No empire can ever conquer the entire world without losing its own national identity in the process.
If such an empire succeeds in its territorial ambitions, it is forced to assimilate the peoples it conquers. If such an empire fails in its territorial ambitions, it is left pregnable and defenseless. It might even be punished by competing empires for its previous success.
One of the great paradoxes of imperialism is that the exorbitant cost thereof can only be borne intergenerationally through compulsory taxation and fractional reserve banking, which had its historical equivalent in practices like coin clipping. A basic law of economics is that you get less of anything you tax. As a result, the intergenerational national debt incurred to finance the growth of empire puts downward pressure on domestic birthrates.
In other words, the more your empire expands, the fewer new subjects or citizens you will produce per existing subject or citizen. The larger the empire, the more its population growth will depend on inbound immigration and the further expansion of borders.
When such an empire collapses, most of the territory under its control is lost, but the disparate peoples it imported remain…
…which is why the left is celebrating the death of Queen Elizabeth as the symbolic end of Britain as a white country.
This is EPISODE 920 of So to Speak w/ Jared Howe!
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