10 ms·

How Western Civilization Could Collapse

56 points by probe 9y ago

bleair 9y ago
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
dvdhnt 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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.
  - MR4D 9y ago
    Complexity = Friction. Too much will stop anything.
  - dwaltrip 9y ago
    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.
chrismealy 9y ago
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.
chillacy 9y ago
> 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 9y ago
  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.
  - gremlinsinc 9y ago
    There's a difference from envying the haves, while having not, --and starving or being unable to clothe yourself, or even not being able to buy a low-end smartphone at all. Not saying everyone needs an iphone to be happy, but having low end feature comforts -will satiate people enough that they will be a LOT less likely to rebel -- it's when people become desperate that we have problems
  - chillacy 9y ago
    > 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.
vinceguidry 9y ago
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.
- jcranmer 9y ago
  > 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. War is the ultimate test of political systems. In France alone, the First Republic, First Empire, Second Empire, Vichy France, Third Republic, and Fourth Republics all collapsed due to strains of war. Similarly, loss in WWI proved the end of several strains of government. In the United States, the American Civil War prompted Lincoln to more or less tear up the Constitution (although it should also be noted that many provisions only apply in times of peace). Merely asserting that Western governments are immune to the foibles of fascism and dictatorship is folly. While I agree that many countries have fairly strong checks against reversion from democracy, a prolonged period of weakening could still very well happen.
factsaresacred 9y ago
> 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/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/ http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/...
belovedeagle 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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.
brilliantcode 9y ago
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.
duggan 9y ago
> 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.
rdiddly 9y ago
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.
chmln 9y ago
> 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.
- throwaway10934 9y ago
  > Unexpected or rather unexpected to those on the far-left of the political spectrum... Which planet are you living on? Noam Chomsky predicted the election of someone like Trump six years ago [1]. You have it backwards: it's the milquetoast neoliberal part of the spectrum that didn't see the rise of fascism coming. Socialists, communists, anarchists, etc. have been concerned about the rise of fascism ever since World War II. [1] http://www.snopes.com/noam-chomsky-predicted-trumps-presidency/ http://www.snopes.com/noam-chomsky-predicted-trumps-presiden...
  - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
    > Socialists, communists, anarchists, etc. have been concerned about the rise of fascism ever since World War II. Yes, they have. They have predicted nine of the last zero fascist dictatorships (with one awaiting further evidence).
- sanderjd 9y ago
  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.
norea-armozel 9y ago
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.

56 points by probe 9y ago

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

dvdhnt 9y ago

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 9y ago
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.
- MR4D 9y ago
  Complexity = Friction. Too much will stop anything.
- dwaltrip 9y ago
  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.

chrismealy 9y ago

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.

chillacy 9y ago

> 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 9y ago
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.
- gremlinsinc 9y ago
  There's a difference from envying the haves, while having not, --and starving or being unable to clothe yourself, or even not being able to buy a low-end smartphone at all. Not saying everyone needs an iphone to be happy, but having low end feature comforts -will satiate people enough that they will be a LOT less likely to rebel -- it's when people become desperate that we have problems
- chillacy 9y ago
  > 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.

vinceguidry 9y ago

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.

jcranmer 9y ago
> 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. War is the ultimate test of political systems. In France alone, the First Republic, First Empire, Second Empire, Vichy France, Third Republic, and Fourth Republics all collapsed due to strains of war. Similarly, loss in WWI proved the end of several strains of government. In the United States, the American Civil War prompted Lincoln to more or less tear up the Constitution (although it should also be noted that many provisions only apply in times of peace). Merely asserting that Western governments are immune to the foibles of fascism and dictatorship is folly. While I agree that many countries have fairly strong checks against reversion from democracy, a prolonged period of weakening could still very well happen.

factsaresacred 9y ago

> 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/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/ http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/...

belovedeagle 9y ago

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 9y ago
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.

brilliantcode 9y ago

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.

duggan 9y ago

> 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.

rdiddly 9y ago

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.

chmln 9y ago

> 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.

throwaway10934 9y ago
> Unexpected or rather unexpected to those on the far-left of the political spectrum... Which planet are you living on? Noam Chomsky predicted the election of someone like Trump six years ago [1]. You have it backwards: it's the milquetoast neoliberal part of the spectrum that didn't see the rise of fascism coming. Socialists, communists, anarchists, etc. have been concerned about the rise of fascism ever since World War II. [1] http://www.snopes.com/noam-chomsky-predicted-trumps-presidency/ http://www.snopes.com/noam-chomsky-predicted-trumps-presiden...
- AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  > Socialists, communists, anarchists, etc. have been concerned about the rise of fascism ever since World War II. Yes, they have. They have predicted nine of the last zero fascist dictatorships (with one awaiting further evidence).
sanderjd 9y ago
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.

norea-armozel 9y ago

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.