Well, I'm not jythie. Good to know I didn't use something wrong.
Except you corrected a reply of mine to jythie.
I'm not making any expectations of empire building. I'm just pointing out which one is the norm, and which is the exception, when viewed beyond "modern" history (which IMNSHO is a myopic view)
If we're going to play that game, how about the several billions years before empires? Or most of the age of the universe when there wasn't even an Earth or Sun? Norms change.
And that ignores that empires aren't necessarily worse off for their inhabitants either. Since neither you or I have any "expectations", I really don't see any point to continuing an argument that doesn't make sense in the first place.