Ponderings about ancient Rome

This is Joseph.

So I love analogies with ancient Rome and I love the works of Bret Devereaux, an academic famous for making it clear to me how shallow my understanding of ancient history really is. But I worry about this particular quote:

I think that this must apply to Augustus (also named Julius Caesar because, of course he is) as the original Gaius Julius Caesar was a dictator but did not reign in any real sense of the word. At the time I suspect Augustus would have quibbled with the word "reign" but in retrospect I think we can allow that it was probably an accurate description of his power and influence. 

But what I think Augustus was worried about was an underproduction of elites and not a general decline in population. Both population and population density increase between 14 CE and 164 CE. Rome had a higher fertility than China, which is not evidence of a serious problem. 

In the modern west, I think we have the opposite problem in elite overproduction. That sounds like a oxymoron, but if elite training takes decades and there are insufficient opportunities at the end, people sacrifice decades of income and life for poor outcomes. Look at the issues with academics in the arts. It is a big source of discontent to have people train for ~10 years to end up needing to find a new life plan or to be trapped as adjuncts. 

There are defenders of this system, although notably the defender is from the UK where PhDs are 3 years long and so the opportunity cost is a lot less. It'd also be different if PhD was a job, itself, and not extensive and rigorous training for a job. I will also point out that most people doing a PhD work very hard -- so it is extensive effort for a goal and not necessarily a time of leisure that would make the low salary seem like a good plan. Nor is there a general sense that elites have few children in the US (Elon Musk famously has ten. Donald Trump has five. Joe Biden has four. Bill Gates has three. I don't see a fertility crisis among the elite. 

So I guess I am not certain of the truth, but I do think that shallow analogies are potentially dangerous and could push us in the wrong direction. The fertility challenge for the modern world is the middle class, and I would look squarely at long training phases, expensive housing, and limited childcare if I wanted to confront that. 

Oh, and spoiler alert. Augustus was a long, long way from the fall of Rome. Augustus dies in 14 CE, The Western Roman Empire goes through a golden age for a couple of centuries and lasts until 476 CE. The final fall of the actual Roman Empire takes place in 1453 CE, not precisely an indication of imminent disaster during the time of Augustus.