The fall of the Roman Empire was frightful.The growth of the Empire had always been based on conquest, and the Empire's economy had been fuelled by the exploitation of new colonies. When the Empire ran out of putative victims, its economy ceased to make sense, particularly as the mere maintenance of the Empire, with its garrisons and its bureaucrats, was so expensive. From the beginning of the second century AD, the State had to raise higher and higher taxes to maintain itself and its armies.
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ID
Cards = Taxation revenue.
Massive programs of censuses had to track and chase every individual for taxation. ID cards and a register of all people and land where brought in to trace people and enforce harsher and harsher taxes.
301 AD State expands further
Immense unproductive employment cripples output and leads to even larger inflation. Prices and Incomes policy
Lanctantius wrote that the edict was a complete failure, that 'there was a great bloodshed arising from its small and unimportant details' and that more people were engaged in raising and spending taxes than in paying them.
What is a prices and incomes policy?
A prices and incomes policy is a attempt by the state to fix prices (eg; the price of bread) and relate it to a persons income, which is also set by the state.
This is an attempt by the state to control the economy, when money inflation is very high (as the state is printing money!)
The state, not merit, not how well people do or how productive they are, decides what people's incomes should be in a range of occupations, and what prices should be set for a range of goods and services.
Obvoiusly the state and its banks are the ones who print the money and cause the inflation in the first place, so such a policy is an attempt to get people to work for often negative returns
Everything we would associate with the roman empire, laws, science, techonology, libraries, democracy carries on collapsing for a long while afterwards.
The feudal dark ages followed for a thousand years.
The collapse of peoples freedoms, with ID Cards and taxation into serfdom and a caste system took only 40 years.
To ensure that the peasants continued to work under an economy which had lost its free-market incentives, Constantine promulgated a law in AD 332 which bound all coloni to the state as serfs. To reinforce state control on all aspects of the economy, the city trade guilds or collegia imposed compulsory, hereditary trades on all. An edict Of AD 390 forbade children of the workers in the mint to marry outside their caste or trade.
The towns shrank, and the population condensed on the patriarchal, self-sufficient, isolated estates that adumbrate the medieval European villages.
Indeed, the word 'village' derives from the Latin villa, indicating that the feudal villages originated as the private estates of Roman magnates.
The Roman government's expanded its commitments from 270AD, its welfare liabilties and spending exceeded its income from taxation, and thus created a collapse in the money economy during 270-300AD, with massive hyperinflation. This undermined the artisan (skilled worker) economy, and finally the state which relies on output from the economy, tries to interfere to force people to work for a negative real economic return through a prices and incomes policy, while it carries on spending.
This attempt at controlling inflation by the government failed and a barter system took its place. A move to a barter/land based/Landlord-Renter economy means that output is based around the land, and people cannot practice highly skilled trades. Innovation and finance depend on a sound money economy to save and form reliable contracts to make productivity gains.
Life in Rome moved rapidly from a money economy with
technology, artisans and
science, to a land based (barter) economy, with a feudal
structure and caste system. Within 40 years every citizen
was registered with the government. In fact citizens were not allowed to move from
their
lands, or occupations as it messed up the 'database' (register)
and created additional expense for the government.
In the 1970's and 1980's, there were
similar attempts at extending the control of the state over people's
output and the
economy. Spending exceeded its income,
and inflation reached 17%. At its peak many people thought
there would be a collapse in the money economy.
Whenever anything, any state, firm, civilisation, even biological organism spends more than it takes in ; That is; its liabilities are greater than its income, it must either
(a) reduce its liabilties/spending, or, (b) increase its income through growth.
The nature of the
income is irrelevent.
It does not matter if the rise in income is from conquest
and slavery, or from technological innovation, or from
consuming more resources.
In the case of an organism, like your body, if you spend more energy than you take in, your body will contract to adapt to the new situation. It will first burn its energy store, then start consuming its own functional components.
In the case of a state, when its liabilities and spending exceed its income, there is a process of inflation, as the state prints money to meet its liabilities and commitments, and consumes the saved income of its population.
Then, (as for all practical purposes its population is its income), it nearly always attempts to control the population and thier output, and thus raise its share of income.
Prices and incomes policies, ID cards and registers, both are very powerful means of extensions of government control, which have had terrible consequences for the indivdual's freedoms and liberties. There could have been a similar collapse in the money economy through inflationary spending commitments, a massive economic shock and a move to a landlord based economy in our recent history as inflation raged.
After the register and ID card system was introduced in the Roman empire to control its citizens, Europe took over 1500 years to start to break free from the barter/landlord economy and into the Renaissance and a money/artisan economy again.