the 'empire' is run to everyone's expense including the 'empire's own expense even if they show a whole mess of false evidences that their're not. they are.

i meant improving society and strengthen its immune system against threats that would otherwise cause collapses. imperiums cause and collapse/vanish all the time, just try to count the already vanished ones in "known" history, i guess while you are still busy counting the known ones there will be even more "newly found" by archaelogists. while lots of them just vanished without trace, some vanished but just weren't found yet.