Does corporate consolidation really simplify the economy? Does 1 WalMart replacing 17 smaller stores make things simpler? I would argue that it does not, since the functionality of those stores are now subsumed as departments at WalMart. In other words, all the complexity once carried on by each of those 17 stores remains, though now as a department at WalMart rather than an independent store. What WalMart does is the same as what the state does: it adds a level of complexity on top of those other stores.

This has obvious benefits, most immediately an economy of scale (but see Jeff Vail’s “Anti-Economies“). Whether or not complexity has benefits is not the issue, though; the issue is the marginal return one can get from that investment in complexity—or, for example, whether the benefit of an economy of scale is worth the added costs in overhead, management, and other costs of increased complexity.

1 Wal Mart instead of 17 smaller stores is reductive. There is less choice.

Shirts from a few vendors can be found at Walmart, on the other end of the spectrum, Nordstrom, you have a greater variety because it provides the luxury of wide selection. That comes at a premium.

Walmart employs many people and singular principles, which means that it’s easier to run Walmart in a collapse than it is to run Nordstom which has fewer, more specialized employees.

Based on this principle, collapse is gradual and it is marked by centralization and lower variety of consumed goods.

Just to balance things here, the neocons don’t get it either.

I think they do.

Otherwise the crash would be in full swing already.

I think it is.

Without a doubt, the neocons are the reigning monarchs of “not getting it”.

“Neocon” is a much-abused ephitet. Neoconservatism is a political philosophy, and its adherents have, I think, some of the clearest understandings of the situation we’re in that side of anarchism. See “Petroleum et Imperium Americanum.

When the masses do “get it,” that is the moment everything breaks down. The fact that civilization still exists is all the evidence necessary to prove that most people do not “get it.”

But perhaps the tonic to said disappointment is to realize, as ChandraShakti says, that the vast majority of people on the planet don’t get it (and it would probably freak them out royally if they did, so you also can’t really blame them that much).

Taking the long view, the “mechanics of collapse” arc is just the top part of a sine wave.

Given the long, long flat part before the current spike, and our future prospects, no, it looks like this arc is, in fact, quite the anomoly.

Do you mean “answers” in some conscious sense? That a deliberative body passes a law?

Or the market squeezes out a new invention, or the government gets reorganized, or there’s a reorganization of the corporate powers, or there’s new information-processing agents brought on. I’m talking about the adaptations the system as a whole makes to accomodate new shocks and overcome obstacles.

Collapse very much is a choice that societies make from time to time–when the option of being a civilization is no longer tolerable, as discussed in thesis #20: “Collapse is an economizing process.” But, from your tone, I doubt the truth of the matter is quite what you had in mind….

Do you mean “answers” in some conscious sense? That a deliberative body passes a law? Otherwise, I’d say that medieval Europe answered stress with the Black Death, radically reducing complexity. And Rwanda had it’s own nasty answer. Why not see “collapse” as one of the choices that civilization makes from time to time?