Mors tua vita mea. Tacitus gave an entirely moralistic explanation…
Why so much debt had accumulated by the end of the Roman Empire we do not know exactly, because economic facts are not a science.
Tacitus gave an entirely moralistic explanation : decadence of customs, less and less valiant military, disrespect for the mos maiorum.
Contemporary historiography, influenced by more modern doctrines but certainly not entirely relevant to those times, has begun to speak of general economic and social reasons.
Even today, we do not know exactly why so much debt was accumulated by the State, by families, by companies.
But there is certainly a clear “decadence of habits”, not to be understood in a moral sense.
Today, compared to the previous generation (and especially compared to two generations ago), there are many, too many people who do not want to study, who do not want to work.
So they steal, they cheat, they corrupt.
This is the other cultural face of social and economic decadence.
The crisis that more or less envelops the entire Western world is not only the child of the misdeeds of bankers, central banks and politicians.
But above all it is the result of a common thought.
A perverse ideology, the child of the “ethical” state, that is, a state that is superior to the individual and must think of the good of the individual.
In this way, many have no incentive to work seriously at all, because they have no self-interest.
And this is why very often totally incompetent people make careers, while those who are really prepared often have problems even finding a job.
