We Gotta Talk About The Fall Of Rome

If anything, America is more like the Byzantine Empire than Rome in decline: a nation capable of reinvention, thriving under pressure, and innovating in the face of challenges.

The "Fall of the Roman Empire" is a modern concept that misunderstands the lived experience of the people who were part of it. For them, life likely felt like a series of gradual changes, progress punctuated by periods of upheaval, challenges, and change - kind of like all of history.

Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day, and America Isn’t Falling in One Either

The doomsayers seem to come out strong in the new year dawn: comparing the United States to the Roman Empire in its so-called decline. It’s a trope as overused as coffee and cynicism, as intellectually lazy as quoting Nietzsche without reading him. And yet, here we are again, in a new year inundated with cries that America… The West—along with democracy, free markets, and everything you enjoyed about brunch Saturday morning—is teetering on the brink of ruin, Fall of Rome-style.

Not only is the comparison between America and Rome’s “fall” wrong, but it’s also boring, unhelpful, and frankly, should be embarrassing for those making it.

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Let’s Talk About Rome’s “Fall”

We’ve been conditioned to picture toga-clad senators weeping into their goblets as barbarians torch the Forum. The truth? Few are reading the history. They’re opting for what they picked up along the way in cartoons, movies, and memes. Rome’s fall was less of a cataclysm and more of a slow administrative shuffle. For most regular “Romans” they would have called it progress. For the Byzantines (Romans in the east), Rome didn’t fall at all—the capital moved to a stunning new city called Constantinople and the empire (not a country) carried on innovating, trading, and surviving for another 1,000 years. Their empire stood as a beacon of civilization for over a millennium after the "fall of Rome," influencing art, architecture, law, and religion in ways that endure today. Founded by Emperor Constantine in 330 AD, Constantinople was more than a replacement for Rome the capital; it was a deliberate upgrade. Positioned at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, it became the wealthiest, most fortified, and culturally vibrant city in the world. The Byzantine Empire became the epicenter of Christianity, a shift from the pagan traditions of old Rome. Under Emperor Justinian I (527–565), the empire codified Roman law (Corpus Juris Civilis) and built monumental structures like the Hagia Sophia, a symbol of religious and imperial grandeur. Through Golden Ages, their cultural influence spread through art, religion, and the transmission of classical knowledge to the Islamic world and Western Europe. If Rome had a slogan, it wouldn’t be “Decline and Fall.” It would be “Adapt and Thrive.”

Rome didn’t collapse in a fiery blaze; it transitioned, transformed, and in many ways, progressed. So why do modern cynics cherry-pick this mythical “fall” as their go-to metaphor for the supposed end of America?

The fundamental difference between empires like Rome and countries like Canada or America lies in their purpose, structure, and adaptability. Rome was an expansive, hierarchical system built on conquest, plunder, and centralized authority, where the success of the whole often depended on the might of a single ruler or a small elite. Their economies relied heavily on subjugated labor and territorial acquisition, and their governance lacked the self-correcting mechanisms of modern democracies. By contrast, countries like Canada and America are rooted in ideas of shared sovereignty, the primacy and rights of the individual citizen, democratic participation, and the rule of law, with economies driven by innovation and voluntary cooperation. Unlike empires, they are complex systems designed to adapt, grow, and self-repair, prioritizing individual rights and collective progress over the rigid hierarchies and extractive practices of ancient imperial systems.

Now, I’m almost sure some sour and bitter lefties are going to rage that this describes the patriarchal Nazi fascists ruling Canada but let’s cool our jets. Canada and the U.S. are designed with institutional checks and balances that disperse power and prevent tyranny. The legitimacy of governance is derived from the consent of the governed, not from conquest or hereditary rule. Where Rome openly relied on subjugation and plunder to sustain itself, modern liberal democracies operate on voluntary economic exchange and the rule of law, ensuring that prosperity is built on innovation and participation rather than coercion and control.

The contexts are so radically different—spanning millennia, societal structures, technological advancements, and foundational principles—that any attempt to equate them oversimplifies both history and the complexities of contemporary governance. It’s not just an apples-to-oranges problem; it’s just dumb.

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The Problem With the Doom-and-Gloomers

The doom crowd thrives on lazy historical analogies, peddling narratives of inevitability. America, they argue, is Rome 2.0: bloated, corrupt, decadent, destined for the ash heap of history. But let’s call out this nonsense for what it is: shallow thinking dressed up in a Halloween historian’s toga.

Here’s why this comparison doesn’t hold water—or wine, for that matter:

1. Rome Wasn’t a Democracy:
   Rome wasn’t a democracy; it was a republic that morphed into a dictatorship. America is not just a democracy. It’s a stack of democracies from cities, counties, states, and all the branches of the federal government. It is complex beyond imagining with mechanisms for self-correction, even if we occasionally use those mechanisms to elect reality TV stars and various other dummies. It just doesn’t matter. It the system itself that’s important. A complex intellectual machine like no other in history. Like the difference between clay tablets and iPhones different. Rolling through the ages.

2. Economic Dynamism Matters:
   Rome relied on slave labor and plunder to fuel its economy. The West, the democracies, and America in particular is an intellectual machine that broke that cycle that had existed through all of history. There is no comparison. Nothing like the time we live in has ever existed. Rome had no middle class - however, you’d like to define it or fret about it. Rome was a brutal and violent military oligarchy supported by a massive and violently victimized underclass. America runs on free markets and innovation; creative energy powered by the same entrepreneurial spirit that makes your favorite food truck possible. Comparing these systems is like equating outer space and the ocean.

3. Technology and Progress:
   Rome didn’t have antibiotics, Google, or Beyoncé. More importantly, they didn’t have the foundational change in government, thinking, social science, science, and technology that we call The Industrial Revolution or the Age of Revolution and Enlightenment. America leads the world in technological progress. Anyone comparing America’s trajectory to Rome’s needs to explain why the Romans didn’t think to invent Wi-Fi.

For a visual of this let’s look at a chart of human progress and flourishing from the year 1 of the modern era until today. Notice anything different?

Note the economic growth during the Roman period and the change after its “Fall” in 476.

Economic historian Angus Maddison, at the University of Groningen, spent his adult life estimating gross domestic product (GDP) figures for the world over the past two millennia. According to Maddison’s calculations, the average global income per person per year stood at $800 in year 1 of the Common Era (2011 U.S. dollars). That’s where it remained for the next thousand years. This income stagnation does not mean that economic growth never happened. Growth did occur, but it was low, localized, and episodic. In the end, economic gains always petered out.

All the sour and cynical folks can compare their lifetime of research, analysis, calculation, and collaborative verification to Maddison’s work. Kidding. I’ll state the theme plainly here:

In 1800, average global income stood at roughly $1,140 per person per year. Put differently, over the course of the 18 centuries that separated the birth of Christ and the election of Thomas Jefferson to the U.S. presidency, income rose by about 40 percent.

The advent of the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century changed everything. Between 1800 and 1900, GDP per person per year rose from $1,140 to $2,180. In other words, humanity made over twice as much progress in 100 years as it did in the previous 1,800 years.

In 2008, the last year in Maddison’s final estimates, average global income per person per year stood at $13,172. That means that the real standard of living rose by more than tenfold between 1800 and 2008.

Maddison died in 2010, but a group of his colleagues continues his work. The latest edition of the GDP estimates came out in 2018. Although Maddison’s original numbers changed slightly, the long-term trend in income growth remained almost identical. The Maddison Project’s 2018 estimates show that in 1900, GDP per person per year amounted to $2,021 (as opposed to Maddison’s $2,180). By 2016, income had risen to $14,574 per person per year. That amounts to a 621 percent increase since 1900.

Finally, the Maddison Project’s recent estimates show that average global income per person per year rose at a compound annual rate of 1.72 percent between 1900 and 2016. If that trend continues, average global income will reach an inflation-adjusted $60,955 per person per year in 2100 (all figures are in 2011 U.S. dollars).\

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Why Cynicism Is Lazy

The problem with doom-and-gloom comparisons is that they’re a cop-out. It’s easier to bemoan the decline of civilization than to acknowledge complexity and work toward solutions. Democracy is messy. Free markets are volatile. Progress is hard. But these systems are also uniquely designed to evolve, adapt, and rise to new challenges—something Rome, with its emperors and static systems, struggled to do at all.

Let’s take a moment to marvel at the sheer cosmic lottery we’ve won by being born in the West, two centuries after the Industrial Revolution—a time and place where the unthinkable luxuries of the past are now mundane realities. We live in an era where clean water flows from taps, diseases that once wiped out civilizations are cured with a pill, and food isn’t just abundant—it’s delivered to our doors with a tap on a screen. Education, freedom, and opportunity surround us, the fruits of centuries of human struggle and ingenuity. We’re not huddled in caves, fearing the night; we’re lighting up cities with electricity and reaching for the stars. No pharaoh, emperor, or medieval king could dream of the comforts we casually enjoy every day. So let’s put the cynicism aside and revel in the fact that we’re alive at the pinnacle of human progress—on the shoulders of giants, in the greatest time and place in history.

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A Better Analogy: The Byzantines

If anything, America is more like the Byzantine Empire than Rome in decline: a nation capable of reinvention, thriving under pressure, and innovating in the face of challenges. The Byzantines faced invasions, plagues, and political chaos, yet they adapted and thrived for millennia. In the end, they left the Empiring behind but all the other parts, progress, and families continued on. America has faced its own trials—wars, recessions, social upheavals—and it’s still standing, evolving, and leading.

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A Call to Optimism

Cynics like to imagine themselves as modern Cassandras, foreseeing doom while the rest of us scroll Instagram. But pessimism is a self-fulfilling prophecy, and their obsession with decline is a betrayal of the very systems they claim to mourn. Democracy works when people engage with it. Free markets flourish when optimism fuels investment. America thrives when its citizens believe in its promise.

If you really want a historical analogy, consider this: America is less like Rome in decline and more like Rome at its peak—innovative, messy, expansive, and filled with potential. It’s a nation still building, still striving, still learning from its mistakes.

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So Let’s Just Stop Mr. Sour, Bitter, And Sad

Next time someone compares America to Rome’s “fall,” hand them a history book. Or better yet, send them to OUR WORLD IN DATA where they can see for themselves what’s really happening. It’s amazing!

Tell them to stop using thousand-year-old metaphors as an excuse for twenty-first-century laziness. Because, as the Byzantines proved, progress isn’t about avoiding challenges; it’s about adapting to them.

America isn’t falling. It’s building, innovating, and—yes—arguing its way toward a better future. Democracy is an argument we have with ourselves about the shape of things to come. It is never settled. And no one should ever wish it to be so. And frankly, that’s a story far more interesting than the one the doom-and-gloomers are trying to sell.