The ‘and them some’ is what causes the trouble. Complex societies collapse because, when some stress comes, those societies have become too inflexible to respond. In retrospect, this can seem mystifying. Why didn’t these societies just re-tool in less complex ways? The answer Tainter gives is the simplest one: When societies fail to respond to reduced circumstances through orderly downsizing, it isn’t because they don’t want to, it’s because they can’t.
In such systems, there is no way to make things a little bit simpler – the whole edifice becomes a huge, interlocking system not readily amenable to change.
I can’t help but think of The Dictator’s Handbook and how all of the societies examined were probably very far from democratic. The over-extraction of resources was probably relatively aligned with the interests of the ruling class. “The king neither hates you nor loves you, but your life is made up of value which can be extracted to keep the nobles from stabbing him in the back for another few years”
I can’t help but think of The Dictator’s Handbook and how all of the societies examined were probably very far from democratic. The over-extraction of resources was probably relatively aligned with the interests of the ruling class. “The king neither hates you nor loves you, but your life is made up of value which can be extracted to keep the nobles from stabbing him in the back for another few years”