Good writeup from
@Winston, I agree.
@Train,
Empires often become geopolitically semi-fluid if they get big enough. The power center in the Roman Empire shifted eventually from Rome to Constantinople, and Rome, the founding city and core of the empire for a very long time, eventually became relegated to being more or less just another city in the empire, and was eventually give up altogether as no longer worth maintaining (the descendants still living there where of those who FOUNDED the empire, but somehow the empire they founded had over time completely abandoned them and moved its seat elsewhere... weird to think about, right?). Similar things have happened in China (where the capital has moved many times) -- just think about the Mongol Empire, founded by Mongolians in Mongolia, but eventually ruled by Kublai Khan from Beijing with mostly Chinese advisors.
What we have in the West right now with the power really resting in the hands of massive, privately-owned banks and massive, largely-privately-owned corporations (they're on the stock exchanges, but much of the big corporations' stock is owned by Black Rock and Vanguard, either directly, or through thousands of shell companies), that are somewhat borderless.... many of the top people have wealth, property, and even citizenships spread around among several countries. You still need population bases and militaries (tied to specific countries) to enforce order or acquire new resources or coerce parties who aren't playing ball.
The relationship of the citizens of states within an empire to the empire itself is often complicated. Using the US as an example, Americans enjoyed unprecedented prosperity after WWII, when Europe's manufacturing capacity was destroyed and the US got to make everything and export it everywhere and funnel massive wealth into itself, with banks and corporations taking their cuts. Then around 1980 or so, with so much wealth in the US, Americans were too expensive to have profitably doing labor to export, so you saw a dynamic shift, where everything became about the same big banks and corporations building and funding projects to manufacture overseas and import that into the US, with, again, the banks and corporations taking their cuts as the wealth that had flowed into middle America flowed back out into the rest of the world again. So you could say middle America benefited from the empire for decades, and now it has been getting hollowed out by the same empire. People in the cities, closer to the banks and corporations or working or them directly, tend to do better than other people -- they're on the banks and corporations' payrolls (not coincidentally, people in cities tend to support imperial ambitions and causes, while people in the countryside no longer do).
From my reading of history, this seems to be a pretty normal part of the cycle too: during the early periods, when the empire is drawing in wealth from outside itself, the rising tide lifts all boats. Later on, when external wealth runs dry, it turns to extracting wealth from its own people, starting with those farthest from the city centers, since they have less direct access to the decision makers, little ability to affect anything at a civilization scale, and effects on them stay invisible longer to the folks making and enforcing the rules.
Maybe think of cities as the nerve centers of an empire... when the empire starts running out of fuel, it consumes the rest of the body first, trying to keep the nerves/brain alive. If one part of the body is healthier than the others, it will shift operations over to there. Thus the Roman empire shifted operations from Rome to Constantinople (better resources, better defenses, and much better trading position); the Mongol Empire moved from Mongolia (poor in resources and brain power) to Beijing (rich in both); the Western banking empire shifted operations from the UK to the US; etc.
If you think about an empire as sort of a system / control grid unto itself, it becomes a little easier to see how it can move itself gradually from one location to another. It's never immediate though -- usually there is a gradual transition where the two chunks are roughly equally powerful, until eventually the new seat supersedes the old one, and eventually starts bossing around the original seat of the empire.
@climbingup,
Only if we can discuss it at a high level.
We have Americans, Russians, and Ukrainians in our community.
I don't want any jingoism, media-zombie demonization of anyone, or flag-swinging rallying cries. If we get any partisan nonsense, I will lock the thread.
Chase
www.skilledseducer.com
