Hater? What kind of minimal intellect retort is that?
Here's why ZH should be 'hated'-
They repeatedly post climate denial fodder for cretins. Are you a climate denialist? You are in the wrong place if so.
As far as the specifics of the Smith piece, it's an verysimplistic blog post for people who have never read about Rome before. The parallels he tries to draw are pretty useless. Trying to compare Roman Senators of Late Antiquity to faceless corporations isn't going to get you very far in understanding. Also his confused amalgam of 'virtue', income inequality, and military service makes no sense- it's not like stark income inequality was absent in earlier Rome and his lack of understanding of the complex and varying degrees of taxation (which included some of the wealthy actually abandoning their lands to stop their burden) means he's just shoe-horning his limited reading into modern circumstances. Wrapping up all this in the guise of 'moral decay' is just further simplification.