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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by Tulyar15 I think you're a bit wide of the mark here about the Roman Empire. It was not on the brink of an industrial revolution in the 5th century; if anything it had been in decline for the last century. The Germanictribes who conquered the Roman empire in Western Europe in the 5th century AD (and gave their names to the countries we now now, eg Angle-land = England, Franks - France) were able to do so because they had better swords than the Romans! Equally important though, they also had better ploughs. This meant the Angles and Saxons were able to farm areas of Britain that the Romano-Briton had not. Consequently the population of Britain increased in the 5th and 6th centuries whereas it had declined in the 4th. In due course the Vikings came too - they also had better swords (and ploughs!). Meanwhile in the Arab world lots of developments took place in sciences (astronomy, algebra and chemistry all come from Arabic words!). Even before the Crusades these sevelopments were starting to filter thru to the Christian world. As for the myth that people thought the world was flat - well the 13 th century English scholar Francis Bacon describes how to calculate the curvature of the Earth (and he refers to how a 3rd century AD Greek mathematician Ptolemy did so). [/quote]In the book mentioned early, he refers to this need to conquer as the Roman Disease, but you have to admit, Rome could not have expanded a vast empire like she did, had she not first formed the Roman Republic. Merely an analogy between the two countries, admittedly the idea of an industrial revolution, is just speculation on the part of the author. The ancient Greeks and the Romans were surprisingly advanced, they had water clocks, which told time, and may have figured the position of the stars, accurate odometers for roads, and other advanced mechanisms, like flame throwers. Things that wouldn’t be rediscovered for nearly 2000 years. Also the Catholic church persecuted anyone who said the world was flat, in fact it took until 1923, to admit that Aristotle was wrong, and the earth was round. But, I am getting farther of topic than a bloodhound with a bad cold... [quote]QUOTE: Getting back to economics and transport, if you go back to Adam Smith, you will find that he accepts that roads (and hence transport infrastructure) are a legitimate responsibility of government. As for the issue of susbidy, it has been shown time and time again that unprofiitable does not mean uneconomic as non users benefit from rail services. Then of course there;s also the issue of climate change which even President Bush is finallly waking up to.[/quote] I think this is a very interesting point, would you care to expand on it?
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