Is Every Civilization Doomed to Fail? - Gregory Aldrete

[Warpy]

2. Hey, sranger, LTNS

Polybius was a product of his time and missed a few things that we now know about, like the different types of external and internal stresses that can provoke systems that have worked fairly well into systems that don't work. External stresses can be geologic, climatic, or human caused. Internal stresses can be disease, poor harvest, or an entrenched political class that has decided to sell out to the highest bidders.

He was also too early to have witnessed the 1500 years or so that Byzantium managed to exist, at least as a powerful city state. They had moved back and forth through all the states of the Anacyclosis several times,

In any case, Polybius's theory has held up from culture to culture starting in antiquity. He deserves great respect for that even as we look to causes beyond simple human nature and ask ourselves if they can ever be avoided.