Thesis #14: Complexity is subject to diminishing returns.
by Jason GodeskyJoseph Tainter’s 1988 The Collapse of Complex Societies remains the definitive work in the field of collapse. Tainter reviews other explanations of collapse–including economics, invasion and environmental problems–and finds them all insufficient. While these factors certainly play their roles, these are also the very same stressors that complexity is supposed to deal with. Thus, while these might suffice as proximate causes, it only underlines the ultimate cause all the more. Why do complex societies become vulnerable to the very kinds of stress which, at an earlier time in its history, the society in question would simply shrug off?
Tainter’s answer lies with complexity itself, and the law of diminishing returns. As a society becomes more complex, greater complexity becomes more costly. The escalation of complexity becomes increasingly difficult to maintain, until it finally becomes impossible.
It is well worth noting, as Tainter does, that complexity is a function of energy. He writes:
Human societies and political organizations, like all living systems, are maintained by a continuous flow of energy. From the simplest familial unit to the most complex regional hierarchy, the institutions and patterned interactions that comprise a human society are dependent on energy. At the same time, the mechanisms by which human groups acquire and distribute basic resources are conditioned by, and integrated within, sociopolitical institutions. Energy flow and sociopolitical organization are opposites sides of an equation. Neither can exist, in a human group, without the other, nor can either undergo substantial change without altering both the opposite member and the balance of the equation. Energy flow and sociopolitical organization must evolve in harmony.
Not only is energy flow required to maintain a sociopolitical system, but the amount of energy must be sufficient for the complexity of that system. Leslie White observed a number of years ago that cultural evolution was intricately linked to the quantities of energy harvested by a human population. The amounts of energy required per capita to maintain the simplest human institutions are incredibly small compared with those needed by the most complex. White once estimated that a cultural system activated primarily by human energy could generate only about 1/20 horsepower per capita per year. This contrasts sharply with the hundreds to thousands of horsepower at the command of members of industrial societies. Cultural complexity varies accordingly. Julian Steward pointed out the quantitative difference between the 3,000 to 6,000 cultural elements early anthropologists documented for the native populations of western North America, and the more than 500,000 artifact types that U.S. military forces landed at Casa Blanca in World War II.
More complex societies are more costly to maintain than simpler ones, requiring greater support levels per capita. As societies increase in complexity, more networks are created among individuals, more hierarchical controls are created to regulate these networks, more information is processed, there is more centralization of information flow, there is increasing need to support specialists not directly involved in resource production, and the like. All this complexity is dependent upon energy flow at a scale vastly greater than that characterizing small groups of self-sufficient foragers or agriculturalists. The result is that as a society evolves toward greater complexity, the support costs on each individual will also rise, so that the population as a whole must allocate increasing portions of its energy budget to maintaining organizational institutions. This is an immutable fact of societal evolution, and is not mitigated by type of energy source.
So, we see with the rise of complexity two distinct phenomena arising with relation to energy. First, greater complexity allows for more energy to be unlocked. Agriculture is more complex than foraging, and yields more calories than foraging; an oil rig is far more complex than a bow drill for making fire, and yields far more energy. At the same time, complexity also has an energy cost–a cost which grows greater the more complex a society is. Thus, complexity is an investment. It has a benefit, and it has a cost, both in terms of energy.
It is also worth noting that, for a variety of reasons, including the fact that human population is a function of food supply (thesis #4) and thus, energy, as well as the Prisoner’s Dilemna that forces complex societies into a positive feedback loop of increasing investment in complexity (thesis #12), that societies are often compelled to make every investment into complexity that they are capable of making, due both to their own population pressures, as well as the threat of competition from those societies that do make such investments. As such, complexity becomes a function of energy flow, such that given information about a society’s energy flow, its level of complexity can be accurately predicted.
However, Tainter has also highlighted the cost of complexity–a cost which, due to the law of diminishing returns, is constantly increasing, while the benefits of complexity are likewise diminishing. This provides a counter-force to the positive feedback loop of societal complexity. Eventually, further complexity becomes far too costly, making the positive feedback loop impossible to pursue any longer. When that occurs, as Tainter highlights, it means collapse.
Tainter discusses four aspects of complexity in his discussion of complexity’s marginal returns:
- Agriculture and resource production.
- Information processing.
- Sociopolitical control and specialization.
- Overall economic productivity.
To this, I would like to add for the purposes of our current discussion:
It stands to reason that if each of these five elements of complexity are subject to diminishing returns, then we may also conclude that the thesis, “Complexity is subject to diminishing returns,” is also reasonable.
Agriculture and resource production.
The Law of Diminishing Marginal Returns was originally formulated in the context of agricultural production. It was observed that adding more workers to a field would increase productivity. However, when this was pursued far enough, it became evident that the added productivity of any given worker was not strictly additive. Two workers could double the yield of just one, but eventually a point was reached where each additional worker meant less of an increase over the previous one. Each new worker still added some additional yield, but that additional yield began to approach zero. Meanwhile, the investment of one more worker remained the same. Thus, the marginal return–how much is returned per investment–went down. The point at which adding another unit of investment, such as another worker, ceased to have a simple additive effect on returns, is called the point of diminishing returns. Past that point, investment cost remains the same, but the benefits returned begin to approach zero.
When we abstract to any kind of subsistence technology, we see this is also tied to the “low-hanging fruit” problem–in this case, literal fruit. If a forager band picks the largest, sweetest, most nutritious, and easiest to acquire fruit first, then any expansion of harvesting must, necessarily, involve more effort (as they took the easiest to acquire fruit first, so the remaining fruit must be more difficult to obtain), for less reward (as they took the largest, sweetest and most nutritious fruit first, so the remaining fruit must be smaller, more bitter, and/or less nutritious). The same principle extends to horticulture and agriculture, as well. The first fields will be planted in the most fertile, easily tilled soil; further cultivation must, then, take place in less fertile and/or more difficult soil. Thus, either the cost will go up, the yield will go down, or–as is usually the case–both.
Information processing.
Jeff Vail has often written on the inefficiency of hierarchy’s information processing capabilities. The span of control limits how many subordinates any hierarch can effectively administer (usually around 5), while the SNAFU principle and signal degradation limits how deep a hierarchy can go before suffering severe efficiency problems (see thesis #11). Thus, while hierarchy provides the only readily available alternative to simply working inside the limit of Dunbar’s number imposed by human neurology, it has a set of limits all its own. To expand this hierarchy beyond those limits means either overwhelming each hierarch beyond the span of control, and/or creating a hierarchy too deep, such that signal degradation becomes an overwhelming concern. This seriously limits the effectiveness of each new investment to expand such a hierarchy, necessitating the use of a new class of specialists dedicated simply to information processing. This increases the cost of expanding a hierarchical information processing structure–costs which yield increasingly little benefit as signal degradation sets in. As an example, in “‘Span of Control’ and Inefficiency of Hierarchy,” Vail writes:
The US Federal Government’s National Incident Management System (NIMS) is based upon the Incident Control System (ICS) methodology developed by wildfire fighters to create a standard for command and control systems (hierarchy) as government agencies respond to incidents. NIMS and ICS both state that the maximum desirable span of control is 5, meaning that one supervisor should control no more than 5 subordinates. The US Military follows a similar formula: one commander controls three subordinate units, as well as a staff function, which results in a span of control of roughly 5. This military formula is virtually identical around the world–a time-tested formula for maximum span of control. The military formula, however, is more revealing, for while it uses a 5:1 span of control, the operational span of control is only 3:1 (that is, the number of subordinate units that actually carry out the fundamental mission of the organization). The remaining two (roughly) staff positions under each commander are actually information processing assistants necessary to make even the 3:1 span of control effective. Without getting in to two much details, those staff positions are normally broken down to an executive officer, who is in turn responsible for the commander’s administrative staff, and a deputy commander, who is in turn responsible for the commander’s non-administrative staff (Intelligence, Logistics, Human Resources, etc.). As a result of the executive officer and deputy commander concept, the non-operational tail actually extends down two layers from each “operational” commander at the higher levels.
Tainter discusses education and R&D under the heading of “information processing,” and shows that each of them are also subject to diminishing returns, and both for much the same reason. Basic information is not only easily obtained, it is the foundation for all other information. By comparison, more advanced knowledge is more difficult to obtain, but is much more narrowly applicable–as it applies only to a specific field of research or learning. In education, one can look at how easily children learn to read, and how universally important that skill is, versus the extreme cost of a Ph.D., which is much more narrow in its usefulness. In science, research and development, we can note the low cost of a “paradigm shift” like evolution and how much such shifts have informed our knowledge, versus much costlier information that is much more esoteric in its application. Thus, we see a problem of “low-hanging fruit” applied to knowledge itself. The knowledge we come to first forms a basis of all other things we learn, making it by definition more widely applicable. The knowledge we gain based on that comes at a greater cost, but it is much more esoteric. It is worth noting that Tainter does discuss the role of a “paradigm shift” in essentially “resetting” a new marginal return curve for such fields.
Education especially faces an increasing burden as society becomes more complex, and there is simply more society that each individual is expected to be conversant in. An American child requires some two decades of education in order to become fully conversant in the various areas of mathematics, science and culture that is expected of any individual in contemporary America. By comparison, most forager cultures had taught their entire culture to their children by their sixth birthday, leaving plenty of time to learn up to 1,000 different species of wild, edible plants, as well as advanced hunting techniques, so that they could be fully self-sufficient by the age of 12.
Sociopolitical control and specialization.
The diminishing returns of sociopolitical complexity are the bread and butter of 24 hour news networks and any politican running on a platform of “reform.” It is precisely the inefficiencies engendered by such diminishing returns that has so often been bemoaned in the political process–and it is precisely because this is an intractable feature of sociopolitical complexity that every politician’s promise to “clean up government” ultimately fails. Tainter identifies six reasons for diminishing sociopolitical marginal returns:
- Increasing size of bureaucracies.
- Increasing specialization of bureaucracies.
- The cumulative nature of organizational solutions.
- Increasing taxation.
- Increasing costs of legitimizing activities.
- Increasing costs of internal control and external defense.
Very often, more efficient administration is an excellent response to some stress. After 9/11, noting the failure of information processing that allowed the attacks to take place, the Bush administration created the Department of Homeland Security in order to effect better information processing across many of the diverse federal agencies involved. Ultimately, however, this added several more levels of hierarchy–and thus, decreased the information processing capabilities of hierarchy (by introducing more signal degradation), while increasing the cost (by requiring more information processing personnel–more bureaucracy–to handle such inefficiencies). Thus we see that much of the reason for the diminishing returns on sociopolitical complexity, are the diminishing returns on information processing through a complex structure.
Sociopolitical structures must also undertake legitimizing activities in order to justify their existence. Ancient Rome had “bread and circuses” on a monumental scale; today, welfare programs take up the bulk of the non-military federal budget in the United States. Tainter explains:
The appeasement of urban mobs presents the classic illustration of this principle. Any level of activities undertaken to appease such populations–the bread and circuses syndrome–eventually becomes the expected minimum. An increase in the cost of bread and circuses, which seems to have been required in Imperial Rome to legitimize such things as the acession of a new ruler or his continued reign, may bring no increased return beyond a state of non-revolt. Rewards to Roman military personnel would often follow the same pattern, particularly when bounties were granted upon a ruler’s acession. Roman soldiers regarded such bounties as a right.
Though by far the greater expense, for both Rome and the United States, was the military. Tainter explains why this is also subject to diminishing returns:
If increased complexity develops to deal with internal unrest or external threats, this solution may yield no tangible benefit for much of the population. Arms races present a classic example. Increasing costs of military hardware, and military and civilian personnel, when undertaken to meet a competitor’s like increases, yield no increased security for the added cost. Such increased costs are often undertaken merely to maintain the balance-of-power status quo. As a military apparatus increases in complexity its administrative costs increase disproportionately, as Parkinson’s figures indicate, usually to little or no competitive advantage.
Overall economic productivity
Economics does not call many things “laws,” but it has granted that honor to the Law of Diminishing Marginal Returns, because it governs nearly every facet of the economy–and thus, the economy itself.
As GNP rises, per capita rates of economic growth decline, so that as an economy expands, its rate of growth slows down. Many economists tie this to “using up” innovations, requiring that new innovations be made–thus, incurring the cost of further R&D, which is itself bound by diminishing marginal returns, as we have already discussed. Tainter hypothesizes that this may be but one application of a more abstract principle: as the marginal return curves of other areas of complexity require more and more resources simply to maintain the status quo, there is less and less capital available for investment in the future growth of the economy.
Technological innovation
One aspect of complexity which Tainter does not specifically address as such is that of technological innovation, the oft-cited counterbalance that makes no trend “inevitable.” This faith in the messianic power of technology to save us from all ills is an irrational statement of religious belief. There is no rational, logical or scientific reason to believe this to be so. In fact, logic, science and reason more often present us with the limitations of technology. For instance, Einstein showed that no one can go faster than the speed of light for very real reasons. Science fiction authors often like to compare this to old pronouncements–made without any logic case–that the sound barrier could never be breached. The difference is not the type of claim, of course, but the evidence backing it up. Computational theory recognizes a large set of problems which are impossible for a computer to solve, and another class that can only be solved in exponential time, making them forever impractical, regardless of what innovations we make in computer hardware. Jevon’s Paradox highlights the futility of more efficient technologies to limit the use of resources–by making the use of that resource more efficient, such a technology results in greater overall use, not less. We all know pronouncements like that falsely attributed to Charles H. Duell, U.S. Commissioner of Patents, in 1899, “Everything that can be invented has been invented.” Such statements were wrong in the past, therefore, any similar statements made in the future must also be wrong. This is nearly as egregious a logical error as the belief that technology can solve all problems itself.
Yet, technology is, itself, subject to diminishing returns. Tainter explains:
Technical innovation, particularly the institutionalized variety we know today, is unusual in human history. It requires some level of investment in research and development. Such investment is difficult to capitalize in an agriculturally-based society that produces little surplus per capita. Technical innovation often responds to labor shortages, which in the ancient world were the exception. As a result, technical development in societies not based on a fossil fuel economy tends to be minimal. Where technical innovation in ancient societies did occur, it often tended actually to depress the productivity of labor.
In industrial societies, technical innovation responds to market factors, particularly physical needs and economic distress. It is not, though, always the panacea that is imagined. In an input-output analysis of the U.S. economy from 1947-58, corrected for inflation, Carter found that ‘technological change (or progress!) had actually added about $14 billion to the task of satisfying the same final [national] demand.’ Technological innovation, as discussed above, is subject to the law of diminishing returns, and this tends to reduce (but not eliminate) its long-term potential for resolving economic weakness. Using the data cited by Wolfle, Schrerer observes that if R&D expenditures must grow at 4-5 percent per year to boost productivity 2 percent, such a trend cannot be continued indefinitely or the day will come when we must all be scientists. He is accordingly pessimistic about the prospects for long-term productivity growth. Colin Renfrew correctly points out (in the context of discussing the development of civilization in the Aegean) that economic growth is itself susceptible to declining marginal productivity.
The lever is perhaps the simplest technology possible. It is cheap, virtually impossible to break, and highly effective for all manner of tasks. The lever is incorporated in many other kinds of technology. As a piece of technology becomes more complex, it becomes more prone to breaking. As any computer programmer knows, simplicity and robustness are usually the same thing, leading to the elegance of simplicity incorporated as an ideal in Eric Raymond’s definition of the bazaar model. Many of our greatest technological achievements have been achieved so cheaply, they were actually accidents. Penicillin, perhaps our greatest medical achievement, was discovered by accident. Its total development cost approximately $20,000. Compare this to the usual R&D budget of contemporary drug companies, running well into the millions of dollars and more, and taking an average of about 20 years.
Ultimately, a new technology is another piece of complexity, and ultimately it is precisely that complexity, rather than any one crisis we presently face, that is the ultimate cause of collapse. Other crises may serve as a proximate cause, but it is the marginal return curve on complexity itself that seals the fate of any complex society. Thus, any “techno-fix” solution may succeed in solving any given proximate cause for collapse, only by contributing still more to the ultimate cause of collapse–complexity itself. Neither is this considering the profoundly negative, unexpected consequences that so many technologies yield.
Technology is subject to diminishing returns; that means that innovation will not end, only that it will become (on average) increasingly mundane, but it will continue to cost more and more. Moreover, technology cannot solve the underlying, systemic issues we face. Technology has its place, and it can be a wonderful thing–but it is not a panacea, and the exuberant faith of the Enlightenment in it is certainly misplaced.
* * *
Agriculture, information processing, sociopolitical control, economic activity and technological innovation are all subject to diminishing returns, because complexity itself is subject to diminishing returns. Tainter writes:
A society increasing in complexity does so as a system. That is to say, as some of its interlinked parts are forced in a direction of growth, others must adjust accordingly. For example, if complexity increases to regulate regional subsistence production, investments will be made in hierarchy, in bureaucracy, and in agricultural facilities (such as irrigation networks). The expanding hierarchy requires still further agricultural output for its own needs, as well as increased investment in energy and minerals extraction. An expanded military is needed to protect the assets thus created, requiring in turn its own sphere of agricultural and other resources. As more and more resources are drained from the support population to maintain this system, an increased share must be allocated to legitimization or coercion. This increased complexity requires specialized administrators, who consume further shares of subsistence resources and wealth. To maintain the productive capacity of the base population, further investment is made in agriculture, and so on.
The illustration could be expanded, tracing still further the interdependencies within such a growing system, but the point has been made: a society grows in complexity as a system. To be sure, there are instances where one sector of a society grows at the expense of others, but to be maintained as a cohesive whole, a social system can tolerate only certain limits to such conditions.
Thus, it is possible to speak of sociocultural evolution by the encompassing term ‘complexity,’ meaning by this the interlinked growth of the several subsystems that comprise a society.
Tainter then presents the idealized marginal returns curve below, and adds some discussion regarding key points along the way.
At point B1C1, the marginal returns of complexity reach an inflection point as they near the point of diminishing returns (B2C2). Between B1C1 and B1C3, a complex society is at increasing risk of collapse. It is at B1C3 that collapse actually occurs. The costs of complexity relative to its benefits are simply too high, and substantial numbers across the society begin to see benefits to “dropping out” of the complexity of that society. In ancient Rome, we might see the baugaudae or the Allamanni as examples of this trend among the lower classes; various landlords who essentially “seceeded” from Rome as their wealthier analogues. In the contemporary United States, we might see the first stirrings of such signs among the Hippies; currently, we might see echoes of it among permaculture enthusiasts, voluntary simplicity advocates, and of course, primitvists. We might even see the open source movement itself as a reaction, trying to maintain the investments in technological complexity by creating greater simplicity in administration and information processing. We might find an upper-class echo of this behavior in the kind of elite resignment that Peggy Noonan discusses in her 27 October 2005 editorial for the Wall Street Journal, “A Seperate Peace.”
It is at this point that collapse occurs, because the costs of complexity have become so high that the society is no longer willing to put forward any further investment in it. Tainter discusses the effect of energy subsidies–such as fossil fuels–which can extend the curve, heighten the curve, or even allow one curve to follow another. But these merely modify the situation; they do not change the basic fact that complexity is subject to diminishing marginal returns, and thus, any society that pursues greater complexity as the answer to every stress–that is, any civilization (see thesis #13)–must eventually collapse. The question is not if, but when.
Huh? You go on to cite a whole two paragraphs he wrote on technological innovation. That doesn’t seem to make much sense. Hmm. Oh. Maybe he leaves it out of his formulation of complexity, but if you’ll note you say that he includes education and R&D under information processing. Does not R&D mean technological innovation?
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I think this article could benefit from the example you’ve used in the past of how you cannot do something in zero time or for zero cost. Somehow people get it in their minds that there are no limits to human ingenuity, but these are pretty hard and fast limits. This is a pretty long article as it is, though. I honestly think that each of these sections could be its own thesis — but then you wouldn’t have that nice round number of 30.
I think this is one of the most crucial (and often misunderstood) arguments, how diminishing returns affects everything. It might be useful to make this one of your more epansive arguments.
The argument that everything increases in complexity in tandem is quite a powerful insight, with many implications… especially when linked to the insight that an increase in complexity follows an increase in available energy. Link this to Peak Oil and you’ve got an airtight argument for collapse.
Which was pretty airtight already, actually, although less tangible. This diminishing returns argument is the most reasonable-appearing argument there is, and likely won’t get bogged down in particulars so much as Peak Oil, which economics has obfuscated to an incredible degree. As far as I can tell, the Law of Diminishing Returns isn’t going to get countered with stupid statements like “we can always switch to an alternative energy source.” It entirely re-defines the frame. Instead of being able to come up with magic-bullet solutions, they’re going to have to come up with something BETTER than what we already have. And increase it. Forever. In spite of diminishing returns.
While this frame does not end dissent, it makes the people who are trying to argue against you look pretty stupid. Sustainable growth is quite the oxymoron. Arguing that there aren’t limits is a pretty wild argument to make.
So, suddenly, then, as you point out at the end of the article, the question is no longer if, but when. And when is pretty easy to handle (relative to if at least) — when energy peaks, the collapse will begin.
It also redefines collapse as a non-pejorative, so that the people talking about collapse as inevitable aren’t seen as these incredibly pessimistic doomsayers all the time.
Anyway, great article.
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I wonder what the theory is for how societies collapse? Clearly they must follow the energy curve downward, however following it exactly seems to be quite the unlikely situation. It would seem that things fall apart much more quickly than they put together.
I guess bottom limits of complexity are more easily reached than upper limits. Or, simple is easier than complex.
“Simplify, simplify.” Who knew Thoreau was advocating collapse?
Comment by Devin — 29 October 2005 @ 4:02 AM
The section on technology comes several pages later, with no specific heading. So, he didn’t address it specifically as a facet of complexity, but he does address it. But R&D can mean technology–it can also mean a lot of other things, too. It’s a big umbrella.
*innocent whistling* Would I be going there? Anyway, there is some chance that we’re wrong, and the cornucopians are right. Stop giggling, it’s possible. Even so, who cares? It’s just another proximate cause. The underlying crisis remains, meaning that sooner or later, we will hit some proximate cause that’ll do it.
Exactly. At best, a new energy subsidy equal to petroleum can tail-end another diminishing returns curve onto the end of this one, give us a second wind so to speak. But then you need to find another one, that produces even more energy. And a fourth, and a fifth… Each one much more than the last. How long can you keep that up?
It depends on when complexity passes the point of diminishing returns, and in the next thesis, I’m going to try to show that we’ve done just that.
Ayup. You go down a roller coaster much more quickly than you go up, right? Frankly, it’s a very similar reason. The collapse always comes quickly. As Diamond pointed out in Collapse, the collapse is usually short, sudden, unexpected, and shortly follows the peak. Because peak power means peak vulnerability–peak population, peak resource consumption, peak needs.
Well, that should’ve been obvious. Stinkin’ Commie….err, wait, I mean, great treasure of American literature! Yes, Freedom literature. Freeture.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 29 October 2005 @ 10:34 AM
So I had to write up a story on dimishing returns. It’s called “Coyote Juggles an Axe” and it’s over in the Forums. Have fun!
And great article!
Best
Bill
Comment by Bill Maxwell — 29 October 2005 @ 11:38 AM
This is big and complex question. Collapse comes quickly, that’s true. But what will be kept after collapse is big question.
Especially if we are talking about scientific and/or technoligy advances. For example Ptolemaic system was the “latest and greatest” achievement of science in Roman empire. Later simpler societies were unable to develep anything comparable for centures! Yet… this system survived and was actively used by that same simpler societies.
Think about things like slide rule. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s the slide rule was the symbol of the engineer’s profession - yet it’s possible to create crude and inaccurate yet usable slide rule from tree branch with stone splinter!
The fact is: with technology there are two costs of complexity. Huge amount of effort, energy and ingenuity are required for invention but duplication of this invention is another matter. The law of diminishing returns is inescapable with regard to technology as well, that’s obvious. But does this mean all technology achievements will be lost after collapse ?
Good question. People from Easter islands or from lost almost all technology of previous civilization. Great Cahokia was forgotten by descendants. So… we all fall down and everything is turning to dust, right ?
Not so. Roman empire collapsed as well. But… it collapsed only half-way! Western (more advanced) Roman Empire collapsed in 476. Yet Eastern (smaller and less advanced) Roman Empire outlived it’s counterpart for almost thousand of years !
Why such a big difference ? Easy: Cahokia and Easter islands reached high (for the time) uniform level of complexity and collapsed fully. Yet Roman Empire was quite deverse (like today’s world) thus only western (more advanced i.e. complex) part of it actually collapsed.
Comment by Vorfeed Canal — 29 October 2005 @ 4:49 PM
Jason, are you familiar with the works of Mancur Olson? I read his The Rise and Decline of Nations back in the late 1980s.
Here’s an excerpt on the book from wiki:
In 1982, Olson expanded his Logic of Collective Action in an attempt to explain “The Rise and Decline of Nations”. The idea is that small distributional coalitions tend to form over time in countries. Groups like cotton-farmers, steel-producers, and labor unions will have the incentives to form political lobbies and influence policies in their favor. These policies will tend to be protectionist and anti-technology, and will therefore hurt economic growth; but since the benefits of these policies are selective incentives concentrated amongst the few coalitions members, while the costs are diffused throughout the whole population, the “Logic” dictates that there will be little public resistance to them. Hence as time goes on, and these distributional coalitions accumulate in greater and greater numbers, the nation burdened by them will fall into economic decline.
Just more data to support your thesis.
Comment by Peter — 3 December 2005 @ 7:13 PM
Hmmm, interesting. No, I’ve never heard of him, but it sounds like something to add to my reading list.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 3 December 2005 @ 11:18 PM
When I read his book back around 1986 or 87, my reaction was “By jove, he’s got it!” He sees all these coalitions (special interest groups) as causing political/economic gridlock over time which then causes the diminishing returns you and Tainter write about.
Comment by Peter — 4 December 2005 @ 12:03 AM
There’s a lot of reasons for those diminishing returns, and only some of them have anything to do with human activity. Still, always good to understand one more, right?
Comment by Jason Godesky — 4 December 2005 @ 12:07 PM
Here’s a very good example of diminishing returns in the face of ever increasing costs.
It’s an article about how India is allowing drug companies pretty wide access to the population for clinical trials.
The article explicity points out the diminishing returns (as well as if the return itself is of any use to the trial subjects) as well as the fact that drug research and clinical trial costs are always increasing.
Thought you might find it interesting.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.03/indiadrug.html
Comment by Jason Turpin — 28 February 2006 @ 4:22 PM
“… societies are often compelled to make every investment into complexity that they are capable of making …”
Yes. But I feel there must be a way of breaking this compulsion. Past the point of diminishing returns, the complex solution becomes the wrong solution. What stops society choosing the right solutions?
Comment by speedbird — 15 March 2006 @ 10:49 AM
Prisoner’s Dilemna. If the society next door decides, “Fuck it, we’re going to keep going anyway,” then the fact that they’re getting less of a return on their investment than they used to doesn’t matter much to your society–you’ll still be wiped out by them.
As globalization shows, this kind of conquest need not be military, nor even intentional. Societies that fail to stay competitive during the anabolic growth phase tend to be wiped out, leaving only those who keep pursuing complexity.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 15 March 2006 @ 11:25 AM
“Yes. But I feel there must be a way of breaking this compulsion. Past the point of diminishing returns, the complex solution becomes the wrong solution. What stops society choosing the right solutions?”
In this case, the likely answer is that this is the very nature and pattern of the form of human social organization we call “civilization”. I’ve defined civilization by its constant alienation of humans from the rest of the world (including each other) and the constriction of power into fewer and fewer hands. This pattern pretty much requires constantly increasing complexity.
A few months back, Ran Prieur had some great insights into a hitherto untried form of social organization that would be able to scale its complexity up and down at will, but he didn’t see civilization being it, or becoming it (and I don’t see it happening, either).
- Chuck
Comment by Chuck — 15 March 2006 @ 11:28 AM
Civilization is what happens when you can scale your complexity up or down at will. Choosing to scale down is choosing massive mortality. Choosing to scale up is choosing to have the upper hand over your rivals. If you don’t scale up as quickly as your neighbor scales up, your neighbor will destroy you. Intent has not a thing to do with it. It becomes a game of Prisoner’s Dilemna, and that yields a self-reinforcing feedback loop of ever-escalating complexity. What we “want” never enters into it–it’s just the unavoidable consequence for any society that gains the means to scale its own complexty up or down at will. That’s what agriculture is: the means to scale your own complexity up or down at will. Surprisingly enough, no one ever chooses to have less food, more plague, and massive mortality. Instead, they choose to have growth, prosperity, and plenty to eat. Go figure.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 15 March 2006 @ 11:39 AM
Rational simplicity, or purposefully simplifying one’s life, thus having less “prosperity” as defined by our current culture is a small movement at best.
Simplifying has been a common theme from Buddha, Christ, and many of the other social philosophers. Certainly no one chooses plauges, die off’s, and eating less (although many americans are currently trying this, lol).
The fact that no political leader ever proposes scaling down, conserving whatever you want to call it should be a tell tale sign that the collapse will happen in short order (within the next 10years) barring some extreme circumstance–i.e. alien intervention, Nanotech or deity intervention or whatever other idea humans can muster for external locus of control thinking/hoping.
“The glass is neither half full, nor half empty, rather the glass is twice as large as it needs to be.”
Comment by bubba — 15 March 2006 @ 12:47 PM
“The glass is neither half full, nor half empty, rather the glass is twice as large as it needs to be.”
Wonderful. Bubba, do you have the source for this?
Today’s Wall Street Journal has a front-page article showing we’ve arrived at a too-complex culture. Power plants can’t get enough coal, even though the US is “the Saudi Arabia of coal.” The reasons are: The railroads have been cutting routes and costs, and now there aren’t enough trains to deliver the needed coal. Too many consumer goods from Asia are clogging the rails. Coal dust dribbling off of coal trains prevents rail beds from draining properly, causing derailments. Western coal is low-sulfur and thus less polluting, but eastern coal delivers more energy per ton, so power plants want a complex mix of several forms of coal. Demand from rich metropolitan utilities means power plants near coal mines can’t get coal because they get outbid. On and on: system error. So although we’ve got plenty of coal, distribution is too complex, creating shortages.
I’m reminded here of the Creationist argument that some living systems are “irreducably complex,” that is, they can’t function until all the parts are in place (so, the argument goes, they couldn’t have evolved over time because they can’t function as incomplete systems, which is illogical, but that’s not my point). Many of civilization’s systems have now become irreducably complex, so if one element fails, the whole thing jams up and can’t be rebuilt. An argument I’ve used in the past about why collapse may be less likely than some people argue is that a culture, like an ecosystem, is composed of many subsystems that are only loosely linked, and thus failure at one point doesn’t easily ripple through the entire system. But I’m less than comforted by that analogy these days. The problem is that failure at one point (take 9/11 for example) can throw the whole system onto a different trajectory; it shifts and begins cycling around a new attractor. Complex systems fail in novel and unpredictable ways: my old Brownie camera would just jam and stop working; bang it and it was fine. My digital rig has a zillion ways to misbehave, complete with bizarre beeping noises, swirly special effects, and arcane and non-repeatable rituals to reset the software. This culture will fail in a way no one is predicting.
The difficulty may not be in reconstructing the failed subsystem. It’s that starting up the whole damn machine once it’s stopped is impossible. That’s the real meaning of irreducably complex.
Comment by Toby Hemenway — 15 March 2006 @ 3:26 PM
The problem is that ecologies, unlike civilizations, have feedback loops to restore equilibrium when they’re thrown out of balance. Both negative and positive feedback. Civilization just has positive feedback loops, so when it’s knocked out of balance, it moves more out of balance, rather than less.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 15 March 2006 @ 3:32 PM
“Civilization just has positive feedback loops”
Maybe so. When I try to come up with negative feedback in civilization, the examples are limited and kinda lame. I come up with 1) feedback at the individual level, as in I do something you don’t like, you shun me, and I stop doing it, which has nothing to do with civilization; 2) feedback that is more theoretical than real, like the “discipline of the market,” although I think one can make a case for economic systems having negative feedback: I manufacture a junky car, it doesn’t sell, I go out of business; and 3) social-scale feedback that has positive and negative components: Hitler invades Poland, the Allies pound him so he doesn’t do it again (negative) but Europe is a wreck for a decade and needs huge infusions of aid, plus we gain much niftier war toys (positive); Are there other classes? Of all these, the economic seems the most like true negative feedback, as in the Arab oil embargo which caused the US to double car mpg in about 8 years. But maybe that’s just sufficient negative feedback to give civilization enough homeostasis to keep on functioning while it grows larger and more unwieldy, more likely to collapse more spectacularly.
A thought strikes me about the connection between diversity and complexity that is familiar to some here. Steven Jay Gould (in “Full House”) argues against the theory that life constantly grows more complex. What is actually happening is that life is gaining diversity. It only looks like a trend to more complexity because simple lifeforms are slammed against a bottom limit, complexity sufficient for life to exist. Life must necessarily, as it explores diverse possibilities, move away from that minimum. Increasing complexity there is just an epiphenomenon of increasing diversity.
So I’m wondering if cultural complexity in our case has something to do with the diversity of economic (analogous to ecological) niches available for us to explore–all those bureaucrats creating work for themselves, for example. The fact that the diversity is limited to all the different ways of earning money there are, as opposed to, say, artistic or cultural diversity, points out the stupifying poverty of basing your life on economics.
But maybe it’s more appropriate to extend the analogy with Gould’s idea in another direction: Most organisms, by numbers, are very simple. They are bacteria, and bacteria are incredibly diverse (5000 species in a gram of soil). The “simplest” human cultures also display the most diversity, since there are far more ways of being a forager and having a forager culture than there are of being an industrial culture (global means only one). Cultural diversity doesn’t have to mean technological complexity.
Comment by Toby Hemenway — 15 March 2006 @ 6:07 PM
Hey –
Man after my own heart, Toby. I can’t stay out of any discussion that gives me the opportunity ti talk about evolutionary theory, or more particularily Gould, Full House and The Drunkard’s Walk. Funny thing is, your last post almost got me talking about it…
I have theorised that, although he did not SAY it, Gould may have realized — or if he did not, perhaps he should have — that in addition to the ‘wall of minimal complexity’ the gutter represents another boundry, that of ‘maximum complexity’. The point where a given organism is so complex that it has ceased to have energy to invest in redundancies, ‘back-up plans’ or general adaptability. Where it is so complex that the chances of something ‘breaking’ approach 1. Just like your digital camera
Dr Alan Thornhill, an evolutionary biologist that has worked with Daniel Quinn on some of his ideas, did a presentation at a conference we attended a couple years back. In that, he discussed how one way to look at the flaws in our cultural system is to look at how we interpret natural dependancies in our world. From an ecological standpoint, it is quite clear that our economic system is nested within our culture, which MUST be nested within the natural ecology. Unfortunately, our socio-political systems behave as if ‘environmentalism’ is nested within culture, which is then nested within economics. So long as this continues to be the case, we will never be able to address or REAL problems, because those real issues always end up with the short straw.
Oh, absolutely. Cultral Diversity, in fact, is in some ways, in competition with cultural complexity. In most cases, you will have at least two alternatives when faced with a choice. Some of those choices will lead to greater complexity and lesser diversity, others will lead to greater diversity, but lesser complexity. It is possible that both factors could move in the same direction, but those options will always be few and far between.
Janene
Comment by Janene — 15 March 2006 @ 8:08 PM
Cor, lot of good stuff here.
Increasing complexity does seem to be linked to reducing diversity. Business in the UK is overrun with ‘best practice’ right now, where it is believed that there is always one best way to do anything - usually a very complex one. Reminds me that there’s a well-known school of thought that cautions against ‘the way that can be described’ as not being the true Way.
The analogy I was thinking of was this: I have a drink, I feel better. I have a second drink, I feel a little better still. But after about four, it stops working. In fact, I start to feel worse. I don’t feel more relaxed or happier, I get miserable and eventually lose the ability to walk, talk and see. People may take advantage of my weakened state. Most nights I can stop myself before this happens (and the occasional failures I regret for weeks). Going past this point regularly is called ‘being a drunk’.
My point is, (most) people have a feedback mechansism in place to stop the excess. What stops civilisations from behaving in this manner? What, for example, drives the UK’s binge-drinking culture?
My hunch is that there’s a matter of perception involved. If we could only see that complexity was making us weaker, we’d be able to stop. It’s a confusion of the thing itself (strength, happiness) with a poor representation of the thing (complexity, beer). There’s an old, old word to describe that state of affairs: ‘idolatry’. If everything does fall down, one thing that we have to try and preserve is whatever ability we have to see the world as it is.
Comment by speedbird — 16 March 2006 @ 4:46 AM
(continued)
My favourite theory for this is that of Marshall McLuhan: all technology changes perception, because all technology is by definition an extension of human faculties. I’m not sure there’s an easy way round this. But McLuhan distinguishes different types of technology - ‘cool’ (even ‘tribal’) and ‘hot’. Perhaps all this talk of complexity and diversity hits the nail even more squarely on the head.
Comment by speedbird — 16 March 2006 @ 5:46 AM
“Civilization is what happens when you can scale your complexity up or down at will.”
Oh, good God, Jason, you knew what I meant. I appreciate that civilization is one of those systems, but I was very specifically talking about a system other than civilization.
- Chuck
Comment by Chuck — 18 March 2006 @ 2:38 PM
But that’s exactly my point. ANY system that is capable of adjusting its own complexity WILL BE a civilization.
A -> B, where A is “the ability to arbitrarily raise or lower its own complexity,” and B is “civilization.” Civilization is the result of that.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 19 March 2006 @ 12:46 AM