
How Western Civilization Could Collapse - probe
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse
======
vinceguidry
I am unconvinced, both by the comparison of the modern social order to a
bicycle and by historical comparisons to Rome.

In the first place, economic growth slows down and reverses from time to time.
Society doesn't collapse. People paint the Great Depression as having been
"saved" by WW2, not as a sequence of events that all fed into each other. In
other words, if the Great Depression and subsequent world war _wasn 't_ a
perfect example of the worst that could possibly happen, I dare you to point
out a _plausible_ worse scenario.

No, nuclear war doesn't count, even the worst nuclear war imaginable won't be
as bad as WW2 was. Nuclear winter is a myth, the particles fall out of the air
too quickly, and the inverse square law greatly limits direct damage. Most
civilian population centers won't get hit, unless we start another arms race,
so we're looking at a few decades at most of economic disruption in the worst
possible case.

Finally, the Roman Empire was in no way comparable to the current global
regime. The political systems seen by Rome were downright primitive compared
to our representative democracies, multi-state unions, and trade federations.
The Anglosphere is in no way vulnerable to dictatorship, and while Europe was
once capable of fascism in the past, the days where a would-be Hitler or
Mussolini could whip populations into a murderous frenzy are long gone. The
worst that can happen is sovereign devolution AKA Brexit, Grexit, Scottish
independence _et al_.

The might of Western hegemony is going to slowly fade away and new regional
orders will slowly gain strength. The EU will slowly evolve along those orders
and the world will stumble towards a new, multi-polar equilibrium, out of
which a new global governing body will emerge, fail, then emerge again.

Rome "collapsed" by spreading across Europe, Western civilization will
"collapse" by spreading across the globe.

~~~
x0137294744532
> No, nuclear war doesn't count, even the worst nuclear war imaginable won't
> be as bad as WW2 was.

Let's do some math. Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed ~100,000 people, making it
50,000 per bomb. The US has currently 31,175 nuclear weapons at its disposal.
If it were to even use 5% of its arsenal, assuming they have the same power as
the bombs from '45 (which they don't), it would amount to 150,000,000 deaths.
This is 2.5 times more than the total casualties of ww2, without even
accounting for the nuclear weapon use of the opposing side.

~~~
vinceguidry
You're assuming all the bombs will be dropped on population centers. They
won't. Most weapons will be used on military targets. Removing your enemy's
ability to wage war will always take priority over non-military targets.

~~~
pg314
> You're assuming all the bombs will be dropped on population centers.

He isn't. He is assuming 5% of bombs will be dropped on population centers.

> Removing your enemy's ability to wage war will always take priority over
> non-military targets.

You are applying conventional military tactics in a nuclear war. They don't
apply. See MAD[1], the cornerstone of nuclear deterrence.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction)

~~~
mrec
MAD isn't current US policy and hasn't been for some time. US doctrine allows
for flexible responses and the possibility of a nuclear exchange staying
within the bounds of a regional conflict, rather than automatically escalating
immediately to all-out nuclear spasm.

And I don't think it was ever the official policy of the USSR; their planners
believed that even all-out nuclear war was both survivable and winnable.
(Which made the whole concept distinctly iffy as the foundation of
deterrence.)

~~~
vinceguidry
To piggyback on this:

MAD is a convenient fiction that politicians and the military use for
political purposes. It has zero bearing on any actual military strategy
because it is not a real scenario. There aren't enough strategic weapons in
the world to bring about such an outcome.

To learn more about how the military community thinks of nuclear warfare,
follow this guy on Quora:

[https://www.quora.com/profile/Thierry-Etienne-Joseph-
Rotty](https://www.quora.com/profile/Thierry-Etienne-Joseph-Rotty)

------
chmln
> The Syrian case aside, another sign that we’re entering into a danger zone,
> Homer-Dixon says, is the increasing occurrence of what experts call
> nonlinearities, or sudden, unexpected changes in the world’s order, such as
> the 2008 economic crisis, the rise of ISIS, Brexit, or Donald Trump’s
> election.

Unexpected or rather unexpected to those on the far-left of the political
spectrum, who very much like their far-right counterparts often live in echo
chambers.

Growing dissatisfaction against globalism and feeble governance didn't happen
overnight.

Those who failed to notice it simply were not looking in the right places.

~~~
sanderjd
I'm pretty tired of "far-left" and "far-right" characterizations of most
people. Most people are moderates on one side or the other (or put another
way, they don't easily fit into either of the "left" or "right" buckets). Lots
of people across that whole spectrum were surprised by the election, not just
"the far left".

Nobody failed to notice economic dissatisfaction, but many were surprised that
the President's particular brand of speaking to it was as successful as it
was, especially coming from a Republican.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Well, the Democrats seemed to not even _try_ to speak to it, even though the
working class was (once upon a time) their core constituency. So maybe it's
fair to say that, if the Democrats "noticed" it, it didn't register in their
thinking to the degree it should have.

~~~
maxerickson
It just didn't resonate.

[http://www.newsweek.com/hillary-clinton-full-transcript-
econ...](http://www.newsweek.com/hillary-clinton-full-transcript-economic-
speech-489602)

------
dvdhnt
My favorite part -

> one of the most important lessons from Rome’s fall is that complexity has a
> cost. As stated in the laws of thermodynamics, it takes energy to maintain
> any system in a complex, ordered state – and human society is no exception.

~~~
tbirrell
That is an interesting thought. We tend think of that law in terms of raw
energy, but the inertia of society is no exception. We see this over and over
whenever anybody goes on strike. Business grind to a halt. Sometimes entire
industries. The Russian revolution was an example of several key industries
doing this at the same time, and that society collapsed, eventually replaced
by another.

It's not just a matter of supplying the raw power to keep everything running.
It's also the sheer amount of continually supplying human effort and
willpower. Much more nebulous concepts, but arguably more important.

~~~
dwaltrip
Great points. However, equally important is the notion of "stability" \--
there are large differences in how resilient complex processes can be against
external forces.

For humans, this can be both a good thing and a bad thing. E.g. the "anti-
fragile" nature of some decentralized endeavors vs. an unstoppable crazed mob
during a fever pitch social or political crisis.

------
factsaresacred
> Pre-existing ethnic tensions increased, creating fertile grounds for
> violence and conflict.

Indeed. We have no shortage of reasons to bash one another over the head, but
this one is surely one of the most prevalent. Diversity (of fundamental values
and identity) breeds distrust, and distrust erodes social capital and
institutions.*

What these doomsday articles don't discuss is what exactly the West collapses
into? I mean, we're still going to be here among the ruins even if the pillars
of society collapse. What then?

Perhaps we'll collapse _up_ , into a more equitable, fairer society.

* [http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/...](http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/)

------
chillacy
> Eventually, the working population crashes because the portion of wealth
> allocated to them is not enough, followed by collapse of the elites due to
> the absence of labour

I wonder how automation changes the balance here.

~~~
probe
Often the argument is made that automation = abundance which can resolve a lot
of problems. However, this assumes that the abundance will be equally
distributed, and that is not necessarily true in a capitalistic society
(especially within the last decade with the top centile owning most of wealth
and income). And if some of Piketty's arguments from Capital in the 21st
century hold (particularly r > g), than wealth inequality will continue to
increase.

However, inequality increasing itself is not a bad thing (in fact you need
inequality for capitalism to work) if the overall quality of life for the
bottom improves. If we can reach a point of diminishing marginal returns of
just owning wealth (if it's true that people stop caring about collecting
wealth once they have enough), than yes I think automation can help stop a
collapse because working population won't care because they have enough wealth
to be happy.

However, it is human tendency to base satisfaction and happiness RELATIVE to
others (look at equity theory from management) so we may still end up in a
situation where the quality of life for everyone has improved, but the working
population still views that they're still inequal relative to the top (even
though they're both better off) and we lead to instability. You can argue that
has happened in our modern world today.

~~~
chillacy
> However, it is human tendency to base satisfaction and happiness RELATIVE to
> others

Yea I thought that historically inequality has lead to violent uprisings due
to general resentment and anger, but the article seemed to imply that the
elites collapse because they still implicitly need people to be willing to
work for them, and that's less true with automation.

I wasn't thinking abundance at all. Frankly the term "collapse of the elites
due to absence of labor" is pretty vague.

------
bleair
This is the best summary of the debate about climate change I've seen -

Unfortunately, some experts believe such tough decisions exceed our political
and psychological capabilities. “The world will not rise to the occasion of
solving the climate problem during this century, simply because it is more
expensive in the short term to solve the problem than it is to just keep
acting as usual,” says Jorgen Randers

------
norea-armozel
I have to wonder if in some part what happened during the Bronze Age is
destined to happen again? I can see the US here going belly up if someone was
inclined to test the US resolve to defend the likes of Saudi Arabia
(considering its contribution to the world oil markets is non-trivial and
probably not easily replaced). What I'm getting at with that hypothetical
situation is that we're probably too interconnected now just like we were in
the Bronze Age and with sustained disruptions to vital resources I can imagine
things getting bad in a hurry. I just wish more folks would take this
possibility more seriously and build redundancy and independence where it can
minimize the inevitable disruptions of the future.

------
rdiddly
Nothing new for those of us who've been well convinced progress isn't
limitless, and some of whom might even have heard of Tainter. What _is_ new is
that a fairly mainstream news outlet is actually addressing the issue. A
longtime litany of complaint in the "doomer" "community" (grains of salt
needed) is that there's no mainstream consensus about or attention to these
predicaments at either a root level or a big-picture level.

------
brilliantcode
I think the gist of the article is that western styled democracy is always
going to be more vastly more expensive & economically fragile than any
authoritarian superpower that can simply threaten to kill it's own people or
harvest their organs to boost GDP and serve it's elite.

It uses Syria to make case that climate change was responsible butterly
effect:

> . Syria, for example, enjoyed exceptionally high fertility rates for a time,
> which fueled rapid population growth. A severe drought in the late 2000s,
> likely made worse by human-induced climate change, combined with groundwater
> shortages to cripple agricultural production. That crisis left large numbers
> of people – especially young men – unemployed, discontent and desperate.
> Many flooded into urban centres, overwhelming limited resources and services
> there. Pre-existing ethnic tensions increased, creating fertile grounds for
> violence and conflict. On top of that, poor governance – including
> neoliberal policies that eliminated water subsidies in the middle of the
> drought – tipped the country into civil war in 2011 and sent it careening
> toward collapse.

Which is shockingly accurate.

It makes parallel case for the rise of populism in US and EU becoming an
increasingly less welcoming region as it faces the full pressure from
collapsed countries in the middle east.

tl;dr: learn Mandarin or Russian because they are far more likely to survive a
global economic collapse.

------
chrismealy
Homer-Dixon's book is really good. Tainter's is a classic but it's not fun
reading. Homer-Dixon explains Taiter's argument well enough.

------
duggan
> Denial, including of the emerging prospect of societal collapse itself, will
> be widespread, as will rejection of evidence-based fact.

I want to take this seriously, but I'm dubious of any argument that uses doubt
of its veracity as evidence of its correctness.

------
belovedeagle
Wealth redistribution: a solution in search of a problem. The article does
nothing to link this supposed solution to the world's problems​; it merely
asserts this dubious connection.

Of course the article shows its bias more clearly here:

> Whether in the US, UK or elsewhere, the more dissatisfied and afraid people
> become, Homer-Dixon says, the more of a tendency they have to cling to their
> in-group identity – whether religious, racial or national. Denial, including
> of the emerging prospect of societal collapse itself, will be widespread, as
> will rejection of evidence-based fact. If people admit that problems exist
> at all, they will assign blame for those problems to everyone outside of
> their in-group, building up resentment.

This is using a lot of loaded language to suggest that it's primarily the
right guilty of these things, but identity politics is a mainstay of the left,
at least in the US. Could it be that eliminating identity politics is more
important than redistributing wealth?

~~~
norea-armozel
It's easy to say wealth redistribution is a solution in search of a problem if
you never lived in a city or town that's been slowly rotting away due to the
negligence of the economic elites. I come from Wichita, Kansas and I can tell
you that the last decade back home has been hell on everyone. I had to leave
my home town for another state just to find work that wasn't just $12/hr
(that's about as high as you can get without any college education back home)
even for software development. You might think "oh but the standard of living
in Kansas is cheap" for which I can prove that's not the case, especially for
Wichita. In the long run, either the economic elites actually start investing
in the consumers that made them wealthy or the consumers who can't pay for
their services or goods will (not might) take their wealth from them by force.

