Posted: Sun Sep 05, 2004 6:38 pm Post subject: The Mechanism of Collapse
Joseph Tainter's book, The Collapse of Complex Societies, provides terrific insight into the reasons complex societies arise...and why they collapse. It also provides some hints about what it might be like if our own society collapses - based on what happened when other complex societies collapsed. Tainter was careful to use "societies" instead of "civilizations," because he felt "civilization" contained an implied value judgment.
Tainter claims that the proper basis for understanding complex societies is an economic one. The basic premise:
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1. Human societies are problem-solving organizations.
2. Sociopolitical systems require energy for their maintenance.
3. Increased complexity carries with it increased costs per capita.
4. Investment in complexity as a problem-solving response often reaches a point of declining marginal returns.
So, in his view, complex societies arise as efficient solutions to problems. At first, they provide great benefit for little cost, but eventually, they face the problem of declining marginal returns. He uses this graph of the benefits of complexity over the level of complexity:
At first, relatively little investment in complexity yields great benefits. (The green part of the graph.) But eventually, diminishing returns kicks in, and greater and greater investment produce less and less benefit. (Yellow) Finally, the point is reached where investment in complexity can no longer yield any increase in benefits. (Red) He argues that once the yellow area is reached, collapse becomes mathematically probable. At that point, a crisis the society easily weathered earlier in its history - a military loss, drought, resource depletion, etc. - is enough to cause collapse.
Why do marginal yields always decline? That is, why is that we always get less and less return on greater and greater investment? Because we solve the easiest problems first. The most accessible oil is pumped first. Teaching someone to read is cheap and has great benefits; getting them a PhD is expensive, and provides far fewer benefits for the cost. The most arable land is farmed first; expanding farms to less ideal territory will provide lower yields for the cost.
It is possible for a society to avoid collapse - by getting control of a new source of energy, either by technical innovation or by conquest. In that case, the graph looks like this:
Eventually, however, it becomes impossible to keep doing this, because of declining marginal returns on whichever strategy you are pursuing (whether conquest, like the Romans, or technological innovation, like the Maya).
Tainter argues that we are already facing declining marginal returns, and provides numerous examples. Among them:
Agriculture: To increase world food production by 34 percent (between 1951 and 1966), it took a 63% increase in money spent on tractors, a 146% increase in money spent on nitrate fertilizers, and a 300% increase in money spend on pesticides. To get another 34% would take even more money.
Medicine: Despite the fact that we are spending more money on health care and medical research than ever, the American lifespan is not increasing much. The easy fixes: vitamins, vaccines, etc., have already been done. Now, we are struggling just to keep lifespan from decreasing (due to new challenges like AIDS).
Science: Most of the great work of science was done years, even centuries ago. Many of the greatest contributions to science were made by people without formal training. But the day is past when monks growing peas or people flying kites in the rain can make significant contributions to science. The general knowledge, which provided the greatest benefits, is already known. The specialist knowledge remaining to be discovered requires expensive education, for relatively little return.
Oil: The subject nearest to our hearts. In 1950, one barrel of oil's worth of energy could get you 100 barrels in return. Now, it's more like 1:10 in the U.S., 1:30 for Middle East oil shipped here. That sort of decline applies to most resources: coal, copper, natural gas, etc.
R&D: Technology has saves us in the past; can it save us again? Probably not. Analysis shows that an increase in spending on R&D of 4.2% yields an improvement of only 2%. At that rate, even if every one of us becomes a scientist or engineer, we'll be losing ground.
Government: Increasing complexity means increasing bureaucracy, and all the expenses that entails. Generally, it means higher taxes. At first, the benefits of complexity - roads, schools, defense, public works - are so great that people don't mind paying taxes. But as complexity increases, taxes rise, and then the government must spend resources on enforcing compliance. Generally, the tipping point is about 20% - which we're past.
Does Tainter think we are facing imminent collapse? No. There's a fifth concept, to add to the four above:
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5. Collapse occurs, and can only occur, in a power vacuum.
Even when a society is past the point of diminishing returns, when economically, they'd be better off not investing in more complexity, there is a situation where they cannot collapse. That is when there is a group of societies, of similar complexity, in competition with each other. No one can collapse, because if they do, they'll be taken over by a neighbor. Collapse, when it comes, will be a group affair. No one can collapse unless they all collapse at once. (Which is what happened to the Maya.)
That is the reason Europe did not collapse long ago, and that is the reason the next collapse will be a global one. A "powerdown" is impossible in the current political climate.
Tainter's discussion of past collapses was fascinating, and I couldn't help wondering if they might be hints of our own future. Complex societies ensure their existence by two methods: legitimization, and coercion.
Legitimization can involve nonmaterial elements (the emperor is a god, democracy is the best way of government, etc.) But no society can continue to survive unless it provide actual material benefits. The people must be shown that their taxes are benefitting them more than they are hurting. So, even while Rome was going bankrupt, they kept increasing the public dole in the cities. They had to, to maintain their legitimacy. Eventually, one out of three people was on the dole.
Coercion is another method, but it, too is expensive. Higher and higher taxes are demanded, with greater and greater punishments for not paying. The state may control where you can live, what your occupation is, what you can say, etc. People get more rebellious, and more resources must be allocated to social control. The wealthier areas that can make it on their own may try to pull away; the government won't let them, because it needs their production.
It's likely, as oil runs out, our governments will use both methods. Taxes will rise, and so will handouts to the poor. We'll lose freedoms, as the government cracks down.
Given that possible vision of the future, collapse seems almost preferable. Indeed, Tainter argues that collapse is not necessarily catastrophe. Complex societies are a relatively new development in human history. They are what is unnatural, so collapse would be returning to a more natural state. And research shows that collapse does in fact yield benefits. Smaller kingdoms were more effective at repelling barbarian invasions than the Roman empire. Nutrition was better after the Mayan collapse than it was before.
The drawback, of course, is the huge population drop that accompanies collapse. An 80%-90% loss is not unusual. While in the old days, those extra people may have simply migrated somewhere else, that's not possible in today's world.
So what will happen to us, if the past is any guide? Some key points:
Real Estate: Though many people here think salvation is a homestead in the country, that wasn't the case for Rome, or for the Maya. In both cases, people moved near the cities in the decades before the collapse. Taxes grew so high in Rome that many farmers simply abandoned their land. It was easier to get food in the cities than on the farms that grew it. Many laws passed involved ways to tax abandoned land. Eventually, Rome passed laws ordering that the sons of farmer be farmers themselves...then had to spend more resources on enforcing those laws.
Less is known about the Maya, but they, too clustered closer to the cities as the end approached. Likely this was because isolated farms were vulnerable to raids. Too many people, not enough food, and no way out leads to only one outcome: warfare.
Population Growth: Societies that collapsed often suffered a leveling of population before the collapse; some even had decreases in population. This was seen as a serious social problem for the government, since it needed new citizens to provide labor and pay taxes. In Rome, laws were passed setting up state orphanages and offering tax incentives for having kids. Among the Maya, women were favored over men. While male skeletons grew stunted and diseased as collapse approached, the female skeletons remained as large and healthy as ever. Neighboring societies of the time honored reproducing women, and the evidence suggests the Maya did as well.
I can't help but be reminded of that politican in Japan, who suggested cutting off social security benefits to women who don't have at least one child, or Pat Buchanan, who wants to end abortion and birth control, in part because it will increase the number of taxpayers.
Currency debasement: Collapsing societies tend to suffer from massive inflation. Even though the government knows it shouldn't just print more money, it can't resist when pushed into a corner. You have to pay the army and the civil servants. This is a way of pushing debts into the future, much as our deficits do. Because, as Tainter says, "the future can't protest."
Who suffers: The wealthy suffered last when Rome collapsed. First the poor suffered, then the middle class, and only at the end, the wealthy. But it was the opposite when the Maya collapsed. The elite disappeared, and only the peasants remained. In some areas, there are signs the remaining population tried to continue the rituals and building that had gone before, but simply did not have the knowledge. Those who did were obviously gone.
After the Crash: Sometimes a society recovers, but often, it never again reaches the complexity it once had. The Maya did not maintain their irrigation systems or raised beds. Either the land was too exhausted to make it worthwhile, or they had no inclination to go back to the way they were, once it was proven unfeasible.
I'm not sure if I find Tainter's book encouraging or not. One the one hand, he suggests that a soft landing is more likely than a sudden dieoff; the collapses he studied took place over decades. On the other hand, the years leading up to collapse tend to be very unpleasant, with brutal government control, high taxes, conscription, anarchy, banditry, widespread malnutrition, etc. Tainter expects that before collapse, we will be pouring a huge percentage of our GDP into R&D, trying to find a technology that will save us. That means the standard of living will fall, since there will be less to spend on other things.
But maybe engineering will be a growth industry, at least for few decades...
Another point from the book that I found interesting and possibly relevant: scanning behavior.
When a society is on the yellow part of the above curve, something Tainter calls "scanning behavior" appears. People become dissatisfied; ideological strife becomes very noticeable. The entire society starts looking around for a better way. Segments of society may adopt foreign ideologies or ways of life. Some of these may be perceived as subversive, while others are height of fashion. Taxes rise, as the government invests more in R&D, trying to find a better way.
Once a society is in the red area, scanning behavior may cease altogether. The government enforces strict behavioral controls, in hopes of increasing efficiency.
I suspect that those of us who have found our way to this Web site are engaging in classic scanning behavior...
Great post, thanks Leanan. I see it pretty much the same as Tainter. My most likely scenario is Orwellian with complete collapse unlikely for exactly the reasons mentioned. Governments will act. They will exercise their power and no matter how unpleasant it is, we will put up with it because the alternative is worse.
The only possible ways I can see a power vacuum is if the grid goes down long enough to knock out communications or there is a nuclear exchange.
In the abstract, I would prefer fast collapse. In reality, I'm going to line up with my ration card, sing the praises of Big Brother and hold firm to the belief that the choclate ration is going up.
The book is highly controversial. It has gotten mixed reviews in academic journals. That does not mean it is wrong, but it does not cover every issue relating to collapse. I find it hard to believe that one theory can explain every instance of collapse. The Aztec Empire, for instance, did not collapse because of diminishing returns. I am sure there are more examples. There are many, many theories as to why empires fall, this is just one. It is a good read, but I think there is more to it. This is what I am doing my senior paper on. I am asking why empires fall. I am comparing the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Soviet Empire. I will post a draft here when I have one if anyone is interested in reviewing it.
The book is highly controversial. It has gotten mixed reviews in academic journals.
I'm not surprised. Applying "mechanistic" theories is usually controversial, outside of the hard sciences. Especially when it leads to unpleasant predictions about our own likely future.
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I find it hard to believe that one theory can explain every instance of collapse. The Aztec Empire, for instance, did not collapse because of diminishing returns.
Tainter acknowledges that collapse may occur for other reasons. For example, all-out nuclear war would likely lead to collapse.
As for the Aztecs...actually, many anthropologists argue that they were already in decline, and the arrival of the Spaniards just hurried them along a bit.
The Aztecs showed a lot of the signs of a society under pressure. The huge construction projects and brutal treatment of prisoners were classic "legitimization" displays. They had trouble controlling the large numbers of peasants needed to maintain those displays, and to conduct the intensive farming that (barely) supported their society. Cortes worked with disgruntled locals, and easily toppled an empire that was already collapsing under its own weight.
The same is likely true of the Inca. The Spaniards arrived as a civil war was winding down, making victory easy.
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I will post a draft here when I have one if anyone is interested in reviewing it.
Perhaps we could put this post in as a review. It's obviously more of a synopsis... which is actually much better, IMO.
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I will post a draft here when I have one if anyone is interested in reviewing it.
I dare say you'll get more feedback than can handle about that one. Collapse of society is the healthiest of the morbid fascinations.
Lastly, I wonder if unidependence upon an energy resource shouldn't be considered as quite a different cause of societal collapse than organisational complexity.
I very much agree that complexity costs energy upkeep, and that returns on complexity should diminish. I agree that this can cause collapse.
On the otherhand, societies which are not complex, like reindeer and bacteria, collapse quite independently of complexity. It's just a matter of energy and overshoot.
In one sense, then, peak oil can also potentially be seen as independent of our current level of complexity.
On the other hand, cheap energy, in the form of hydrocarbons, is the very development that has allowed us to overshoot a sustainable level of complexity. Further, without some initial complexity, we would never have had access to that bounty of cheap energy.
So at once, peak oil mirrors the kind of situation that causes collapse among species that do not have social complexity, and has been made both possible and accentuated by the development of complexity...
Joined: Aug 18, 2004 Posts: 694 Location: SF Bay Area, Calif
Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2004 1:48 pm Post subject: criticisms of tainter
That's a nice overview of the Tainter book, Leanan. I'd read about the theory on the Die Off website, but your explanation is clear and succinct. There are a couple of problems with the Tainter theory, whether or not it is correct.
The scope and time span of the theory are so large that it is impossible to derive much guidance for our individual lives. It's rather like reading that the sun is going to explode in X million years. Such speculation may be true, but it is irrelevant to our life decisions.
The theory is presented like a theory in physics, as a process that is natural and immutable. If nothing can be done, then readers come away with feelings of gloom, fatalism and a grudging acceptance of authoritarianism. In fact, we have zillions of choices and solutions in front of us. Our current problem is much more a lack of imagination and courage than it is a physical problem. For example,
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Medicine: Despite the fact that we are spending more money on health care and medical research than ever, the American lifespan is not increasing much. The easy fixes: vitamins, vaccines, etc. have already been done. Now, we are struggling just to keep lifespan from decreasing (due to new challenges like AIDS)
The easy fixes are still out there, ready to be implemented. In the Third World, health can easily be improved with supplies of clean water, adequate sewage, and simple rehydration techniques for babies suffering from diarrhea. In the advanced world, we could improve our health significantly by getting more exercise, eating better, fighting obesity, and discouraging tobacco and other addictive drugs.
The reason that the money we spend on health care and medical research does not improve the American lifespan is that that is not their purpose. The purpose of the drug companies and medical establishment is to earn profits, which they do by concocting and dispensing expensive drugs for the real and imagined ailments of rich people.
So, the answer is not a cosmic acceptance of the ultimate dissolution of societies, but instead the hard work of questioning our assumptions and getting to work solving the problems in front of us.
- bart
(I should mention that I really do like Tainter's work -- especially its use as a springboard for discussions. Also, I'll bet that Tainter's book is more nuanced than the simplified version I've criticized here.)
The scope and time span of the theory are so large that it is impossible to derive much guidance for our individual lives.
Yes. And it was not meant to offer guidance. It is an academic work - the point is understanding.
Tainter himself does not seem to believe collapse is imminent. However, he also points out that events happen much faster now than they did in the past. It took centuries to make the transition from wood to coal. The transition to oil took a fraction of that time. Possibly, collapse for us will be much faster than it was in the past.
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The theory is presented like a theory in physics, as a process that is natural and immutable. If nothing can be done, then readers come away with feelings of gloom, fatalism and a grudging acceptance of authoritarianism.
Only if you're the sort who was depressed to find out about the heat-death of the universe.
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The easy fixes are still out there, ready to be implemented. In the Third World,
I don't think anyone's arguing that. The Third World is just starting the climb we're nearing the top of.
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In the advanced world, we could improve our health significantly by getting more exercise, eating better, fighting obesity, and discouraging tobacco and other addictive drugs.
Actually, we can't. It would help, but not a lot. The life expectancy at birth for an American male is about 75 years. The life expectancy of a Seventh-Day Adventist is 86 years. Seventh-Day Adventists generally do everything right: no smoking, no drinking, no recreational drug use, regular exercise, a vegetarian diet. They put an emphasis on health, and they tend to have strong community ties - another factor linked with longevity. So they likely reflect the most benefit we can get out of lifestyle choices. While 11 more years is a good thing, at least if they are healthy and active years, it's nothing compared the huge leaps we made earlier. And probably, we'd get most bang for our buck by trying to reduce our infant mortality rate, which is very high for a developed nation. (Mainly because the poor don't get enough prenatal care.)
But of course, we don't really want to help the poor, at home or elsewhere. So we're trying to find the key to immortality, or at least extremely long lifespans (150 years or more). I suspect we'll fail at that. Diminishing returns. And if succeed, it will open up a real can of worms.
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So, the answer is not a cosmic acceptance of the ultimate dissolution of societies, but instead the hard work of questioning our assumptions and getting to work solving the problems in front of us.
The book is not meant to provide any personal answers. Just a mechanism for understanding collapse.
Joined: Aug 20, 2004 Posts: 76 Location: Winnipeg, Canada
Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2004 5:47 pm Post subject:
I think we will see another "Golden age of Capitalism" before we see collapse. On a global scale there is more wealth being created in a single week than used to be produced in entire centuries.
It would only take a few more decades of growth before the whole Earth is developed. Once we have obtained total global development a collapse in productive powers would not be such a bad thing?
There are limits to growth. Once everyone has places to live, work, commute & a tv and a refrigerator declining marginal returns won't matter as much because of declining marginal utility.
Economically declining marginal utility states that initially the first refrigerator has great utility. The second refrigerator some utility. And subsequent refrigerators have less, and less; eventually negitive utility as your run out of space!
On a global scale once we have everything, declining production will be less significant!
I think we will see another "Golden age of Capitalism" before we see collapse.
Yeek. Even the optimists generally aren't that optimistic.
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It would only take a few more decades of growth before the whole Earth is developed.
I doubt it. There's not enough energy for that. Besides, we've got to grow food somewhere.
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Once we have obtained total global development a collapse in productive powers would not be such a bad thing?
It would be catastrophic.
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On a global scale once we have everything, declining production will be less significant!
We'll never have everything. The population keeps growing, remember. Even in developed countries. There will always be new customers.
And there will always new things they "need." Did our grandparents need SUVs, satellite radio, HDTV, home computers, pasta makers, flatbed scanners, kidney dialysis for cats? The point of capitalism is that the standard of living always rises.
Your utopic vision actually sounds more socialist than capitalist. Every one gets what they need, and no more. No one's greedy, and wants more than their share.
Capitalism doesn't work that way. The whole point is to keep trying to get more. Remember Ivan "Greed is good" Boesky?
That is why we have such a huge trade deficit. We are consuming a lot more than we are producing. Improving our standard of living through borrowing. The whole world can't live like us. There's not enough stuff, and I fear there never will be. Because "enough" is always a moving target.
Joined: May 24, 2004 Posts: 3428 Location: California, USA
Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2004 11:34 pm Post subject:
Good going Leanan; I'll go get a copy when I pick up the revised Limits to Growth this week.
The point of a theory of this kind is not to sound deterministic (i.e. fatalistic) but to spell out a basis for the kind of understanding that, with free will, we can act upon. Okay...
Legitimation vs. coersion: Seems to me the key distinction is that legitimation produces voluntary compliance, whereas coersion is intended to produce involuntary compliance.
That is, people voluntarily support a government or other authority-structure that they believe is legitimate. In the past, legitimacy could be based on the idea that God supports the King; today it's usually based on the democratic idea of a government freely elected by the citizens. A government can maintain legitimacy by handing out doles of various kinds, but a better method is to maintain civic cohesion.
The example of Holland under Nazi occupation is interesting in this regard: the Dutch people were terribly oppressed and basically starving, and remained loyal to their government-in-exile because they identified it as *theirs,* a part of their national character and community.
When people believe a government or authority structure is illegitimate, they disobey or rebel, and then the only way to maintain compliance is to use coersion. However, coersion has a high overhead cost, so it saps resources and goes into a spiral of decline. Once again, the Nazis in Holland, and also in Italy: spending much effort to extract labor from the populations against their will.
Re. the "red" part of the curve:
Beyond a certain point, complexity acquires excessive overhead costs in terms of added layers of administration. That is to say, up to a certain point, you have producers and you have managers: the producers produce, the managers coordinate production and distribution. Beyond a certain point, you have meta-managers who manage the managers, and increasing layers beyond that, to manage the meta-managers, to enforce compliance, to manage enforcement, to coordinate data-flows among these various nexes, and so on.
It's as if an organism grows to the point where its central nervous system can't coordinate the activities of its muscles. At that point, things break down.
It would appear that the United States reached that point some time during the last third of the 20th century. And today, symptomatic of that, we see a proliferation of concepts such as "managed care," and "digital rights management," and so on; sanitation becomes "solid waste management," business becomes "financial management," a business education becomes a "Masters of Business Administration," business decisions are dictated by "risk management," and so on.
Management has become a self-referential entity. In the mid 20th century, the managers of businesses, up to and including the very largest such as the Bell Telephone System, were people who rose through the ranks and therefore had an understanding of the "operational" aspects of their companies' products, services, and production processes. Today we have very few examples of that kind, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs being notable among them (starting out as geeks, becoming managers). Mostly, managers come in as managers, with virtually no knowledge of what happens on "the shop floor."
Management behaves like a social organism which seeks to grow on its own. Very often it becomes overtly parasitic, as per the "risk management mentality," where individuals with no training in an actual field of production, have authority over experts, and dictate to the experts based on theoretical calculations of risk.
Then we have another meta-layer having to do with sales & marketing. The lower the actual marginal utility of a product, the more effort (energy, financial cost) needed to sell it. For example, the difference in price between a name-brand and a functionally identical local brand, for virtually any mass-market product you can name, is purely the cost of advertising and marketing. For a can of soda, it might be 50-cents for a can of Supermarket Brand, and $1.10 for a can of Coca Cola. The same case obtains for cereals and other highly brand-intensive food and general consumer products.
So in essence, much of the money spent by consumers for these brand-name products that are indistinguishable from their generic equivalents, is pure entropy: money spent for the advertising that has persuaded them to spend the money! And along with that waste of money goes the corresponding wastes of labor, energy, etc.
Two types of breakdown:
One is the "collapse" situation we've discussed at length. The other involves a breakdown of a single overly-large system into a reasonably coherent group of subsystems. Call it "decentralization" or whatever, but it is not necessarily a bad thing. In business, smaller firms are usually the ones that produce real innovation, because they have to "move less mass," or "overcome less inertia" to innovate or change direction.
The move toward a "decentralist" type of "breakdown," is more likely to preserve a civilized society, compared to a "collapse" scenario. However, in a decentralist model, the need for many of the layers of managerial and administrative "connective tissue" vanishes.
Question is, what would happen to those individuals who identify with, and base their career plans on, being part of that vast administrative and managerial apparatus...? How will they respond when that apparatus is rendered obsolete by circumstances?
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