Lessons from the past
A book I have always skimmed through is 'Gibbons Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' published by Bison Books Ltd in 1979 and again in 1990 & 1993.
In chapter 2 'Of the union and internal prosperity of the Roman Empire in the Age of the Antonines' there is a paragraph that has always stuck in my mind.
''... it was scarcely possible that the eyes of contemporaries should discover in the public felicity the latent causes of decay and corruption.