The fall of the Western Roman Empire was a real loss of state capacity, not merely a change of management, and the evidence for that loss is ample.

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• A heavily centralised state is the most fragile kind: when Rome’s centre failed, its successors were left without the resources or administration to do what it had done. BDBret Devereaux28 Jan 2022
• Urban life in the West did not merely change after Rome, it practically vanished, and had to be built again from scratch centuries later. BDBret Devereaux28 Jan 2022
• There is no counsel in the continental world on when to stop taking territory, which is why Chinese and Russian empires keep overextending and imploding. SPSarah Paine9 Jun 2026
• A mass death does not by itself produce a boom afterwards: expecting a pandemic to renew an economy on its own misreads what followed the Black Death. APAda Palmer4 Jun 2020
• Post-unification Germany has made many policy mistakes and lost much former leadership, and much pessimism about it seems justified. TCTyler Cowen28 Sept 2026

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