Complex Societies and Transformations
Clay Shirky wrote this very interesting article summarizing Joseph Tainter’s 1988 book, “ The Collapse of Complex Societies ”. The book analyzes why some of the most advanced societies of the past like the Romans and the Mayans that rose to such high levels of sophistication eventually collapsed. Tainter’s surprising conclusion: they collapsed because of their high level of sophistication! That seems counter-intuitive at first. Here’s his reasoning: a society starts with a small excess of some resource. Managing that excess requires an additional degree of complexity in management, social structure, economic system etc. This new complexity in turn helps add value to the system. The additional value produced again requires a bit more complexity to be managed. And so the cycle continues. Until, at some point, the additional complexity no longer adds any value. Like a bureaucracy for bureaucracy’s sake. Tainter says that when a major stress is exerted on such a complex system, it is too...