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by slopinthebag
11 hours ago
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Tainter suggests that societies collapse because the costs of maintaining complexity eventually outweigh the benefits. “Collapse” in this context is more like a simplification than a catastrophe. And he points out that for a lot of people, the collapse actually made life better for them, as it becomes more local and less totalitarian. I mentioned the west because I’m a westerner with little experience of other systems, but I don’t think Tainter’s conception of a collapse would be limited to the west. Interestingly since you edited your comment to talk about capitalism, I think under the lense of Tainter’s theory it’s the most resilient to collapse since it’s simpler, at least in theory. In practice it’s heavily regulated - in fact I’d say no country really is capitalist, at most you could say it’s “state capitalism” which is very different from free market capitalism. But you’re also not wrong in that it has issues of its own. |
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This premise sounds very intriguing. And yea I named capitalism just because I don't think we can go on like we do currently, and I'd agree that in theory it's not complex at all. In fact it makes a lot of sense (in the short term, and as long as people are willing to get exploited to be able to finance life).
Nonetheless maybe heavily regulated capitalism works, allthough, regulators are prone to corruption and act way too slow. And lobbyists preventing measurements to combat climate change as an example, I currently see as direct threat to my personal wellbeing. Hard to believe in a system that relies on exploitation, the big "if you work hard you can make it" lie and actively threatening ones or ones children's wellbeing by being ignorant to obvious and well researched topics for short term monetary enrichment...