Requiem For Modern Politics by Ophuls William;

Author:Ophuls, William;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780429977305
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

Escalating Maintenance Costs in the Human Ecosystem

Having considered limitation in general and the ecological consequences of maintenance costs in particular, let us now focus more closely on what happens in human societies. The essence of the human ecological predicament is easily stated. In our avid pursuit of the high yields characteristic of the pioneer stage, we have over the years built up a very large stock of goods, as well as a growing population. But the larger the numbers, the higher the maintenance costs, and a dramatic rise in such costs now obliges us to devote more and more effort and energy to running “to keep in the same place.”

However, we are addicted to the high yields that can be obtained only during the pioneer stage, so we resist the call to ecological maturity and refuse to accept limitation as a fact of life. Instead of seeing higher maintenance costs as signals warning us to abandon the pioneer quest for quantity and to embrace the climax ideal of quality, we cling to our outmoded growth mentality. We therefore do everything in our power to avoid, displace, postpone, or evade maintenance costs. Those that we cannot overcome with main force we banish with fraudulent accounting.

The apparent success of this deluded strategy is an illusion, for we now experience the worst of both worlds: most of the actual costs and complications, but little of the real integration, complexity, and richness of a climax system. And the strategy is now imperiled, because the bills from previous avoidance, displacement, postponement, and evasion are being presented: the shadow price of stolen goods, deferred maintenance, and hidden costs from the past has caught up with us.

In a magisterial work that merits more attention than it has received, the archeologist Joseph A. Tainter has examined all the theories that purport to explain the rise and fall of civilizations and proposes a new one that largely subsumes them all by revealing the essential similarity of the process of decline and fall across many different cultures. The essence of his argument is that increased investment in socioeconomic and political complexity offers high returns at first, but declining returns over time as “ever greater increments of investment yield ever smaller increments of gain.” In fact, the process can reach a point where vastly increased investment does little more than maintain the status quo, as when previously constructed infrastructure irrigation systems, highways, and the like—fall into disrepair and have to be reconstructed at great expense for no net gain in productivity. Worse yet, increased investment in complexity can even produce a negative return. Arms races are a classic example: one spends more to be less secure. In short, all other things being equal, what Tainter calls “the marginal product of increasing complexity” always declines over time, eventually becoming zero or even minus.

The primary reason, according to Tainter, is that

more complex societies are more costly to maintain than simpler ones, requiring greater support levels per capita. As societies increase in complexity, more

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