Decadent Societies

This is a review of Decadent Societies by Robert Adams. Overall, I liked the book, but cannot give it 5 stars. The writing style left something to be desired in many spots - lots of very long and convoluted sentences with obscure words, including untranslated and uncommon foreign phrases. As to the information in the book, there was quite a bit there that I had never heard before or had not seen all in one place. The Byzantines seem quite "redeemable" from Adams' point of view. I had no idea that the Old Regime in France had a tax structure that horrendous to all but the top dogs - the only wonder is that the regime did not collapse sooner. Similarly for the Romanovs in Russia. The are also interesting points made about (western) Rome and the British Empire. It seems that the main issues come down to bad leaders, tax exhaustion, social inequity, excessive regulation and complacency (of the ruling class at least). Adams does spend a bit of time discussing what decadence means generally and how this all might apply to us today in light of the history previously mentioned. This is not as easy a thing as might be expected. The last part of the book makes some very interesting points on how things stand in the US. At first, it seemed that Adams was going to beat up on conservatives only, but then he really did a number on liberals and their non-judgmentalism (especially in its more extreme forms) and other foibles. He wrote this in the early 1980's, but it is still/more relevant to our current situation if you ask me. I nearly laughed out loud a few times! Look past the sometimes not so good writing and focus on the points being made. There is lots here worth considering.