On The Collapse of Complex Societies

One of the mailing lists that I'm on had a great short essay about the disastrous decision that societies can make - and their consequences. The author is Jared Diamond, who also wrote Guns, Germs and Steel (First Slashdot book review was that book), and is still one of the most interesting books I've read in a while.

Comments

Collapses

[gnarly]

Jared Diamond was the speaker at my graduation & I've heard a few of his talks at UCLA. He pointed out that the factor that caused the collapse of both the Easter Island civilization and (probably) the Mayan civilization is now thought to be the same: Logging. Both civilizations overlogged the surrounding forest ecosystems which sustained them, resulting ultimately in a collapse of agriculture. Diamond wondered what might have been going through the mind of the Easter Islander who felled the last tree on the island. He guessed that it might just have been thoughts that would resonate today: "Hey, keeping my job is more important than preserving the environment".

Re:Collapses

[aron_wallaker]

Ever seen the "tree farms" that result when "modern loggin(g) companies" clear cut and replant ? They don't look anything like a natural forest. The clear cut not only kills the large profitable trees, it also kills many smaller flora that are part of the forest ecosystem. Replant small trees and they quickly take over, resulting a new forest with very little diversity but very fast tree growth.

Forest companies at first thought this looked great - the faster tree growth, the sooner we can come back to that piece of land. Unfortunately, and this is supported by studies done by the BC dept. of forestry (which they tried to cover up), the rapid growth of the replanted trees results in much lower density wood than that found in "old-growth" (ie natural) forests. As a result the wood is worth very little to the foresters who planted it and they don't want to log it. Forestry companies continue to push for more "old-growth" forests to be opened up to logging because that's where the best quality wood is, all the replanting that's been done has yet to produce a lumber supply that adequately replaces what has been lost. We may not be as bad as Easter Island, but we're nowhere near sustainability.

It's a flame, but important anyway

[Animats]

First, the article is basically a flame. A well-written flame, but a flame. That's not unusual in what passes for the literary community.

The author complains that history isn't treated as a science, but offers nothing more than anecdotes. What he's groping for is a theory of economic externalities. But he doesn't have one.

Externalities involve unloading some of your costs onto someone else. Pollution is the classic example, as is spam. Windows bugs are another; the costs are borne by users, not Microsoft. A major social question is the extent to which externalities should be accounted for and billed back to the source. Most of the political arguments over "litigation reform" and "deregulation" involve this issue.

Classically, the problem with externalities was that accounting for them was technically difficult and expensive, more expensive than the value of tracking them. In the computer era, this is less of an issue than it used to be. Measuring and tracking things is now a cheap operation. We're seeing some of this, in the form of "road-usage fees". It's still possible for tracking to cost more than the value of the thing being tracked; long-distance phone billing costs more than long-distance call transmission, for example. There's a legitimate economic tradeoff argument.

But mostly, externality issues are resolved by power, not accounting. Understanding this gives one insight into how societies function.