{"id":2489,"date":"2011-01-11T10:47:59","date_gmt":"2011-01-11T17:47:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/?p=2489"},"modified":"2011-02-13T09:01:06","modified_gmt":"2011-02-13T16:01:06","slug":"the-collapse-of-complex-societes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/the-collapse-of-complex-societes\/","title":{"rendered":"The Collapse of Complex Societes"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><span style=\"font-family: Verdana;\">(1989) Joseph A. Tainter<br \/>\n<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Verdana; color: #ff3300; font-size: x-small;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/JospehTainter_TheCollapseOfComplexSocieties.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-2490 alignnone\" title=\"JospehTainter_TheCollapseOfComplexSocieties\" src=\"http:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/JospehTainter_TheCollapseOfComplexSocieties-209x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"100\" height=\"136\" \/><\/a><\/span><\/span>Tainter presents a detailed review of the major theories on societal collapse.\u00c2\u00a0 Through appeal to diminishing marginal returns on complexity, Tainter takes a pseudo-economic line to argue that decay is inevitably  in the cards for any complex society.\u00c2\u00a0 Unfortunately, little attempt is  made to constrain the notion of &#8216;complexity&#8217;.\u00c2\u00a0 In reference to the prospect(s) for  modern society, one of Tainter&#8217;s more interesting observations is that  complex societies that exist as islands in a sea of barbarism tend to  collapse suddenly and dramatically, while those that exist amongst estimable competitors tend to undergo long, drawn-out decay as power is slowly but surely usurped.\u00c2\u00a0 Rather than the desperate bank-runs and grocery-store pillages envisaged by some, I would not be surprised if Tainter envisages a less catastrophic 21st Century in which the United States and Europe slowly deteriorate into a backwater of China.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Talk of collapse is becoming increasingly fashionable, as is starkly illustrated by analysis of the word &#8216;collapse&#8217; in English literature: (using the on-line database at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.culturomics.org\/\">http:\/\/www.culturomics.org\/<\/a>)<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_2505\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2505\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/OccurenceOfTheWord_Collapse_.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-2505\" title=\"OccurenceOfTheWord_Collapse_\" src=\"http:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/OccurenceOfTheWord_Collapse_-300x110.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"110\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/OccurenceOfTheWord_Collapse_-300x110.png 300w, https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/OccurenceOfTheWord_Collapse_.png 900w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2505\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Relative occurrence of the word &#39;collapse&#39; in a large sample of English books<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(1989) Joseph A. Tainter Tainter presents a detailed review of the major theories on societal collapse.\u00c2\u00a0 Through appeal to diminishing marginal returns on complexity, Tainter takes a pseudo-economic line to argue that decay is inevitably in the cards for any complex society.\u00c2\u00a0 Unfortunately, little attempt is made to constrain the notion of &#8216;complexity&#8217;.\u00c2\u00a0 In reference &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/the-collapse-of-complex-societes\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Collapse of Complex Societes<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civilization"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2489"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2504,"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2489\/revisions\/2504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realfuture.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}