Death by Admin

On the strange behaviour of empires as they near their expiration date.

Empires rarely end in a single moment.
There’s no dramatic curtain drop. No booming announcement. Just a slow, quiet drift from function to theatre, a system still going through the motions, long after anyone remembers why.

Near the end, things don’t collapse so much as unravel.
You’ll still see parliaments, palaces, ministries, and news briefings. But the decisions they churn out begin to feel oddly performative. Like the people running things are no longer addressing the problems, just responding to the performance of a problem being raised.

History has seen this before. Rome didn’t vanish, it evolved into bureaucracy and spectacle. The Ottoman Empire spent its final decades stamping things and filing them. And the old British Empire, long after its height, found comfort in grand rituals that made everything look intact, even as power slipped away.

It’s easy to forget that most imperial decline looks very official.

You’ll know something is off when the laws get stranger, not smarter. When the government responds to crisis with acronyms. When a new taskforce is launched to investigate why the last taskforce didn’t task-force hard enough.

It all still works, technically.
There are press conferences. Speeches. Schedules.
There’s a Minister for Something, who appears at a lectern, saying the right words in the right order. But nothing moves. The machine is on, but it’s no longer connected to the thing it was built to serve.

In place of solutions, we get performances.
A grand initiative to “level up.” A campaign to “restore trust.”
A well-funded website that doesn’t load.

And beneath it all: calm.

No revolution. No mass panic. Just a low hum of national indifference. People scroll past headlines with the same energy they reserve for junk mail. They’ve seen the story before, the scandal, the denial, the report, the apology, the promotion.

They’re not angry anymore. They’re tired.

Not because they think the system is rigged.
But because they suspect it no longer matters if it is.

Of course, the pageantry continues. The rituals of state are upheld with increasing precision, even as the meaning behind them dissolves. A perfectly timed photo op in front of a hospital wing that doesn’t have enough staff. A major investment in clean energy that quietly reroutes funding from something else. A press release about fixing potholes, signed off by someone who doesn’t drive.

It would almost be funny if it weren’t so well-lit.

Empires don’t always fall into chaos. Sometimes they just fade into absurdity, performing seriousness long after seriousness has left the room.

The buildings are still there.
The flags are still raised.
The leadership still makes announcements.

But somewhere in the back of your mind, you start to wonder if anyone’s really steering, or if we’re just all here out of habit, applauding politely while the roof leaks.

Not quite collapse.
Just a long, well-rehearsed shrug.