So To Speak W/ Jared Howe

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 o