BY DR. JOSE MA. EDUARDO P. DACUDAO
SINCE its peripheries tend to fall in production, once such a state stops expanding, it can support its economy usually only by engaging in economic imperialism in countries outside its borders, or by direct invasion, colonialism, and plunder of new territories.
In federal countries, the local states, given the incentive of retaining most of the fruits of their economic activity, usually maintain high productivity, so that the entire system’s economy is maintained.
Augustus Caesar and the succeeding Roman Emperors kept on expanding the Empire that succeeded the Roman Republic. Sooner or later, given the Empire’s centralized nature, it had to collapse. By the beginning of the 4th century, dictatorial centralized Rome had extreme difficulty in paying its army, which was its main instrument of control. Eventually, the army had to pull out off the provinces, which were quickly invaded by tribal nomadic peoples (called by the highly cultured Romans as ‘barbarians’).
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395 AD – At the death of Emperor Theodosius I, the Roman Empire was permanently divided into a western and eastern portion.
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476 AD – Germanic troops in Italy rebelled and deposed of the western Empire’s last Roman ruler Romulus Augustulus, replacing him with the Goth Odoacer.
Thus the Roman Empire ended.
Rome gave us a model for Representative Democracy. We adhere to democratic ideals because of Rome’s example. Much of our laws have their origins in Rome’s legal codes. The Americans copied Rome’s Republican system, and that system was imposed on us.
What did Rome miss, that the Americans did not?
The Americans instituted the first modern Federation. Romans seemed not to have thought of it at all.
In the American Federation, there are no provinces. Every state is legally co equal. There is no primate city such as MetroManila that acts as a dictator to the provinces the way Rome the City did.
The autonomous states in a Federation such as the USA also have all the incentive to produce goods and services for the reason that they retain most of their taxes. Plunder by a primate city is checked.
If the Roman Republic had developed the Federal system, who knows what would have happened. There would have been no power concentration in Rome that could have attracted power grabbers, because power would have been devolved to local states typical of Federations. There would have been no Empire; instead there would have been a politically stable, economically productive Roman Federation that treated its diverse ethnic peoples with respect.
Federations are the most stable polities in history. Perhaps such a Roman Federation would be in existence until today, and courageous statesmen such as Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus would still admired as the avatar of democratic ideals and self-sacrifice./PN
