Moral Collapse theory

Alongside Michael Hudson's neoMarxist analysis (I mean that as compliment), I recommend Richard E. Blanton, Gary M. Feinman, Stephen A. Kowalewski, and Lane F. Fargher: "Moral Collapse and State Failure". Daily Mail got a summary.

The paper starts with a theory of the Good Government: the system which enables a productive working class. I'd call out the Mail's use of "middle class". As President Obama proved, that is a shield for what the "Lion of the Blogosphere" in his halfsigma heyday called value-transference. The middle-classer might earn the same salary as a worker, but his job is a Bullshit Job and he lives as a parasite, inhibiting production.

Blanton et al. don't look at democracies. Their paper looks at three empires for which we have good record: Flavian / Antonine Roma, Ming (not Tang!) China, the Mughals. Also one republic: Venice. Neoreactionaries will accept that this is because democracy doesn't work. Small-d democrats might excuse this in that those systems can serve as example and shame for democracies.

Michael Hudson isn't cited. I moot he should be. Hudson is ultra reactionary here, taking cue from Babylonia and from the crypto-monothelete Macedonian Constantinople. The Emperor Protects, and Forgives Us Our Debts. The Macedonian Dynasty is at least as well-documented as is second-century Rome. It is just not well studied, outside the Orthodox world.

The paper goes further than Hudson, to explain how the Good Empire fails. Empress Zoe presided over the Macedonians' failure. Installing a good system is necessary, but it also needs a plan to keep it aloft. Most of all - should the system falter - the Imperial Court needs a "plan b" of restoration. Antonine apologists often neglect the Flavian decades starting AD 70ish. Roma survived the later years of Domitian, the Nerva-Trajan coup, and Trajan's overextension into Iraq. The new dynasty wasn't genetically Flavian (a lot of it was Spanish!) but, I'll propose, the Flavians laid down the foundation for a post-Flavian Romania.

Also good news is the exercise of scientody in political science. Bruce Gilley at Portland State seems authoritarian enough; I suggest he take this tack of doing scholarship, instead of chasing notoriety and a conservative fanclub like the late Mike Adams did.