Why did Rome fall? And please do not give the argument of barbarian encroachment...

Why did Rome fall? And please do not give the argument of barbarian encroachment, barbarians were already heavily involved with the Roman army for over 200 years before the two sackings that occurred in the 5th century.

They got bored being #1 and decide to give someone else a chance.

They deeply regret doing this

They murdered the son of god

MORAL DECAY
HIGH IMMIGRATION
INFLATION OF CURRENCY
The Romans put themselves under the guillotine, the barbs just tripped over the lever.

I forgot
HIGH TAXES!

Christendom
Byzantium was not Rome
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

t. Gibbon

Constant civil war.

Everything happened, and even then it still hobbled on for 1000 years, because of how excellent the Romans were as a civilization.

It was not remarkable that it fell, but that it took so much to fell them. Such were the Romans.

Barbarian encroachment obviously. The entire Western Roman Empire was a patchwork of Germanic kingdoms by 500. How could it be anything else?

How was Marius able to repel a gigantic horde of Barbarians and not the whole of the Roman Empire?

Barbarians had become a mainstay in the Roman army a hundred years before the sacking of Rome by Alaric. If anything it was the Empire being too big and the population being too large that lead to the downfall.

>Barbarians had become a mainstay in the Roman army a hundred years before the sacking of Rome by Alaric.
Yes, so? That doesn't mean "barbarians" weren't the main cause. Also, WRE didn't end at Alaric and was already kinda doomed before him. Of course there were other reasons but the root cause for almost everything was the barbarian invasions.

The main problem was allowing the Barbarians to retain their barbarian identity.

If the Romans had assimilated them like they had the Gauls, the Iberians, and the everyone else, it would have been fine.

It's not even like the Goths wanted to destroy the Roman Empire, they just wanted to be part of it, and it sort of collapsed in on itself.

It doesn't help that the East and the West never really formalized once they were together.

Then you have these retarded Germans trying to run an empire they don't understand, and it devolves into petty kingdoms.

The main question is why did the West fall into such irrelevancy?

The Romans had an effective assimilation policy with new barbarian tribes, but more often than not they chose not go through with it. The war with the Visigoths was entirely the fault of the Romans, they could have handled that situation much better.

We could talk about the economics of a plunder/enslave society or we can be retards like and and spout off false meme history proven false by just about every academic

>It's a sole explanation of the fall of the Western Roman Empire Episode

Literally as bad as Climate Change Fags

Rome never fully recovered from the crisis of the third century and the western empire was economically unviable, it just took a little push in the form of sustained barbarian invasion for it to crumble.

>hurddur muh materialism
>hurrdurr look at me ma I'm trying to make history into an hard science where historical outcomes don't need to be analyzed on a case by case basis

I'm sorry if the answer isn't edgy enough for you or seems to simple. I'm sorry if you can't stop conflating it with modern day politics. But discounting barbarian invasions entirely is just flat out wrong, and economy wasn't the primary reason why Rome fell. The direct downward spiral started after the Crisis of the Third century, which was kickstarted by the death of an emperor and the ensuing civil wars.

The point about assimilation IS NOT AT ALL WRONG. Rome had a program of assimilation for incorporated barbarian tribes, but they chose not to use it often and instead left the tribes as united and armed.

Climate change did bring with it large amounts of immigration, but the very structure of the Roman government and politics had descended into chaos by that time. Diocletian's reforms really highlighted the vast differences between the economic strength of the East, which could maintain a positive cash flow due to trade and the West, which while having the most problems with barbarians and political infighting between imperial claimants, had already declined into feudal manorialism where self sustaining estates owned by the rich avoided taxes leading to the government to raise taxes on the middle so high that they went into poverty. The fall of the west was really an period of economic deflation where the east saw to point in saving a sinking ship

You're not quoting my post. I never said that. Fuck off.

>can't maintain a working assimilation program without proper control over the border

>can't maintain control of the border without an efficient military force

>can't maintain an efficient military force without the funds to pay for it

>can't raise revenue without a functioning government

>can't maintain a functioning government if political power is gained by constant civil war against political rivals

Plebs can't understand that it always comes down to the economy. If that fails then everything else fails

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS GONE MAD

THE BANKERS
THE BONUSES

They couldn't, with the integrity of the Roman establishment as hopelessly compromised, keeping corruption and incompetence out of international affairs was impossible.

Rome did try, but Rome was old, siick and tired.

I've stopped writing 5 post-long arguments since nobody reads them.

>HIGH IMMIGRATION
Explain, I can't quite wrap my head around that one

gays and degeneracy obviously :^)

underrated post

...

West Rome fell for a multitude of reasons:

>the division of East and West
The west was proper fucked over territory wise from the split, with the only profitable regions they had being Italy and North Africa, and Iberia, Gaul, and Britannia being comparatively rural, and ate up more money than they produced. Losing the richest provinces in Greece, Anatolia, the Levant, and Egypt crippled West Rome from the very start, but also in turn made the Eastern Empire that much more stable.

>subcontracting the armies to the Germans
This took 200 years to really bit them as OP said, but hiring soldiers that are loyal to Gold and not the state is generally a bad idea. Once West Rome started going bankrupt and the gold stopped flowing to the German mercenary bands, their loyalty turned real quick.

>corruption and incompetence at the highest level
the Roman elites were mostly interested in keeping their lavish lifestyle upheld for as long as possible, and only dealt with the glaring problems of the Western Empire in a state of confused panic. Their inability to effectively respond to problems with legions that have no turned against them spelled disaster.

the Eastern Empire largely avoided all these problems, mostly because their provinces provided the coin necessary to maintain professional legions rather than hire mercenaries loyal to gold and not the idea of the state.

Econfag here.
Stop being so naive. The economy itself is a function of the nature of the people interacting to make that system along with the resources available. Reform the people and you reform the economy, etc.
Of course economic factors are important, but you're the sort to say 'if the dinosaurs had had a stable dinoeconomy they would have survived that meteor!'

t. American