Secessio plebis
The last secession was in 287 BC. Why were there not secessions after it? The reason has to do with the growth of the Roman Empire. Rome’s conquests really went into overdrive after that and they conquered many kingdoms. Along with those conquests, there came a lot of slaves. This totally changed the dynamics. After a while, the wealthy depended not on their poor fellow Romans to farm or make goods, but on slaves. Now it did not matter if the plebes didn’t not show up.<p>I fear that globalization may have served the same function in the United States. The wealthy don’t depend on their poor fellow Americans to provide goods for them and work for them. They depend on good produced oversees and even for domestic production on immigrant labor(look at who gets employed in fame labor or domestic help). They have an alternative to their fellow poor Americans.<p>Now, a strike in the US has a good chance of resulting not in long term employee benefits like it did before, but in the plant being moved oversees.<p>Unfortunately, this has bad consequences. When the relatively peaceful secession was no longer an option, Rome devolved into outright violence in the Roman Revolutions which saw demagogues and authoritarians mobilize the disaffected poor to kill their enemies and establish their power. When it all ended with the ascension of Augustus in AD 31, Rome was a republic in name only, but in reality a military dictatorship. And the people were generally happy with it because it brought peace after  decades of violence and bloodshed.<p>I hope our democracies can find a better solution to the issues of wealth inequality, before this story happens to us too.