

How Civilizations Fall: A Theory of Catabolic Collapse - aarontait
http://www.xs4all.nl/~wtv/powerdown/greer.htm

======
RyanMcGreal
One of Tainter's more interesting arguments is that collapse, when it occurs,
is a sensible, reasonable response to negative returns on societal complexity.
He notes, somewhat famously, that the average nutrition and health of Romans
actually improved after the collapse of the Roman empire, presumably because
the wealth they generated was no longer being siphoned off to maintain the
empire's overhead.

~~~
run4yourlives
Well, they call it the dark ages for a reason...

Statistics might show improvement because wealth is redistributed, but the
total wealth is also a lot less, which isn't always a good thing.

~~~
pradocchia
It's an example where greater welfare may be derived from less overall wealth,
if a) the marginal benefit of more wealth per member diminishes with each
additional unit, generally, and b) the distribution between members improves,
such that more members are in the steep part of the slope.

Proponents of capitalism usually point to (a) not always being true. That is,
at some point, and under the right social conditions, the marginal benefit per
unit picks up again, when instances of per-member wealth is great enough to
finance capital-intensive production.

------
CulturalNgineer
He makes a solid argument which really comes down to the problem facing any
component of an ecology... either keep expanding until you can't... and then
die back "involuntarily" (pretty much the universal pattern) or get your act
together and make a better plan!

And that's an option only available to "rational" components of an ecology...

So he's really making just a rational argument for the need to either
recognize limits or expand the frontier.

Regarding his thoughts on the role of complexity and a society's need to
simplify... there's some truth in it but to achieve that solution without the
chaos of collapse may actually require an "increase in complexity.

------
alexandros
"[The author] is active in the contemporary nature spirituality movement"

While the concept seems interesting, this line made me seriously doubt the
credibility of the author. I will wait for a few more comments before
attempting to read again.

~~~
KevinMS
Isaac Newton was an alchemist.

Any more examples?

~~~
jerf
Yes, Isaac Newton was an alchemist... _in the mid-17th century_. He died
decades before Antoine Lavoisier founded "modern chemistry".

If Isaac Newton was an alchemist _today_ , I think we would not spend much
time listening to him.

Alchemy was a mix of practice and mystery back then. It's not the same as a
modern alchemist, who is left only with the mystery, because modern chemistry
claimed all the practice centuries ago.

~~~
jerf
(Correction: Late 17th through early 18th. He died in 1727, Lavoisier was born
1743.)

------
rsheridan6
Could there be the seed of a video game here?

------
zackham
A great read on exactly this issue is A New Green History of the World by
Clive Ponting. Noticed it is cited in the page linked but wanted to call it
out specifically since I have read it and really enjoyed it as a history of
human civilization from the perspective of resource availability and
utilization.

~~~
HistoryInAction
Thanks for the recommend. I'll reciprocate with a rec of Arnold Toynbee
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_J._Toynbee>), who wrote about the
cyclical nature of civilizations and societies with a blend of perspectives
from various fields, rather than the basic 'flow of history.'

------
jackchristopher
I swear it's Aubrey De Grey :) <http://www.singularitysummit.com/bios/grey>

