Spoken like a true leftist.
Elon musk thinks he’s the Bo Jackson of academia
Flint! You’re my favorite nerd! Thank you for studying so much and sharing with us! 💛 by the way – you CRUSHED IT on Joe Rogan 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
They really give the game away when they just say “births are decreasing” when the global population is growing.
He says “You can’t have humanity without humans” and to him the majority of the world’s population is not “human”.
I think you hit the nail on the head at the end. He promotes a false idea of societal collapse and a narrative to try to steer away from it because he knows he will be on the chopping block when this society collapses.