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Musings Report #37 9-10-16 What Triggers Collapse?
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What Triggers Collapse?
Many authors (Jared Diamond, Joseph Tainter, Thomas Homer-Dixon, David Hackett Fischer, Michael Grant and Peter Turchin, to name a few) have delved into the question of why civilizations decay and fail. The question of how nations/empires endure gets considerably less attention, but economic/social adaptability, the resilience of shared purpose/social cohesion, social mobility, the ability to generate reliable surpluses, secure trade routes, a professional army and navy to defend borders and trade routes, a merit-based a professional bureaucracy to collect taxes and oversee commerce, a stable form of money and competent leadership all play critical roles.
But history is replete with examples of nation-states and empires that possess all these positive attributes that still decay and collapse once critical supplies of energy and food fail, or invaders conquer essential territories or trade routes.
Can we generalize the dynamics that weaken a nation/empire to the point where collapse cannot be staved off?
The authors listed above have highlighted the following systemic dynamics:
1. Rising complexity that no longer increases productivity or efficiency. (Tainter, Homer-Dixon)
2. Loss of social cohesion and shared purpose. (Turchin, Grant)
3. Environmental destruction, population over-reach, resource/food scarcities. (Diamond, Fischer)
4. Leadership clings to failed models, insuring systemic failure. (Diamond, Grant)
5. Costs of conquering territory exceed the gains: nation bled dry by defending borders in periods of warring states or imperial over-reach.
These are powerful insights into the causal backdrop of decay and collapse, but this isn’t the entire story: we have to understand path dependent failure, increasing systemic fragility, and the catastrophic failure model of collapse.
Path dependency describes necessary progressions: to get to D, you must first go from A to B, from B to C and then from C to D.
Path dependency is visible in many advances and histories. It wasn’t possible to go from the physics of the ancient Greeks straight to Einstein’s general theory of Relativity; the path had to proceed through the step-by-step advances of Newton et al.
Rome did not leap from being a modest city-state to sprawling Empire in one Great Leap Forward. (The Great Leap Forward was an incredibly devastating central-planning failure in China in the late 1950s, as Mao’s attempt to bypass path dependency caused millions of deaths from famine.)
Just as advances tend to be path-dependent, so are declines. The Roman Empire didn’t collapse in a sudden event. First, leadership declined (the turnover of emperors increased at an alarming rate); Western finances deteriorated (the cost of bread and circuses skyrocketed), and the cost of defending the borders rose as tribal incursions increased.
As A proceeds to B and B to C, collapse is still several steps away. Effective leadership that repairs the damage can reverse the progression, and indeed, several long-ruling emperors restored much of Rome’s resilience. (Major military victories over rivals helped.)
We can understand path dependent decline as an increase in systemic fragility—but increasing fragility does not necessarily follow a path-dependent progression (one weakness setting the stage for another causally linked failure).
Fragility can arise from synergistic crises that are not necessarily path dependent but are accretive; the viral load on a person’s immune system is one analogy. As the viral count rises, the immune system’s response to the next threat is seriously degraded.
In other words, erosion on a number of unrelated fronts can increase fragility to a tipping point where a relatively modest crisis can break the system. Examples include a loss of faith in a society’s gods, rivals obtaining more advanced military technologies, and the sudden arrival of new enemies on the borders.
Random events such as plague and drought can dramatically collapse what was otherwise a fairly stable system. This is the catastrophic failure model, in which an essential link is broken by invasion, severe drought, environmental breakdown, plague, etc. In this model, a society that would otherwise have continued indefinitely is fatally disrupted by a single catastrophic failure.
In some cases, a crisis (or series of synergistic crises) could have been handled in the society’s heyday, but it breaks a weakened system that was near a tipping point-- a tipping point that was largely invisible to participants.
In other cases, the loss is irreplaceable, and a cascade to system instability is inevitable. Once the Western Roman Empire lost its bread basket in North Africa, the collapse was baked in—there was no alternative source of wheat to feed the army or distribute as free bread to the unemployed mob in Rome.
Once the merchant fleets of Europe bypassed the Silk Road and China lost the monopoly on silk, tea and porcelain, there was no alternative market of equivalent size for China’s exports.
Collapse, or Just a Necessary Adaptation?
The process we call collapse from a vantage point in time far from the actual events is more accurately a transition from one mode of production to another.
We decry collapse and laud the expansion of technologies that birth new modes of production, but both are best understood as adaptations and solutions to a new set of circumstances and challenges.
Thus the so-called Dark Age (Medieval era) between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance was not merely the dismal detritus left by the collapse of the Western Roman mode of production; just like the eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) that endured 1,000 years beyond the fall of Rome, the so-called Dark Age was a successful and highly complex adaptation to new circumstances and challenges.
Understood in this light, the medieval era wasn’t a failure of the Western Roman mode of production so much as a replacement of what was no longer sustainable for a variety of reasons. Put another way, the surpluses needed to sustain the Roman Empire declined to the point that the payoff for maintaining the complex Empire no longer covered its expenses.
While history seeks to lay the blame of decay and collapse on incompetent leadership or a barbarian invasion, the deeper truth is the entire Roman mode of production creased to be viable. Brilliant leadership may have delayed the transition to another mode of production, but it could not by itself sustain what was no longer sustainable.
I think it is self-evident that we are on the cusp of just such a transition from an increasingly unsustainable mode of production to another more sustainable order. This transition will be experienced by many as a collapse, but this is not necessarily a collapse so much as a rapid, disorderly adaptation as the fatal flaws of the existing order are revealed by interconnected, mutually-reinforcing crises.
I think it is fair to conclude that the status quo mode of production and the elite-dominated social order it supports is increasingly fragile for a number of reasons—some are path-dependent, others are unrelated by synergistic. I think we’re approaching the tipping point that few observers living in the moment can discern—partly because the potential for a crisis toppling the entire regime strikes observers as unlikely or even impossible.
Resilience and Opportunity
The collapse of Roman rule and the rise of a complex medieval mode of production—much less centralized and no longer as reliant on trade for its wealth—reveals the resilience of humans and human communities. There is no evidence in the historical record that the populace of the Roman Empire died off as soon as Roman control disappeared; rather, people moved to other places and took up other ways of getting by.
In time, much of the population of the metropolis of Rome drifted away. Some moved to the relative security of monasteries or patrician estates. Others moved to areas under the protection of Byzantium, for example, Ravenna on the eastern coast of Italy. Still others slowly established independent fiefdoms such as Venice.
People didn’t just die once the legions and bureaucrats of Rome vanished. They adapted.
There are many pathways to adaptation. If Nature is any guide, periods of rapid, semi-chaotic change generate an explosion of innovation that creates multiple pathways of adaptation (failures are of course abundant; those who learn quickly from mistakes tend to be survivors).
I will end with an illustration of how the opportunities for adaptation depend on one’s perspective and experience.
Consider a pile of wood chips. To the nobility with no experience of real-world work, the wood chips are trash that need be hauled away as an eyesore. To someone with experience in agriculture, the chips are excellent mulch. To someone on the bottom of the wealth-income pyramid who is sleeping rough and living hand to-mouth, they are a potential bed.
In other words, the value and opportunities presented by crisis, collapse and adaptation vary depending on the experiences of each individual and class within the social order. The social class that loses their unearned privileges and wealth will likely bemoan the transition to a new mode of production as a disastrous collapse. To those with productive experience, opportunities will abound.
Summary of the Blog This Past Week
Control What You Can 9/9/16
Our Selfie Society Is Incompatible with Democracy 9/8/16
Identity Politics = Totalitarianism 9/7/16
Our Impoverished, Pathological Society 9/6/16
Labor Day Summary: Wage Earners Have Taken a Beating 9/5/16
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
Attended a performance of Steve Reich's "Double Sextet," (composed 2007) my first exposure to this American composer's work.
Market Musings: When do we get a decent decline/mini-crash?
Whether you're hoping to profit by going short on the way down or by buying the dip, a decline decline/mini-crash is a welcome opportunity.
When do we get a decent decline? Is this little drop going to extend, or will it quickly be bought?
Interestingly, it seems the giant rising wedge that's been forming since January has broken to the downside. This is not bullish. Here's the weekly chart of the S&P 500:
MACD and stochastics have rolled over in bearish crosses. There are price targets--the 20-week and 50-week moving averages, the lower Bollinger band and the round numbers of 2100 and 2000.
Where will the bottom be put in? Nobody knows, but once the weekly stochastic hits the 20 level, the bottom is likely at hand.
Will this develop into a real crash, or will the dip be bought? Nobody knows, but there's a hint of one more rally before a serious decline: the MACD is still far above the neutral line.
Bad things happen when the MACD falls below the neutral line, and it will take some time for that to happen.
This suggests (but does not guarantee) a decline followed by the usual seasonal rally in Nov. - January or so, and then, if the weekly MACD plunges through the neutral line, a truly serious decline.
But first, let's see how far this drop extends.
From Left Field
An Elephant Never Forgets: Mother Brings Newborn to Animal Sanctuary That Raised Her (via CNF)
The Estate Jackie Built With John F. Kennedy is for Sale (via CNF)-- secure basement for Secret Service agents a plus...
A Dog Is Re-Elected Mayor For A Third Term -- town is very well managed, according to reports...
The rise of marriage for one: The women taking the ‘we’ out of wedding are representative of a much bigger social trend
THE PATHOLOGIES OF PRIVILEGE: Everyone knows privilege is a rotten thing. But should it be excised or democratized?
Did You Do These 6 Activities Today? Then You’ve Got Class Privilege -- getting a full night's sleep is now a sign of privilege...?
In Pa., boomers see the American Dream slipping away -- those with government pensions are retired in Florida, private-sector people are still working...
Against Charity: Rather than creating an individualized “culture of giving,” we should be challenging capitalism’s institutionalized taking.
Why Luck Plays a Big Role in Making You Rich -- but luck is rarely sufficient by itself...
System is rigged for the rich so the poor borrow to get poorer -- excellent explanation of how debt has a dual function: for investment and consumption...
It’s Tough Being Over 40 in Silicon Valley: Older workers are trying lawsuits, classes, makeovers--even surgery--to keep working. -- will fake avatars be a "solution" to ageism?
You’re How Old? We’ll Be in Touch -- more on ageism...
COULD GENETICALLY MODIFIED MOSQUITOES SAVE HAWAII’S ENDANGERED BIRDS? -- I hope so....
"It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment." Cicero
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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