An Opportunity to Study a Modern Tainter Simplification

 

Some are calling part of what I refer to as Tainter Simplification, Tainter’s Law (“social structures generate negative returns when they become too complex”), Ugo Bardi.

 

While driving to work this morning I listened to the news. It had content mostly consisting of; the continuing inability of my society to address mass shooting by developing a comprehensive health care system (therefore early close tracking of mental illness), control distribution of military weapons among its citizens*, and the apparent inability of elected representatives in a government to increase taxation. It occurred to me that this is a good opportunity for folks to study a “tainter simplification” in real time, right here in River City.

"According to Tainter, societies become more complex as they try to solve problems. Social complexity can be recognized by numerous differentiated and specialised social and economic roles and many mechanisms through which they are coordinated, and by reliance on symbolic and abstract communication, and the existence of a class of information producers and analysts who are not involved in primary resource production. Such complexity requires a substantial "energy" subsidy (meaning the consumption of resources, or other forms of wealth). …When a society confronts a "problem," such as a shortage of energy, or difficulty in gaining access to it, it tends to create new layers of bureaucracy, infrastructure, or social class to address the challenge. … Tainter argues that sustainability or collapse of societies follow from the success or failure of problem-solving institutions and that societies collapse when their investments in social complexity and their "energy subsidies" reach a point of diminishing marginal returns. He recognizes collapse when a society rapidly sheds a significant portion of its complexity.” Wikipedia summary

Tainter1996 article: http://dieoff.org/page134.htm
The book:
http://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Studies-Archaeology/dp/052138673X
The Collapse of Complex societies, by Joseph Tainter
Lecture in 7 parts keynote talk delivered to the 2010 International Conference on Sustainability: Energy, Economy, and Environment, 2010.
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddmQhIiVM48
Entries on Cassandras Legacy:
http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2011/03/joseph-tainter-talking-about-collapse.html

http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2011/03/tainters-law-where-is-physics.html

*The idea of arming K12 teachers is a good example of how societies "scan" for less complex, less initially costly solutions, thatalso  further distribute control, during simplification.