Roman Problems with Roman Solutions w/ Jeremy Ryan Slate: The J. Burden Show Ep. 439

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they must know what they're talking about. But in all serious disband it was a great interview. And so if you could, could you introduce yourself to my audience? Well, who are you and what do you do?

And one of the major things I've looked at is I've become very good at pattern recognition and I have two different channels that I talk about this on. The first is called Hidden Forces in History, and we look at kind of the power structure behind history.

but also it's connected to the Trojan War. And okay, look, there's a lot more to it than simply that, but it is a very interesting element of that document that isn't often discussed, at least in common circles.

really interesting word salad to do that. But one of the things that he does is he puts a big

attention on literature and the ane. It is actually one of the things that he commissions to be written, and Virgil, when putting it together, actually towards the end of his life, doesn't finish the Enea, and in his will he wanted the work destroyed if it was left unfinished, and Augustus actually manages to stop that because hey, he wants this epic to show you know, just how important Rome is and tie it to something great like the Trojan War.

But really it's a masterful piece of propaganda in order to tie the Romans to something that existed long before them and also tie themselves to like a royal lineage, because the character of Eneas is very interesting. He leaves the Trojan War with his father Ascanius on his back and walks across Italy and ends up in a city called Alba Longa, which is later going to found the kingdom from which Rome comes from, because Romulus and Remus

are from Alba Longa. So it's a really interesting tie in to kind of give this mythical East Ethos to the Romans and what they're coming out of.

And you see that echoed every time we pick a fight with someone, right, slivanon Malasovich is, yeah, he's basically Hitler, and Saddam Hussein he's basically Hitler. And you know that myth was very powerful. It you know, sort of propelled us through almost one hundred years. But as it sort of starts to weaken, it seems as if there is no really cohesive narrative about what we are coming into you build on it or take its place. And so

I'm curious. One of the things that you were speaking about your comments on Rome is you know that an addition to currency debasement, which we will get back to, one of the other things that sort of brought about the end of Rome was the weakening of borders. And so before we get into that, it's probably best to describe, well, what is a citizen? So if you could, could you describe what a Roman citizen was and how that's different from our conception of citizenship and modernity.

of Rome that they don't have citizenship. And if you get towards the Late Republic, this is one of the things that Marius, the great military reformer, is going to push for. He's going to push for citizenship for the Italians, and eventually that will get out to the point that it's called the struggle of the Orders, which kind of brings us to this citizenship for the Italians. So now citizenship applies not just to Rome and the territories are very close to, but also to all Italian states that

are kind of part of Rome. And the way Rome expanded during the time of the Republic is it wasn't initially from taxes. It was we conquer you, we put a government in place, you give us soldiers, and we'll kind of leave you alone. So Rome was able to expand by bringing in these new territories that would fight for Rome, and by serving in the legions. It's initially twenty five years, it's in the later Empire it's going

to be closer to thirty years. You could gain citizenship, and what that would mean is it's citizenship for you, your family, your children. So you would start to have more Roman citizenship in these territor tories. Now if you get into the mid Empire, so around like to twelve, Caracala is going to give citizenship to thirty million people overnight.

It's very debated why he did this, but it's thought that the reason he did it is in order to be able to tax the inheritance of these new citizens, because anyone in a Roman territory paid about five percent tax, whereas a Roman citizen paid ten percent tax. Now you also got some goodies for that, like you know, if you look in the Bible of Saint Paul, one of the reasons he's able to travel so much is because he has Roman citizenship. It's kind of like having a

golden passport in a lot of ways. And then there was also something called the grain doll that every citizen was allowed to have a certain amount of grain supplied to them by Rome. So you do get a lot of these benefits. And it's also the ability. This is going to change a lot in the Late Empire because around two eighty four the Empire becomes a lot more you know, hard rule, a lot more autocratic in a

lot of ways. But in the early Empire you could redress your a grievances directly to the emperor, like it was something as a citizen you had a right to do. So citizenship did have a ton of value, but there were also various forms of citizenship. They would be citizenship with the vote and citizenship without the vote. So it was kind of a very interesting thing to be a

Roman citizen. And it's hard to define really what makes a Roman and this is there was a big debate on X a few months ago between one of my favorite follows, by the way, go follow this guy if you're not a Roman helmet guy and Elon Musk about you know, what is romanness and how is that changing? You know, Rome had always been very cosmopolitan, and I guess that's the issue of how do you define what

a Roman is? Because if Rome expanded into your territory took you over and you were there long enough, well you became very Romanized because people wanted to be like Rome because there was a lot of goodies you got

for having that. So that's kind of one issue. Now, the thing you're going to start to see is as currency starts to break down in the late Empire, and as these generals that were declaring themselves emperor care more about their civil wars between each other than their borders, you start to get these enclaves developing on the borders that are living with the Roman territory. They're not really being Roman, and you start to have this kind of

loss of a shared reality. So I think that's one of the major things that you're looking at as an empire breaks down, is there starts to be this loss of a shared reality and then people kind of aren't playing the same game.

the eventual birth of the empire. Right, But you have this founding idea, however, imperfect, that we are a collection of effectively kind of Yeoman farmers, right that you know, we are people who you know, certainly fight, but you know, a Roman is tied to a piece of land and that is sort of his right. You know, this is an idea that runs all the way through the West.

they have no tie to the land anymore. They don't really own a stake per se in the empire or even you know, the state of Rome past the Dole and an incredible influx of people who are looking to get a piece of that, right, And I mean you don't have to be a genius to look around and say like, wait a minute, I've seen this one before. Yeah, and so we've been talking about this a lot, So let's just kind of set the framework here. Where does

this currency debasement come from? Like how was it done? Literally? And also like what what's the advantage? Why would you make your coins worthless?

This is debated, but sometime between thirty one and twenty three BC. So one of the things you're going to have change in the last one hundred years of the Republic is there's a guy named Gaius Marius, and he's a very famous military reformer of Rome. Actually, the Roman eagle standard is something that he creates. It's something that he actually adds to the Roman military. Before Marius, Rome had been very much a citizen soldiery. He actually starts

to create more of a class of professional soldier. So that is very much a difference in how Rome is going to start to function. And he mentioned people not being tied to land after the Punic Wars and after the reforms of Marius. This is going to be something

that's debated for a long time. And it's actually one of the biggest reasons that Julius Caesar in the Late Republic is a to get the support he's able to get because he wants to take land that Pompey has gained through conquest and give it to veterans, because those veterans would come back and they'd have nothing to come back to because their land might have been sold in

the time they were gone. Because people might have expected they died, so you'd have a lot of these military men come back with no purpose, nothing to come back to, and Caesar thought we should give them land. So this is something that's actually debated quite often, is what do we do with these people that don't have any land?

be much much more productive. Right when when you combine that with credit, right, which is obviously helped along by currency debasement, an unequal distribution of wealth that is becoming more and more unequal, and then the cheap labor to take that land and make it into something productive. Oh wait, and also a massive scheme of you know, government contracts,

whether that's for grain or weapons or anything else. And not only do you start to see the parallel, but it's like, well, it's no shock that that created an unstable system because that is going to massive Well take an unequal system anyway. You know. Look, we're not communists, but I think we can all say that, you know, even at its most liberal, Rome was not exactly, you know, not exactly an equal system.

in the two eighties, it's like five percent pure. This is this here is a silver coin of the late third century, very rare to find because there just weren't as many. But this is Valerian who was actually captured by the Persian shah Shahpoor the first and actually used as a footstool the rest of his life. And then this is a bronze coin of a relion. This would have been kind of the standard. A bronze coin would be used every day.

to kind of set it up. But if you look at the you know, as we have the Great Fire of Rome in sixty four a d and Nero needs to pay for a lot of things, so he'll start some currency to basement, So you're going to see the value start to drop during Nero. It holds pretty stable until the death of commonas in one ninety two. So we went from sixty four to one ninety two, almost

one hundred and fifty years with a pretty stable currency. Now, the thing that's going to change in that year is it's the year of five Emperors and the last one that comes in, because basically they'd cause the civil war, they would declare themselves emperor. And you have it at the last one, the second to last one, the fourth one of those is basically going to buy the auction by the empire and an auction from the Praetorian art

twenty thousand cissirces. He now owns the empire. So you're going to have a military commander out on the Danube named so timmya Severus, he's actually from North Africa who's going to come in replace that emperor, declare himself emperor and do it by military force. And the pattern he uses is something that the emperors will after him will pattern the rest of the empire. The thing that he does is when a new emperor came in, he would do something called the donative. It comes from the Latin

word meaning to give. And that donative was a gift to the military. So he took from probably about twenty years before Marcus Aurelius at that point in time, gave the largest donative to the Roman military ever. So he takes that and go is way bigger than Marcus Aurelius did. So now he gives this giant gift to the military. He also doubles military pay, and then he also doubles the size of the allegiance. He takes the praetorian guard

replaces them all with his own men. And now that's something that each emperor after him is going to do. They're going to enlarge the allegiance, double their pay, and give this huge donative gift to them when they become emperor. I'm trying to remember the quote offhand, but when Severus is on his deathbed, he says to his sons Caracala and Gaeta, enriched the soldiers and forget all others. And that's kind of the pattern that emperors after them will

continue to apply. So that's really the key thing that starts currency to basement is you have this new brand of emperor. It's not quite sever Its. It's going to get the name. It's a little bit later on in two thirty five you're going to have a guy named Maximinus Thras that's actually fit considered to be the first of what are called the barrack emperors or military emperors

declaring themselves emperor. But it really is applied off this pattern that Severus creates and every emperor after him is going to create So in the period of the Third century Crisis, which is two thirty five to two eighty four, you're going to have like twenty six different emperors and they're each going to apply that same strategy of large donative, give a higher pay raise in large the legions, because

that's where their power base comes from. And you're going to get to the point of two eighty four, when the crisis finally ends and a guy named Diocletian takes over that they're at fifteen thousand percent inflation, and that's really how they get there is just military spending. Now, all of these other things are going to exasperate it, like the grain dole or Caracala giving out citizenship to thirty million people in two twelve, So these things are

going to exasperate it. But it's really that pattern that's created by Severus that emperors after him continue to apply.

a huge influx of capital and money into Rome. So how and free of me this is no really broad question, but how do these conflicts in Rome affect the sort of like effective inflation rate? Because it seems as if there's so much money, there's so much value flying around that that would lead to asset inflation. Right if the conversion rate from a I don't know a house to a slave I'm pulling these numbers out of thin air was like two to one, Right, you could buy a

house for two slaves. Well, if all of a sudden you've brought back you know, however, many tens of thousands caes are brought back, it seems that you know that ratio would change. So to what degree was there inflation simply from the sort of like spoils of war.

things there. In the one twenties, you're going to have Hadrian builds the wall to try and keep the picks out, But for all extents and purposes, Rome stops expanding after one seventeen AD. There will be smaller territorial ads, but for the most part, this kind of machine that keeps kind of grinding up everyone, you know, further and further out stops. And I think that's a really key point because one of the things that allows Rome to do what it does is it is continually bring in more

territory and more wealth. Once that stops, that's going to be a major change in how things operate, right, because you're no longer bringing the gold and the silver. You know, you have your silver mines in Datia which are kind of out towards the Balkans, but those silver mines actually go dry I think in the third century, in the early third century. So now you have this ability to get wealth changes dramatically. So I think that's a really

key point. Is I don't know as much about how slavery would cause inflation, though you know it is something that continually to come into the empire. But I can tell you that the territorial expansion ending in one seventeen is a major major point of no longer continue to bring in new wealth.

just own a house or a farm. So how does this sort of inflation that we see, whether in Rome or you know, in the West, affect normal people? Right? How does it sort of shift the balance of power in a society.

in four seventy six. The life of someone living in four seventy six and five hundred in Roman.

You have the Aciprian plague in the mid third century that kills an enormous amount of people.

So for them, they're just worried about survival. For them, it wouldn't have changed that much.

they should, they're going to start bartering. And one of the things that Diocletian is going to do as part of his famous reforms from two eighty to three h five two eighty four to three oh five is he's going to issue something called the Edict of maximum Prices, because he doesn't want people overcharging for things which price

controls them. They always work, trust me. And the other thing that he does as well is he tries to issue new coinage, but people still don't trust it because the purity of the coins have gone down so much. So the one thing I can tell you is that a barter economy becomes a really big part of it.

a long term where we're at. And I think a really easy example of that is I went to the grocery store the other day and it was like nine to ninety nine for a pack of like the crap bacon, Like that shouldn't be the case. You know, that was two ninety nine, four years ago, right, So I think when you're looking at it for the regular person, it's how you feel in the grocery store. But if you want to kind of get into the economics of it, the FED likes to call it quantitative easing, you know,

QI one Q two. What that means is, hey, we printed more money, and the dollar in your pocket is now worth less. So it's like a tax you don't actually pay. It just means they increase the amount of money in circulation, but doesn't mean they actually ever printed any money. Like Romans would have loved this, that you could just go into computer create more ones and zeros

and now more money exists. So I think the actual problem that we're dealing with is not quite the same as what Rome dealt with and how inflation works, because we have something like the Federal Reserve, which isn't federal, doesn't hold any reserves, and can kind of just change the amount of money in circulation and change the interest rate whatever they feel like. So our economy is very controlled in a lot of ways. And I think to me that's the major concern is most people don't feel inflation.

They just think things cost more, and in the grand scheme of things, costs don't really change. It's the value of your money going down that make you feel like things cost more. So I think if you look modernly, that's the scary part. And even there's a story during the Weimar Republic of you right before World War two of some are I'm sorry, right before World War two, but somebody going with a wheelbarrow full of money to

go buy a loaf of bread. By the time they get there, that wheelbarrow is not enough to buy the actual loaf of bread because inflation is moving so quickly. When you kind of get to that point from inflation to hyperinflation, somebody can't keep up, and that starts to become a real problem. And I think the way we do it now is more covert and almost more criminal in a lot of ways, because people don't feel it.

It's not a physical coin in their hand that they can see is getting some or they can see the silver and bronze content is changing. It's something that they just go to the store and things cost more, and all of a sudden, their salary that they're getting can't pay for it. So I think that's modernly. The real problem is most people don't understand because they're so far removed from the process.

Not I mean, not to say a dumb person at all, but not really like a finance guy, to put it mildly, right, And in that conversation, you know, it came up that like, oh, you know, some social acquaintance you know, is making six figures a year. And he was floored. He's like, oh my, this, this guy's a superstar. He's amazing. You know, this is like a record setting event at some point, and we'll be making that kind of money, and especially if you

live in an urban center. And look, that's still decent money, but that is not at all what it was twenty years ago, let alone ten. Right, And again the combination is for wage earners, you are behind the curve, right, you were hoping that your wages keep pace with inflation. We'll kind of understand that, not really because again, how that number is derived, and so proportionally you are getting poorer.

You have the secondary condition, which is if every dollar at every moment is becoming less valuable, the incentives to hold on to cash are almost none. So it creates asset inflation because even if someone doesn't need the asset itself, well, they need somewhere to park their money.

It's the rest of us that have our money and dollars and everything else. You know, Obviously, I don't put every dollar I have into gold, but we do buy gold, right because that is something that has been a store of value for a really long time, and if the economy does crash, we have something of value. And I think there is something to be said about that gold price is the way, I don't know if you've watched this at all, the way they've been going up over the last.

too of looking at incomes across the country. In the US, they've they've started to put in these laws of higher minimum wages, which are a little insane. Where I think here in New Jersey, I think by twenty twenty seven we're supposed to be at like around twenty dollars an hour, which for an entry level job, businesses can't afford that. And what starts to happen is you push businesses then have to either use AI to replace people or go outside of the US in order hire people to actually

run a business. You know, I remember, I'll be forty in year. When I got my first job out of college, I was making like seven to twenty an hour or something like that, And it just shows you how inflated rates are now that that twenty bucks an hour really isn't worth much, and you start to have give business as a decision of do I hire more people or do I find ways to automate or not use them

because I can't afford them. So it's once again the middle to lower classes are the ones that suffer by inflation because businesses have to run and businesses have to try to figure out how to make a profit well.

or treated particularly well. But again, in times of inflation, and when you have this mass store of cheap labor, right, even if it's not morally correct, it's an understandable conclusion someone would reach. You can sort of map it out. And I think that it's another thing that sort of tilts the sort of the balance of power, if we could say that away from someone who's primary asset is their labor, right, someone who makes money through that, well,

they are competing against the world. The wages for which they are working are decreasing in value. And yeah, sure that hits everyone to a certain degree, right, things are more expensive, But if you are primarily you make money from money, you get hit less because your debt. And you know, I'm by no means the most financially literate person, but I'm sure you're aware just being around rich people that they use debt in ways that you and I cannot.

Debt is easier to repay, their money is in inflating assets, and so those are not necessarily problems for that class in the same way they are for you and I. Yes, the feature not a bug from that perspective.

that they want to pay. It's kind of the larger conglomerate multinationals that it doesn't it actually makes the money, right because they'll figure out how to go to China or you know, go to other places where their money

is worth more. So I think the struggle of it is it continues to hurt the minimum tower, middle to lower class a lot more because they're work can be replaced much easier, they're not as specialized, and that kind of you know, creates a problem that cascades and if you look at for a lot of us, we don't have the type of discretionary income we be able to trade in debt like people with a large amount of capital can do. They're kind of you know, the going

from paycheck to paycheck a lot of times. So it does hurt your regular person a lot more.

for it. But one of the things that I've been really interested in as someone who has been kind of digging through the Epstein files, and I problem, I promise this connects more than it might initially see.

And a particular figure I've been tracking through the Epstein files is Pete Mandelson, right, this kind of British version of a swamp creature. Right. And obviously you know there's

salacious stuff in there, you know, he's incriminating photos. But what's particularly interesting about this is what he was at actually up to with Epstein, the kind of business side, right, not the personal stuff, which was basically massive insider trading, specifically as regards you know, the sale of British gold reserves and you know the the Greek bailout right, where these massive events, which were incredibly destructive were basically treated

as sort of an opportunity to make some side cash. Right, those kind of massive course corrections in the world economy were effectively by the man making the decision used at an opportunity to enrich themselves personally. Yes, and I think that was sort of an interesting or sort of revelatory

bit of information. It's like, oh, Okay, So all the stuff about why we needed to do this, why it was a good idea to sell off, you know, these gold reserves or to bail out Grease, It's like, well, those may or may not have been true, but also you were making a lot of money from that decision. So I don't necessarily believe you when you tell me

this is why we had to do it. And so I'm curious, would you look at either Epstein or other kind of you know, major decisions like that, how much emphasis do you place on just the kind of naked fraud of it.

the Protestant churches come out. The one of the big changes that happens there is you have Pope Leo the Tenth, who's a Medici pope, and he comes up with this strategy because Saint Peter's has been unfinished for many years. It started under Julius the Second, but he wants to do this massive upgrade of it. So he has to come up with a way to make money. And what

does he do. He sells indulgences and that's what indulgences were, basically these tickets out of purgatory, and that was one of the major things that was a motivating factor for Martin Luther's ninety five Thesiss. So if you look at kind of the power behind power, these are often the things that we don't talk about and throughout history, a lot of times it's banking interests, a lot of times it's geopolitical interests of a particular person, not of a

particular country. So I think if you look at that, I'm always interested, well, what's the real story, right? Because they want you watching this hand. What's this hand doing? And I think that's the thing you really have to consider. Because even Mike Ben's has been talking about the Epstein network and kind of the monetary side of it a lot. You know, people hear about, you know, the sex scandals and everything else, and that's kind of I guess some

of it's a distraction. But at the same time, if some of it is actually a currency that Epstein used, right, because he could get you to do a deal because you wouldn't want your information out there, right, I think that's something to take a look at even.

his wife and all that stuff. You realized that these guys together are basically going on like jet setting, like sex tourism trips, and like, you know, okay, that's not really something I'm into, but like he was a party guy, right, And that's the phenomenal way to meet people and also ingratiate yourself when you're giving them access to something that is rare and difficult to access a little.

So I think it is really not that I think Epstein is a great guy, but like what he was doing is deviously ingenious, right, He's to kind of get access to the circles, you know, he's kind of like the guy bringing the drugs to the party, and he's he's able to get what he wants. And I think that's a really kind of interesting way to mess with world politics certainly.

obviously it has a great deal of artistic merit. You know, it is part of the Western canon for a reason. But you know he didn't just write that to write that, right, there was there was another way. Yeah, there's a.

banker lending money. Well, he actually bribes the seven prince electors, gets Charles the Fifth elected, and then every strange decision you don't understand in Charles the Fifth's life was something that was a benefit to Jakob Fuga, And I think that's the thing to understand when you look at power behind the power and you don't understand why a politician's doing what they're doing, you need to know who's behind them. And I think that's what it really comes down to,

like who put them there. One of my favorite writers you see since passed on is a guy named Jim Mars, And Jim Mars would say about George W. Bush when you look at kind of like how did you get an office? He said, In Texas, we have a saying called the post turtle, where somebody's trying to play a joke and they put a turtle on top of a fence post, and you say, like how'd they get there? He said, George Bush was a post turtle. You don't know how he got there, but you just want to

help the creature down. And I think when you look at politicians, a lot of times you get these people that aren't the best of us because they're more easily corruptible, that get in a position because they have people behind them that want to use them as the means to their own end.

like Chicago. And then you realize, oh, wait, she was friends with or she was sort of handpicked by the Obama DJ. Right, they basically dropped her in to you know, play some games they wanted to play. And once you know that, you're like, oh, this makes sense because on first viewing, you're like, who would vote for this woman. She seems to be, even by the standards of Chicago politicians,

not particularly bright, not particularly charismatic, and plainly corrupt. And then you have that bit of information and you're like, oh, okay again. It's that gap between how you were told the system works, the sort of schoolhouse Rock version, and how human nature interacts with these sort of you know, complicated systems.

would understand. And I think if you look at kind of understanding your world is you want to know the forces behind things because what you're seeing really is play acting, really following the money and really going.

creates something new. But it is really interesting to understand the power behind the power. I wrote a thread about a year ago trying to describe Obama kind of as the new Praetorian Prefect because that was the point in time when they were trying to annoy Kamala Harris's as kind of the next person, because it's like she came out of nowhere. Obama picked her. Okay, he said, she's fine, you know, now she can go on. But I think it's really interesting to understand, like who is the force

behind what you're actually seeing. And if you even look at the second Emperor Tiberia, this is where you're kind of like Epstein connection comes in. He's a very creepy dude. At a certain point in time, he doesn't really want to rule Rome anymore. He goes off to the island of Capri and he has prepubescent boys nakedly swimming in a pool with him. He would call his little fishes

and his praetorium prefects. To Janus is basically ruling Rome, and once Tiberius catches onto this, he has Jane is killed. But this is something that is really interesting when the power kind of peaks its head out.

Junto Magazine, who I've written for before, I know the guys who started it, have a really interesting series of tools on Junto dash Intelligence or intel rather, I'll link it in the description, But in it, not only do they have kind of a briefing right of what's happening, the kind of stories behind the stories, they also have a massive collection of different resources, whether that's like a scatterplot mixed with donations, FEC filings and so it's free, right.

I'm friends with these guys. They're not paying me to say it. It's a very interesting website to spend some time on because one, it breaks down information that in a way that someone who's not particularly intelligent can understand, which I appreciate. But also because you start to see those networks, you're like, oh, these two organizations that I was I would have assumed had nothing in common. Oh well, they both got two hundred and fifty thousand dollars from

the Koch Brothers. And regardless of your opinion on the Koch Brothers, you're like, oh, okay, that makes sense because when I see those two institutions saying the same things or pushing the same direction. Yes, you don't have to go tinfoil hat. You just look, oh well, they both got a fat check from the same guy, right, and you it sort of mass it sort of pulls the

mask back from politics in that way. And you know, it's one of those things that I think that framework is very helpful or analyzing politics, analyzing current events, because it's one of those things that it will drive you insane, very very easily. It's so tempting and on certain level satisfying to get pulled into the kind of headline game right the like XYZ is mad at this and mad at that. But that information isn't actually particularly useful to you.

Doesn't tell you how the world works, It doesn't inform your decisions in any meaningful way. But if you can step back, look at the system, look at how money and power flows. You can actually have a functional understanding of this system, because that functional understanding was not explained to you in Civics class.

are funding him. And a lot of the decisions that Caesar makes is because if I screw up here, I'm ruined. And if you look at that in history, a desperate man will make a lot of decisions that a brave man might not make. And I think if you understand the power behind things, you'll understand your history so much better than just kind of reading the history and taking it at face value, well one hundred percent.

and ten ninety nine Bacon is not making it any easier. Also, you can check out our sponsor, Axios Remote fitness and coaching flues.