Economics of History

            In today's economy we are faced with fears of losing our jobs, inflation, stock market crashes, and war. These fears feed decisions we make every day with our careers, what we buy, and how we live. Over a thousand years ago, the same things were going on. We just have more electronics than the Romans.

            The world was full of anger, violence and conquest. The Romans specifically were masters of those three traits. Spanning an empire across Europe and towards the middle east, they destroyed many civilizations in an attempt to spread and preserve their own. But humanity has the ability to create and destroy everywhere. Where did the Romans go wrong?

           Romans spent most of their time taxing their provinces, pulling all of the wealth of the world back to Italy, and looking for battles where they could capture more land and more treasure. Their economy was driven on trade and conquest, mostly the latter of those two values. However, after conquest, they did not massacre every people they defeated, but instead let them live. Over time, those peoples grew again, larger than before, and the Romans could no longer afford to defend their borders.  One of the major problems was the people were no longer happy with their government. They chafed at the laws meant to guide them and hold them in place. 

             The Roman Empire collapsed, and with it the invading Germanic tribes managed to penetrate almost to the city of Rome itself. A great age was lost, and our world was plunged into darkness. 

Will that tragedy happen again?

Economics

The problem with money is it SUCKS. Right now as a country we're struggling with our economy, but we're not alone. Europe is struggling, Greece in serious trouble specifically. I was told not long ago that if we were asked to pay the amount of money we as Americans would be responsible for if we had to pay off the country's debt tomorrow, it would be roughly over $700,000.

That's a lot of money. Seriously. I don't know if i'll see that amount ever in one year, there's a small percentage of Americans who do. Yeah we see the millionaires and billionaires on tv talking about how amazing their lives are, and how they got there, but I can't say everyone is going to be wealthy. I can say we all want to try.

Rule One: 1've learned you have to spend money to make money. Right now our stock market isn't doing well because people are afraid to spend money. They're "saving" which is causing other people's jobs to falter or employees to be nervous when businesses aren't doing as well.

Rule Two: I've learned that everyone likes something that looks pretty, but a loyal customer will buy something that works consistently. Selling a customer a product that will break will change that customer's mind immediately regardless of the look of the product.

Rule Three: Innovation. Look at Steve Jobs with Apple products. Change your thinking, change the world.

This actually applies to the music industry. Musicians get signed to the record label, the record companies pay so much for the recording studio, the advertisements on the music, the radio stations. But what if one small change could save money and put it back into the pocket of the musician?

Answer: Learn the technology you have and use it as much as you can. Getting discovered in a country where everyone wants to be discovered makes for a lot of people only paying attention to what is given to them. So give them something to look at, and people will start paying attention. It applies to most every business.

Just a lot of food for thought. Have a nice week