Real empires go for much longer.
The US will not be more than a shitstain in the pages of history.
this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2025
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It's funny to imagine our descendants in whatever America becomes defending the empire by saying it wasn't America's fault it collapsed, it was Israel's; hopefully though one of the things they admit is it's also because of culture war idiocy and other arbitrary, fabricated social divisions; EDIT: Also the empire's insistence on capitalism and wasting the talents contained in around 350 million people; China capitalizing (haaaaa, see what I did there?) on their population with excellent access to really good education and health services has turned their one billion people into its most powerful asset, meanwhile in America humans are also an asset, but in the form of slavery (wage slavery and actual slavery).
The 250 year thing is basically completely made up BS
Indeed. The empire you left to make your own with blackjack and hookers was nearly double that. If you want to be facetious too, then probably triple.
250 years is just a rough estimate. As an expert, what's the number you've arrived at?
Three
It's straight up not a thing, there is no number of years which tends to correspond to the life expectancy of empires
We're talking about the average life expectancy of an empire. It's a fairly straightforward calculation if one has all the data ready.
Sure, we could also work out the average life expectancy of a mammal.
But, would it really be useful, predictive or meaningful, given the variety and variability of the conditions the data emerges from?
It's not really that straightforward though, is it? Firstly is it a mean or a median average? What counts as an empire? When do we date the rise and fall of specific empires? These are not questions with straightforwards answers. Would Hitler's Germany count as an empire? How many Roman empires were there?
It being an average number, pulled out of it's context, doesn't necessarily mean anything beyond just the average
Regardless, that is the number we are interested in.
I hate to be nitpicky about a meme but I love to be nitpicky. This claims is based on bullshit statistics that the author made up or bent to his will. The Ottoman empire alone shows this to be incorrect but Rome too stands out. Besides, what would an arbitrary amount of time have to do with the collapse of complex economic systems. Its bullshit idealism and I hate seeing it.
I am begging the US to collapse though
Average. It's just an average. I haven't verified whether the number is accurate (and often it's probably debatable what qualifies as an empire and at what point it fell) but some empires lasting way longer does nothing to disprove 250 years being the average lifespan.
The second part of what you said is still entirely correct of course, that number has no real predictive capabilities for the collapse of the USA.
It isn't though, I have seen the original source of this claim and its bs. The author just picks and chooses when empires begin and end so that it fits their claim. I would concede the point if it were ever actually an average.
It's not just Glubb. The Changing World Order by Ray Dalio also arrives at the 250 year number.
Cliodynamics and Structural-Demographic Theory suggests cycles of 200-300 years as well.
I want to believe
Thankfully, nothing lasts forever.
Made-up bullshit
Pic unrelated
(I'm /j)
When someone says "death to America", they aren't saying "death to Americans". A government/state is a regime, not all it's people, despite how much as nationalists love to stoke that sort of patriotism. So I have no problem with the slogan, I call for the fall of the US imperialist regime.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_to_America#Interpretation_and_meaning - has some confirmations from various Iranian politicians and a travel writer.
OK, so what's the plan for bringing death to the USA without killing a single American?
Usians: "hate the government not the people"
Usians when hearing someone else say "hate the government not the people" about USA: "we're gonna kill you"
Of course this is incorrect, go look up an empire and see.
... Roman empire got over 1000 years, Ottoman's got 623 years, Mongol empire only got 162.
...and Italy, Turkey, and Mongolia are still around, they're just not empires anymore. They're Nations.
“Average”
Mean, median, or mode?
Yes.
I take preference to the “Russian method” cut off the high and low score and mean them.
You do know what average means in this context, right? You divide the sum of the empires’ years by the number of empires.
The actual paper the number comes from (Fate of Empires by John Glubb) is complete bullshit, though. Even the cherry-picked examples it uses, which are limited strictly to the surroundings of the Mediterranean, don't use any kind of consistent criteria for when an empire starts or ends. He tries to count "Alexander (and his successors)" as one coherent entity and then picks an end year in which all of them had either already collapsed long ago or would not do so for many decades to come. He cuts centuries off of the Roman Empire's lifespan by just saying that the empire was unstable and getting invaded a lot (and ignoring the Eastern Empire entirely). HIs reckoning of the "Arab Empire" includes three separate caliphates, and the end date isn't even the actual end of any of them
Other than that, no, it does not attempt to find an average in the sense of a mean lifespan. It actually does argue that 250 years for an empire can be compared to a human living 70 years.
Then it wouldn't be reasonable to assume the US would collapse right at the average (mean) though. If the majority of empires collapsed at the same age (the mode) it would be different, but the mean tells you very little about when any particular empire will collapse.
The mean number of children per household is a decimal, that doesn't mean any households have partial children.
But if the average hides a huge range of datapoints, it becomes less useful.
these where the first versions of empire that existed on this world and full of equal parts flaws and dumb luck as a result
the modern hybrid euro-colonial versions also have flaws and luck on their side, but, more importantly, they learn and adapt from each other and, as a result, have a pattern that we can now identify.
Despite all the and suffering it has caused and will cause, Trump admin has at least handed us the beginning of a breakdown in US hegemony as trust has eroded with other nations who are all busy pivoting away from it right now.
Unfortunately upon breaking the gridlock, other nations are scrambling to maintain the status quo rather than leaning into the future by redoubling commitments to address human and climate crises before it’s too late for the humans.
It's not correct, but would be nice.
Does this picture originate from a comic?