Joseph Tainter: Collapse and Complexity

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"Collapse, if and when it comes
again, will this time be global.

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No longer can any individual
nation collapse.

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World civilization will
disintegrate as a whole.

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What may be a catastrophe
to administrators

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need not be to the bulk
of the population.

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Collapse is not intrinsically
a catastrophe: it is a rational

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economizing process that
may well benefit much

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of the population." Joseph
Tainter. Good evening.

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This is Radio Free Beszel.
I am Alphonse.

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Tonight: Tainter's collapse
and complexity.

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Imagine you get a job as
a high-flying lawyer

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in New York City. You're
making a big salary,

0:45
but you're working long
hours. And as a result

0:47
you have to spend money on
a lot of other things.

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You have to spend money on
a house in an expensive

0:52
neighborhood. You have to
spend money on clothes,

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on flying, on a nice car.
When you have children,

0:58
you have to hire tutors for
them because you don't

1:02
have the time to spend
looking after them.

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And at some point in your
life you look at

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what you're doing and you
think, everything I'm

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doing is work, and nothing
I'm doing is for me or

1:13
my family. Maybe it would
make more sense to

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find a small place out
of the way somewhere,

1:19
reduce my income, but reduce
my spending too.

1:22
Simplify my life. Maybe
my life would be better

1:25
then. In other words, you
figure that you might

1:29
actually be better off if
you simplified your life

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instead of living
with all the

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complexity that allows
you to be wealthy.

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That, in a nutshell, at a
personal level, is what

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Tainter is talking about
when he talks about the

1:42
collapse of societies or
civilizations. Collapse

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isn't something forced on
a society - at least

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not in most cases. It's a
choice. It may be a bad

1:52
choice, but it may also be
a less bad choice than

1:56
the alternatives. There
have been many theories

1:59
of the collapse of
civilizations. One particularly

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popular approach, going
back to ancient times,

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is that a civilization
is like a person. It's

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vigorous when it's young,
stable when it's mature,

2:12
and then it declines and
disintegrates in old age.

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Well, that might be
a description of

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what happens to some
civilizations.

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It doesn't explain anything
about why a society

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collapses, or why it collapses
when it collapses.

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There are other theories
that people have come

2:30
up with, for example that
a society may collapse

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when it runs out of a
crucial resource. Or

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it may be attacked by
outsiders like the

2:38
barbarians who invaded the
Roman Empire. Or it

2:41
may be a consequence of
class conflict within

2:45
or the corruption of elites.
But Tainter says

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these explanations are weak,
because societies

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and civilizations often
weather such crises.

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There may be natural disasters
that they survive,

2:58
barbarian invaders who
don't get through. In

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fact, Rome had fought
off stronger attempts

3:03
at invasion before it
finally fell. And

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problems like class conflict
and corruption

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are normal in societies. They're
usually there all

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along - so why would they
suddenly cause collapse?

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Tainter's theory of
collapse is in his

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book, The Collapse of
Complex Societies,

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published in 1988.
By collapse he

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means a rapid reduction
in complexity.

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Complexity may sound
like an abstraction,

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but it's actually something
fairly concrete,

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something that we could find
proxy measures for.

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For example, a complex society
would be one likely

3:38
that has more social roles;
more different kinds

3:41
of jobs; more different
kinds of products that

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are produced, more that
are consumed; more

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trading partners; more
different scales of

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settlements, from villages
to cities; deeper

3:53
social hierarchies; and
so on. So complexity

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is something that you could
actually measure.

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And a rapid significant
reduction in complexity

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would be noticeable.
What Tainter says

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is that as societies
encounter challenges

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they increase their complexity.
For example, say

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your society has war-like
neighbors, and it faces

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the threat of invasion. In
response it develops a

4:17
military. That means now
that there's a hierarchy

4:21
within the military of
officers and soldiers.

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Arms and equipment need
to be manufactured,

4:26
supplies, training academies
and so on. So there's

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an increase in the complexity
of the society to

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address the problem of the
threat of invasion. Say

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the country actually goes
to war and conquers the

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war-like neighbor. Now
there needs to be an

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administration to manage
the new territory.

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Again there's an increase
in complexity. And that

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complexity has costs. That
army has to be paid.

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Someone has to pay for
the equipment. Someone

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has to pay for the training.
Somebody has to

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pay for the administration
of the new territory.

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The problem, Tainter says,
is that as the society

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becomes more complex, the
benefits of additional

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complexity reduce and the
costs increase - or at

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least the balance between
those shifts. So

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the returns on the investment
in complexity

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go down. One of the clearest
examples of

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this is food in hunter-gatherer
societies.

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Food existed in nature, and
all people had to do

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was go and find it and collect
it. And in fact

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those people had some of
the most leisure time of

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any people ever. As human
population increased,

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that was a challenge that
was met by finding

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more food sources and
intensifying agriculture

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by actually growing food
rather than going

5:42
and finding it. People
could grow more food

5:45
in the same amount of land,
but it took more

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work. In other words, it
took more human energy

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to grow food than it did
to find it. And this

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continued right up until
the present day. In fact

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right now it takes about
10 calories of fossil

5:59
fuel energy to grow one
calorie of food energy.

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If it wasn't for the essential
free energy that

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fossil fuel gave us we would
be starving to death.

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And Tainter argues this applies
to other resources

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too. No matter what the resource
is, whether it's

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oil supplies or forests
or fisheries, humans

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naturally go after the
low-hanging fruit first.

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And the result is that as
we need every additional

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fish, every additional barrel
of oil and so on,

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that additional fish,
that additional

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barrel of oil is more
expensive to collect.

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The same is true for an
empire like the Roman

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Empire invading other
territories in order to

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take their wealth. As it
conquers more territory,

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the administrative overhead
grows faster than the

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wealth from the newly conquered
territories.

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And as that return on
investment decreases,

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it may start to look to
some of the people in

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the society as if this isn't
worth it anymore.

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There may even come a point
where the benefit

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of invading one more territory
or extracting

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one more barrel of oil
just isn't worth it,

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where the cost actually
exceeds the benefit.

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Now one response to
this might be to

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say, well, technology
will solve this.

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But the same phenomenon
occurs with

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technology, as Tainter
demonstrates.

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we go after the low-hanging
technologies first,

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just as we went after the
low-hanging resources.

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You can see this for example
with computer

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chips. For a long time
Moore's Law ruled and

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computer chips rapidly
got more sophisticated

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and cheaper. But in the
past decade or so that

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has slowed down. And this
happens in technological

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development generally.
Technology isn't a way out,

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it's just one more example
of diminishing returns.

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The one thing that can be
a way out, Tainter says,

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is a new source of energy,
as for example when

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we started exploiting
fossil fuels and oil.

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But that cost is not necessarily
distributed

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equally among the people
in a society. Those

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who are part of the additional
complexity are

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having resources allocated
to them in order to

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manage things. For example,
a military

8:07
empire has to spend
on its soldiers.

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Or if it doesn't spend on
the soldiers, they're

8:13
likely to revolt. So there
comes a point where

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some of the groups in
society may find that

8:18
they might be better off
if the society was

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less complex. The farmers
may find that they

8:24
are paying high taxes to
maintain an army that

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doesn't seem to be benefiting
them, for example,

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and at that point they
may prefer collapse.

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And Tainter said in fact that
happened - that many

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of the Romans welcomed the
barbarian invasions

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because it wiped away
the expensive taxes

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and administration that
they were paying.

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Now when I say taxes,
i don't necessarily

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mean government costs:
those costs could be

8:48
in any institution in society.
Complexity can

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be all over the place. Now
if Tainter is right,

8:56
this pattern of diminishing
marginal returns

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strikes every society. And
ours is no exception.

9:03
In fact, when I look at
the quality of living

9:06
from 40 or 50 years ago,
it seems to me that it

9:09
has not gone up. Back then,
a single income with

9:12
a job that didn't necessarily
require university

9:15
education was sufficient
to support a house, a

9:18
family, education and so
on. And today it's not.

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Our inflation statistics
may suggest that we

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are better off because
we have better phones

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and better televisions,
but when you look at

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the essentials of life
- things like housing,

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transportation, food,
education and health

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care - those things are
extremely expensive.

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And one of the reasons
they're expensive

9:41
is because of increased
complexity.

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So it might be that many of
us would be better off

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with what Tainter would
describe as a collapse:

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a significant rapid reduction
in complexity. I

9:52
should just note that collapse
in Tainter's terms

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doesn't have to be a free
fall. It doesn't have

9:58
to mean the elimination
of society altogether.

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It simply means reduced
complexity. We might be

10:03
better off with it, he says:
but it can't happen.

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He says collapse occurs
and can only occur in

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a power vacuum. What he
means is that a society

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that's in competition with
other societies can't

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collapse. If it tries, it'll
basically be taken

10:20
over. And when it's taken
over it's unlikely to

10:23
become less complex. And
in fact we've seen this,

10:26
when Greece hit the
wall financially

10:28
in the 2010s and tried
to go bankrupt.

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It wasn't allowed to. It
was bailed out by the

10:33
rest of Europe - even though
the administrators

10:36
and politicians who arranged
the bailout knew

10:38
that Greece could never
pay back the money.

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And yet they bailed it out
and then they extracted

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wealth from Greece by
privatizing public assets.

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So Tainter says, in societies
in competition,

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collapse can't happen unless
they all collapse

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together. They have to
keep competing. And as

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they continue to compete,
much of the population

10:59
may find that it is immiserated
as complexity

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increases and it has to
be paid for somehow by

11:06
someone. Now one of the
interesting things about

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Tainter's theory is that
it's not political.

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For Tainter, none of this
is a consequence of

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conflict between classes.
Class conflict may

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be normal, but because
it's normal it can't

11:20
explain exceptional events
like collapses.

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But if you look at the dynamic
within a society,

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there's obviously a class
component. The people

11:30
who are benefiting the most
from the increased

11:32
complexity are going to
be the administrators,

11:34
the managers and the leaders
and so on. And

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the people who are going
to be paying it are

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the masses of the population,
the workers.

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For the administrators,
increased complexity

11:45
is what pays their wages.
They don't want to

11:47
collapse. For the majority
of the population,

11:50
collapse might bring benefits.
If competition

11:53
with other societies prevents
collapse, that is

11:57
actually to the benefit
of the administrative

12:00
class. It might seem
beneficial then

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to actually simply reduce
complexity slowly

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rather than collapsing
suddenly. But that is

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very difficult. Tainter says
it basically doesn't

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happen. Because it's much
easier to add complexity

12:16
than it is to eliminate
complexity,a

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nd that although he
doesn't say, it

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may be the consequence of
class dynamics. Because

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those with the greatest interest
in complexity are

12:25
those who make a living
from it. And they have

12:28
no interest at all in allowing
it to be reduced.

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Despite exhausting resources
and the environment's

12:34
capacity to absorb our
wastes, according to

12:37
Tainter it's highly unlikely
that we would be able

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to simplify our way to
sustainability. So we're

12:43
in a bind. We can't collapse
because we're in

12:46
competition - until we all
hit the wall together,

12:50
the whole world. And then
there's potentially a

12:53
global collapse, as he says,
or we find some new

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source of energy. And
that source of energy

12:59
allows us to continue longer.
Unfortunately,

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that doesn't seem to be
on the horizon. This is

13:07
Alphonse for Radio Free
Beszel, www.beszel.ca.

13:13
Good night.