The Opaque Process of Collapse

The ultimate cost of protecting the privileges of the few at the expense of the many is the dissolution of the social order that enabled the rule of the privileged few.

When I write about the demise of unsustainable systems, readers often ask me to describe the collapse I see as inevitable. This is a tough assignment, as there are as many kinds of collapse as there are systems: fragile ones can collapse suddenly, and resilient ones can decay for years or even decades before finally imploding or withering away.

Another way of describing collapse is: complex systems become much less complex.

Certain features of modern life could collapse without affecting everyday life much–for example, the derivatives markets could stop working and the impact would be enormous on those playing financial games The Great Wave: Price ... Fischer, David Hackett Best Price: $2.65 Buy New $14.88 (as of 10:45 UTC - Details) and those who entrusted money to the gamblers, but the consequences would be extremely concentrated in the gambler/speculator class. Despite the usual cries that financial losses in the gambler/speculator class will destroy civilization, the disruptions and losses would be widely dispersed for the economy as a whole.

Other collapses–in food or energy distribution, digital communications, etc.–would have immediate and severe impacts on daily life.

My three primary models of decay and collapse are:

1. Historian David Hackett Fischer’s masterwork The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History (given to me by longtime correspondent Cheryl A.)

2. Thomas Homer-Dixon’s The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization

The Upside of Down: Ca... Thomas Homer-Dixon Best Price: $2.34 Buy New $20.40 (as of 05:35 UTC - Details) 3. The decline of the Western Roman Empire (the process, not Edward Gibbon’s epic 6-volume history). My recommended book on the topic (a short read): The Fall of the Roman Empire

Fischer’s primary thesis is that society and the economy expand in times of plentiful resources and credit, and this increased demand eventually consumes all available resources. When demand exceeds supply and excesses of credit reach extremes, inflation and social disorder arise together.

Though we have yet to see inflation on a global scale, it is inescapable that demand will soon outstrip supply of essential resources and that the global credit bubble will pop, depriving the economy of the means to buy resources regardless of cost.

The Fall of the Roman ... Michael Grant Best Price: $1.46 Buy New $22.76 (as of 09:10 UTC - Details) The Upside of Down describes the process of increasing complexity adding fixed costs to the system, and the way in which this diminishes returns: more and more labor, capital and resources must be devoted to maintain production. At some point, the yield is negative–costs are higher than the output.

At that point, systems start unraveling, and people simply abandon costly complex systems because the means to support them no are no longer readily available.

This is similar to John Michael Greer’s process of catabolic collapse, in which costly complex systems go through a re-set to a much lower energy consumption and less complexity. The system stabilizes at that level for a time, and then as costs rise and resources dwindle, it goes through another downsizing.

The Upside of Down: Ca... Thomas Homer-Dixon Best Price: $2.34 Buy New $20.40 (as of 05:35 UTC - Details) The Western Roman Empire (along with the Tang Dynasty in China) is the premier historical template for slow decline/decay leading to an eventual collapse. (Recall that the Eastern Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, endured for another 1,000 years.)

Depending on how you slice it, Western Rome’s Imperial decline took a few hundred years to play out. Unusually competent and energetic leaders arose at critical junctures in the early stages, and these leaders managed to stem the encroachment of other empires and “barbarian” forces and effectively re-order Rome’s dwindling resources.

By the end, The Western Roman Empire was still issuing a flood of edicts to the various regions, but there was no one left to follow the edicts or enforce them: the Roman legions existed only on parchment. The legion had a name and a structure, but there were no longer any soldiers in the field.

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