I agree with the first; I'm doubtful or at least not convinced about the second. There are other factors as well that I would include although I think that climate change, bad harvests, and the resulting famine and disease were all very important. The ones I would add...too much taxation...too much of the revenue spent on defending perhaps indefensible and not very productive areas, too much dependence on mercenaries (does no one ever learn that eventually they turn on their employers?), too much regulation of commerce, of jobs...I think there are some lessons to be learned there. Also, I think if we know anything it's that eventually all empires fall. The Romans had a good run and a big influence on the world, but they weren't immune from that inexorable process of decline.
Doubtless we all see the past, no matter how much we read and try to be objective, through the prism of our own particular history. In Luni, from whose inhabitants I am certainly in part descended, even in the late empire ordinary modest people lived in homes with watertight, mass produced ceramic tile roofs, used sophisticated, high quality pottery that came from all parts of the empire, ate relatively well from domestic as well as imported food products, had clean water, effective sewage disposal, schools for at least some of the population, some degree of control over local officials, the opportunity to travel and trade, to engage in crafts like stone carving, and even to create some art. With the dissolution of the empire Luni was repeatedly gutted and burned and ultimately had to be abandoned. Its people, their sophistication and standard of living infinitely depleted fled with their Bishop to Sarzana and surrounding areas. After the fall, that particular area didn't start to recover until the late Middle Ages, and it could be argued that life there didn't achieve the level it had during Roman times until the 19th century. I would hardly tend to be a fan of Rome's dissolution.
That's the context from which I view these issues.
How far might these people and the people of the Roman empire as a whole have come in terms of knowledge and standard of living if they didn't have to start from lower than ground zero? That's how I view the collapse of all great civilizations, not just Rome, btw. I've said it before...it sometimes seems as if mankind is doomed to scratch it's way upward to some sort of sophistication and knowledge and a decent standard of living for at least a good portion of its people, and then through environmental change, internal forces that they don't know how to control, and invasions, there is a collapse and people's standard of living and knowledge base plummet and they have to start all over again. It seems such a waste.
I don't like to speak for others, but I think this is the context for LeBrok's remark.
Ed. For a light hearted take on the matter see the link below.
The last one was "peace". I would add the legal system and the languages of a big part of Europe.
What do we owe the Romans-Monty Python
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9foi342LXQE
Not to say, of course, that there weren't decided negatives to add on to the scale...like most great empires of the past they were brutal in conquest and in response to rebellion, and took a vast number of slaves (although unlike in the American south, for example, you could get out of it and rise to great heights.). I also have no great liking for gladiatorial contests, although I understand how the custom arose in the context of human sacrifice as part of funerary rites.
