Sorry, but this is a really poor attempt at an explanation.
It combines various trends and events over 4+ centuries as if they were all happening at the same time.
The Praetorian Guard, for example, was destroyed several times in civil wars, and was finally disbanded in the early 300s, 175 years before Rome fell.
The dole in Rome was for the inhabitants of Rome itself, and possibly a few of the larger other cities. IOW, it’s as if we had something resembling a welfare state in NYC but nowhere else in the country. Not a major cause of social decay, in and of itself.
The major cause, imo, of the Fall was glossed over. The article mentions Constant Wars and the resultant expense. That expense, btw, was immensely greater than money spent on the games. But it doesn’t mention why there were so many wars.
The main reason was civil wars between rebels and the “legitimate” emperor. But why were there so many rebels?
Simple. The Romans simply never developed a logical and consistent method of succession. The most common method was to seize the throne yourself by coup or civil war, or to be the son of a guy who did.
This meant every emperor had to constantly be leary of his generals, especially the competent ones, because they might overthrow and kill him. So he tended to bump them off pre-emptively. As might be imagined, killing your most competent military leaders is not exactly the best strategy for a state with many foreign enemies.
OTOH, those same generals were legitimately paranoid about the emperor and were thus prone to rebellion in self-defense, whether they might have preferred to have remained loyal or not.
A civil war is, of course, infinitely more destructive to a nation than a foreign war. Look at how much our own single war still affects us 150 years later. The Romans had dozens of them.
nice write-up. i tend to agree.
Bingo. See my screen name.