Money, Borders, Power: The Pattern That Actually Killed Rome

Podcast: The Jeremy Ryan Slate Show · Jeremy Ryan Slate

Opublikowano: 2026-07-27

The Roman pattern didn't end with Rome. It just kept running at a smaller scale. Everywhere the Western Empire had held together — Hispania, Gaul, North Africa, Italy, Britain — the political form gave out, but the substance didn't disappear. It fragmented, reassembled, and kept running the same three-part pattern at a new scale: money weakens the center, borders get harder to defend, and power drifts from institutions to individuals. That's the kill chain. And every post-Roman kingdom ran it, in slightly different form, over the next three centuries. By 800 AD, a Fr...