Yeah you definitely have to be a patrician to be the Emperor. But you gotta remove many other patricians too.

My thought is, the US reached the peak of all Empires. It is Pax Americana, and every empire imploded whenever it stopped expanding. We had some pretty good time in the late 1800s and better time back in 1945 and 1990. There were struggles but we always managed to plow through because there were spaces to expand, and the elites back then, TBF, were better than this batch (I was reading Baltzell's books a while ago). But the good time was over, and there is not much space to expand, so the "safer" way is to reform -- but we rarely saw this happen, e.g. both Brother Gracchus were killed by the Senate -- and eventually Caesar came up and swept the floor, and I have no faith in this batch of elites.

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JumpCrisscross 11 hours ago | parent [-]

> you gotta remove many other patricians too

What are you basing this on? The patrician families continued to rein under the Empire. Which side do you think backed Sulla’s dictatorship? Which side do you think felt (and feels) constrained by elections and democratic norms?

> It is Pax Americana, and every empire imploded whenever it stopped expanding

One, source? Because plenty of great civilisations across history reached stable states for hundreds if not thousands of years.

And two, America is still expanding. The economy is growing. Post industrialisation, there are more routes to goodies than conquering territory. (I can’t think of a single war of conquest since China annexed Tibet that has gone well for the invader since WWII.)

	▲	markus_zhang 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> One, source? Because plenty of great civilisations across history reached stable states for hundreds if not thousands of years. Be that as it may. Expansionist empires usually shrinks dramatically once they reached their peak. Both Roman and the British are examples, as well as many Chinese dynasties. The East Roman Empire did survive for much longer so it is also possible for the US to go on for a lot longer. I think the Inca was also kinda stable before the Spanish came. > And two, America is still expanding. The economy is growing. Post industrialisation, there are more routes to goodies than conquering territory. (I can’t think of a single war of conquest since China annexed Tibet that has gone well for the invader since WWII.) I do hope that we can drag through this period and make some reformation happen. But I don't have high hope for the current batch of elites. Sure the number is growing.