Yourdon recommends Joseph Tainter's book, _The Collapse of Complex Societies_ (1988).

After a quick skim, not sure it is worth reading unless you are really interested in detailed history and economics. This book does not attempt to describe the collapses or provide especially helpful info in our context, I think. (though I'd be happy to hear contrary opinions)

The author IS rather proud of himself, though, as he beats up on many other theories of how civilizations collapse (e.g., Roman, Mayan). Other authors have proposed causes such as:

1. Depletion of vital resources 2. Discovery of brand new resources 3. Catastrophes 4. Insufficient response to circumstances 5. Competition from other complex societies 6. Intruders 7. Class conflict, societal contradictions, elite mismanagement/misbehavior 8. Social dysfunction 9. Mystical 10. Chance concatenation of bad things

He says the cause is not these things, but instead, the fact that the society had achieved a level of complexity such that the economic overhead for maintaining the bureaucracy, etc was so great that the society was weakened. Then, when items like 1-10 occur, the society is less able to handle it, or even might support it (e.g., Roman citizens were so heavily taxed at the end that some of them welcomed the "barbarians").

If Y2K causes TEOTWAWKI (hopefully not), I think he'll have to add an addendum to his book, if he can print it, because we will see that the interdependencies in our global and even national economy are the factors that set us up--then followed by _inaccessibility_ of vital resources, plus causes #3, 4, 7, 10.

As for a description of the collapse, itself, he briefly summarizes other folks work, which I will summarize further. During a collapse, you will see:

1. Breakdown of authority and central control 2. Loss of power at the former political center accompanied by the emergence of small, "petty" states (nations) 3. Law is eliminated and lawlessness prevails for a time. 4. New building ceases 5. Local self-sufficiency becomes primary 6. Population declines precipitously

Interestingly, the author said at one point (1988), "Collapse today is neither an option nor an immediate threat. ... A nation today can no longer unilaterally collapse for if any national gov't disintegrates, its population and territory will be absorbed by some other." Three years later--Soviet Union disintegrated. Perhaps his point was that the Soviet Union civilization continued on as it was, but merely broken into smaller pieces. Not sure exactly, but it seems like a miss to me.

==

Anyway, that's it. Instead of getting his book, you might just want to read an essay of his on the web to get the gist of his arguments-- http://dieoff.org/page134.htm

-- Rick

-- Rick Stahlhut (stahlhut@net-link.net), August 30, 1999

Answers

I agree Rick. He has missed at least part of it. the collapse of the roman empire...also the Greeks, the Minoans, the Phoenicians, and the Sumerians was soil erosion and the collapse of agricultural production. The collapse of agriculture was the stimulation for colonization and empire.

-- Sand Mueller (smueller@azalea.net), August 31, 1999.

Well, all those civilizations that you cited with "soil erosion" for example, I'd say that those would come under the umbrella of "too much overhead". I've also heard the term "carrying capacity" which refers to how much human population a particular region can support.

His thesis basically comes down to "too much overhead" to support the civilization. A civilization needs several things including transportation, labor, food, resources, etc.

To utilize these, one or more authorities are created to organize them. Once organized, they have to be protected. Since they have to be protected, an army is created. Armies are very expensive and very hungry. They utilize resources disproportionate to their size.

Frequently, it becomes irresistable to utilize the army, so agression against neighbors becomes more common. If successful, then organization and protection for the new territories are needed; making an even larger force necessary to feed and maintain them, etc.

The one factor that never seems to go away is the "need" for ever expanding resources to go to the organizing body or government and its army.

A better book for most people to look at this subject, may be "America's Man on Horseback". It's not scholarly in tone, but the author has done a lot of research. And though he has opinions that may make you uncomfortable (such as his assertion that women as politicians is not a good thing), his description of the phases that a civilization goes through are quite interesting.

In the end, the collapse (according to him) of various civilizations is directly caused by increasing government intervention into economic and personal areas.

Basically he says that once the society has achieved its goal of safety and economic abundance - it's doomed. The step after abundance is decadence, followed by disintegration.

America certainly is falling into that pattern right now. I'm not moralizing from a Christian point of view - I'm an atheist. But the ideals of honesty, integrity, courage, and thrift are certainly non- existent with our government, AND OUR PEOPLE. If the American people embodied those morals, they would elect people to office that have these ideals as well.

You'll have to decide for yourself whether he's tailored his thesis to the current times we're living in, or if there really *is* a pattern here. Personally, I think he's got it right on.

Lead in the water didn't kill Rome, Rome had become decadent LONG before that might have become a problem. And Rome became decadent after it had conquered its enemies, and enjoyed vast economic abundance.

Jolly reads too much history

-- Jollyprez (jolly@prez.com), August 31, 1999.

"Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

-- Amy Leone (leoneamy@aol.com), August 31, 1999.

Rick: good synopsis, great post.

I'm w/Jolly. The US is a materially mature society in which infrastructure has given way to management concerns. Regarding Tainter's notion of the impossibility of unilateral collapse for a modern state, I think the emphasis is meant to be placed on the word 'unilateral' It's not that we (or the USSR) can't go down, but rather that we won't do it in isolation. The more interlinked the collapsing society is w/ other societies, the more far-reaching the collapse. Interesting that Tainter's an archeologist rather than an historian.

-- PH (ag3@interlog.com), August 31, 1999.

Sounds like a variation of complexity theory. One of the properties of a complex system is that when attacked or damaged, it will spontaneously reorganize at lower levels of complexity. Read "Complexity" by Robert Waldrop. Another condition that might cause a reorganization is the level of complexity itself. Proponents of Chaos Theory describe a "threshhold of chaos," a point at which a system becomes so complex that its individual components are incapable of understanding or dealing with the complexity, or a rate of change that becomes so great that it is essentially unsustainable. A system experiencing these two conditions will move towards the "chaos threshhold," where it will undergo at least a partial collapse back to a simpler system that the individual components can recognize and handle.

This is highly conjectural, but it's compelling to think of our society, or the world in general, as the complex system and information technology as the vehicle for introducing an unsustainable rate of change to the system. Is there a point where things get so complex that no one has the expertise for dealing with systemic problems? Will Y2K be the attack or damage that disrupts the continuity of the system enough to cause a partial or total collapse?

Having not read Tainter, it sounds like he over-simplifies things a bit, but his thesis seems to be in keeping with complexity theory.

-- rob minor (rbminor@hotmail.com), August 31, 1999.

Another factor in the collapse of civilizations is the loss of the underlying religious or cultural foundation that unified the society. Religious and cultural strife undermine the cultural consensus. For instance, in the old testament, the Israelites lose their faith in their god, then fall to Babylon. By the time Rome went under, Roman citizenship had become a commodity that was bought and sold, so many Romans weren't Roman in the cultural sense. Rome had also forsaken its republican structure for a series of tyrannical emperors who depleted the nation's wealth. The US isn't based on a single religion, and we have absorbed immigration well. The American cultural glue is civic political involvement, and shared ideals of freedom and rights, etc. I don't think this will disappear or that the country will fall like Rome, but if times get bad there will be a lot of bitter political fighting over the diminished pie.

-- Forrest Covington (theforrest@mindspring.com), September 01, 1999.

Am currently reading "Guns, Germs and Steel" which is more of a book about why some civilizations conquer others than why civilizations fall apart. Riveting and sobering. Sure made me wannna buy a gun. There is just no substitute in a defense situation for superior technology. 200 Spanish defeated 80,000 - yes - 80,000 fierce Aztec fighters. Why? Guns.

IMHO cultures fall apart because of arrogance. Its a long technical evolutionary climb up from bonfires to laser beams but it is a very, very short fall down.

-- R (riversoma@aol.com), September 01, 1999.