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/lit/ - Literature

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19668700 No.19668700 [Reply] [Original]

Any good books on the decline and fall of empires? Was considering getting either World Order by Kissinger or the Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy, which one of these should I get or is there something better?

>> No.19668702

China can't survive, it's fate is sealed.
All we have to do is sit back and wait.

>> No.19668715
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19668715

WOWIE THE WEST IS FINISHED

>> No.19668723

>>19668715
Unironically yes, China is now without a doubt surpassing us in terms of military technology.

>> No.19668724

>>19668700
too bad they murdered half their population in a delusional eugenicist craze and now they are headed for demographic collapse and irrelevancy before they even reach first world status

>> No.19668775
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>>19668715
It objectively is

>> No.19668780
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>>19668700

>> No.19668794

>>19668700
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Obviously.

>> No.19668815
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>>19668775

>> No.19669942
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>>19668775

>> No.19670441
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>>19668702
Like each previous superpower graced with industrial capitalism, the returns become shorter lived. Of course China will enjoy a height and decline in this century, but don’t giggle about for long. This time there is no recovery for anyone, and likely no other nation or region to replace it.

The US has been in decline for the fifty years of my life.

>>19668724
Murdered? What on earth are you regurgitating?

>> No.19670478

Deeper request, but along the same lines. Are there any texts or books on Organizational Theory and the concept that all human systems are doomed to failure?

Civilizations rise and fall just as discord tranny servers blow up and die, corporations get crushed and eaten, and all human systems devolve into absurd politics, bureaucracy, and egos.

Like, at least with the big systems, it's pretty easy to track their decline with bloated bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is interesting because it's so double edged. Having a bureaucracy enables you to dominate competition and people, but also too much leads to gross inefficiency. No one has been able to solve this problem either since it's innate to human systems and organization. Even if you select for specific people, this shit still is poorly ran (just actually investigate large complex engineering projects which are mostly ran and operated by STEM autists).

>> No.19670516
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>>19670478
>the concept that all human systems are doomed to failure?
That’s a concept. Why would you want to read someone who believes it?

Here’s a great historic essay on what “civilization” actually has been all this time.

>> No.19670553

>>19670516
Yeah, it's pretty plainly obvious if you've ever worked in a bureaucracy. Be that academia, government, or a large corporation.

Things are done inefficiently to the point of failure. You're already seeing this outcome with the American government and it's failure to manage complex engineering projects. There are failed systems after failed systems in America and the government copes by saying that's the nature of engineering when it's not.

I mean it literally makes sense. Once the bureaucracy grows too large to manage, which naturally happens with age, these inefficiencies creep in and take over. No one ever removes a rule, they just add more to the pile.

>> No.19670631

>>19668700
Countries that seek power for power’s sake will destroy themselves in their hubris.

>> No.19670643

>>19668700
Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy, because it's the one I have.

>> No.19670660

>>19670553
>large bureaucracy doesn’t work
I concur. But pretty plainly that’s not all there is.
I also see capitalist decay effecting all those systems. The greediest are in the driver’s seat and they’re just bribing their way to early retirement on their private islands or whatever

>>19670631
That’s their modus operandi from the start.

>> No.19671361

>>19670660
What else is there? Every human system is a bureaucracy and a system is inevitably stronger than an individual. When you group together, rules are established as part of the social contract. When something new is encountered, a new rule is established, it has to be. These rules pile and pile until the system collapses in on itself because inevitably people will forget that a rule was established and create a new ruling for the same situation.

I can't think of a single organization that doesn't succumb to this problem. You see it night and day in academic 'discovery'. Many people in different fields recreate the wheel of another field and they do this endlessly. It's not their fault, there is simply too much information.

Even with these faults, bureaucracy always rises above the individual. This is plainly seen in non-human systems such as computers. Parallel processing is inherently less efficient than single processing but is still much, much quicker.