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THE COLLAPSE OF COMPLEX SOCIETIES
Joseph Tainter
You Tube Video
http ://www.youtube.com/watch? v= ddmQhIiVM48
Review Essay by Tom Kando
Joseph Tainter is an anthropologist and historian who teaches at Utah State University. In 1988, he published a book titled The Collapse of Complex Societies. Since then, Tainter has amplified his thesis, making it even more compelling. This essay is based on a brilliant lecture he gave at Northwestern University on December 10, 2010. This is not a mere a summary; I add my own examples and interpretations. I do this especially at the end, where I suggest some straight-forward solutions with which Tainter may not agree.
THESIS
Tainter brings to mind another doomsday prophet, Jared Diamond, a UCLA geographer whose thesis is well-known. In his 2005 book, How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Diamond proposed a neo-Malthusian analogy between the collapse of the Easter Islands and the possible imminent collapse of humanity. Tainter is similarly apocalyptic, but more interesting. Diamond's "Easter Island scenario" is an academic version of what "green" people have been worrying about for at least fifty years. Tainter, on the other hand, presents a sociological analysis which suggests that the root of societal collapse is located in the inexorable nature of social evolution. As a sociologist and a history buff, I found it mesmerizing.
As a society evolves, it becomes more complex. In time, the level of complexity becomes unsustainable, and society begins to decline, ending up in collapse. Tainter uses the words "collapse" and "simplification" synonymously. Increasing complexity manifests itself in a growing bureaucracy. The cost of increased complexity is twofold: ( 1 ) greater expenditures of money and energy and (2) increased annoyance/pain. Complexity does solve problems, but over time it provides diminishing returns and requires more and more energy. This is the Energy-Complexity Spiral.
ROME: THE PROTOTYPE
Tainter focuses on Ancient Rome to make his point: For centuries, Rome was able to sustain its growing complexity through an extremely successful "loot and pillage" strategy. Rome subjugated various peoples and appropriated the surplus resources which those peoples had accumulated. All these resources were the product of converted solar energy. That is, they consisted of built-up minerals (precious metals, etc.) and of human energy/labor (slaves, soldiers and other annexed populations)....