Cicero and Public Debt: A fake quote, but it gives one to think. (Repost)

 

 A statement allegedly (1) by Marcus Tullius Cicero (January 106 – 7 December 43 BC):

The Budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, the public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed, lest Rome will become bankrupt. People must again learn to work instead of living on public assistance.

Cicero lived in an empire, which was rich enough to pay the costs of military occupation and administration of the (ever longer) supply chains that sustained Rome. Whoever put these words in his mouth thought as if Cicero lived in a subsistence economy, one that's barely able to meet the needs of its citizens. They were wrong. (2)

We live in an economy capable of even greater over-production than Rome. We make too much, but we still think about our economy as if we can't make enough (3). That causes a lot of stupid decisions, whose effects are now becoming clear: Too many people (4), too much production and consumption, too much exploitation of natural resources (5), etc, all of which are the causes of the climate crisis, the ecological crisis, and the many sociopolitical crises around the world. The only question left is which crisis will destroy our way of life first, and just how bad it will be. If we don't learn to think differently, we won't adapt fast enough to survive in anything remotely like our present way of life (6).

Having made such gloomy pronouncements, I still wish you a good day. :-)

Footnotes:
1. From https://checkyourfact.com/2019/08/19/fact-check-cicero-quote-budgeting-treasury-public-debt/
“The quote does not appear in any of Cicero’s surviving works. It actually comes from best-selling author Taylor Caldwell’s novel about ancient Rome.” Note the phrase "assistance to foreign lands": Rome never did this. And the phrase "public assistance" is American, not Roman.

2. Any empire capable of maintaining itself for any length of time clearly was capable of producing far more than its citizens needed. Rome had about three times as many “statutory holidays” as we have, thus a much shorter working year. Even slaves got some time off on those holidays.

3. The USA spends over a trillion dollars per year on its armed forces and the wars they fight.

4. In my lifetime, the Earth’s human population has grown more than fourfold. 1940: about 2 billion.  2021: over 8 billion.

5. It’s likely that there won’t be enough food to feed all human beings sometime between 2025 and 2050.

6. Just how different will it be? Best case: Something like a medieval life-style for the survivors, with small farms producing enough food to sustain the necessary artisans and traders. Worst case: Back to the stone age, with perhaps some of the survivors being able to scavenge useful materials like iron from the ruins. That is, if humans don't go extinct.