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Augustus was concerned with public "morality"...

He also knocked up Livia when she was still married to her first husband, their child being Drusus.

...in some respects his efforts were aimed at problems similar to those we are facing - such as low national birthrates, decline of family values, widespread immoral behavior.

He tried to address the low rate of marriage among eligible Roman men through new laws. Roman citizenship had been expanded by Julius Caesar, some said diluted, and eventually he was murdered by a Senatorial conspiracy. Prior to and during that time, it had been Senators who had been seizing lands under various artifices, from the very people who had signed up for the armed forces.

After he'd finally achieved victory over Antony and others, Augustus cut the Roman army by about half (56 to 28, plus the Praetorian Guard), and made up the difference by expansion of the auxiliary legions. This was partly to reduce the number of idle troops and thereby reduce the possibility of renewed civil war, but the obvious problem was that there were too few interested in serving.

although Rome was an expanding power, "colonization" consisted in large degree in making subject populations into Romans than exploiting them as a subject race.

The Romans used everyone they conquered, but as with other slavery-based societies, the number on top continued to shrink and the subject peoples increased under the protection of the Roman army. Some of the best emperors were from the provinces, and over time the number of regular legions filled with non-Romans increased. Caesar slaughtered a good chunk of Gaul, which merely made it a tempting place for people east of the Rhine to expand. That remained a problem for Rome, in part due to the declining temperatures during the Roman Cooling pushing people out of Central Asia.

I think the similarities between the situation in Ancient Rome and in America are striking in many respects. They failed to address their problems, and collapsed as a consequence. Our failure to address very similar problems may result in a like result today.

The Romans had a system of measures, a (sort of) unified standard currency, a road system, pretty safe maritime travel and commerce, and a top-notch military. They didn't have a postal system per se, although there were various systems to courier official messages. As was pointed out sometime by someone somewhere :'), the President can communicate across the country faster than Caesar could communicate across his palace. The Romans didn't have what we would call a public school system, nor did they have compulsory public education.

Roman government was very much more like modern socialist states than it was like our republic. The economic peak of the empire was during the reign of Trajan, but he only managed to achieve that through the booty taken by his conquest of Dacia. His boy-butt-lovin' successor (adopted) Hadrian wanted to abandon Dacia, was talked out of it, but withdrew from southern Scotland, and left Trajan's province of Mesopotamia after just a couple of years of Roman occupation. Diocletian tried to impose a regularized system of succession, but it failed. Aurelian was a short-lived bright spot, but was murdered by one of his corrupt aides.

But anyway...

Thanks for your kind remarks about my profile page. My links page is far too large, and I plan to carve it down sooner or later. I also plan to file my income tax return by the end of January, for the first time ever. ;')