The Collapse of Complex Societies (New Studies in Archaeology) by Joseph A. Tainter

Author:Joseph A. Tainter [Tainter, Joseph A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2008-02-05T06:16:00+00:00

Alternatives to collapse

Much of the foregoing may read like the doom and gloom that issues from the Club of Rome (e.g., Meadows et al. 1972). Economists and others will rightly ask whether all this is really inevitable, or whether some salvation such as technical innovation can stave off collapse and permit continued growth. Tied up in all this is the question of the future of contemporary complex societies. Although contemporary societies will be discussed, that is deferred for a later chapter. For now the matter of innovation and growth, particularly in regard to ancient societies, will be briefly addressed.

Technical innovation, particularly the institutionalized variety we know today, is unusual in human history (Elster 1983: 105). It requires some level of investment in research and development. Such investment is difficult to capitalize in an agriculturally-based society that produces little surplus per capita. Technical innovation often responds to labor shortages, which in the ancient world were the exception (Walbank 1967: 79-80). As a result, technical development in societies not based on a fossil fuel economy tends to be minimal. Where technical innovation in ancient societies did occur, it often tended actually to depress the productivity of labor (Renfrew 1982: 272; see also Wilkinson [1973]).

In industrial societies, technical innovation responds to market factors, particularly physical needs and economic distress (Wilkinson 1973; Mensch 1979). It is not, though, always the panacea that is imagined. In an input-output analysis of the U.S. economy from 1947-58, corrected for inflation, Carter found that `technological change (or progress!) had actually added about $14 billion to the task of satisfying the same final [national] demand' (1966: 29). Technological innovation, as discussed above, is subject to the law of diminishing returns, and this tends to reduce (but not eliminate) its long-term potential for resolving economic weakness. Using the data cited by Wolfle (1960), Scherer observes that if R&D expenditures must grow at 4-5 percent per year to boost productivity 2 percent, such a trend cannot be continued indefinitely or the day will come when we must all be scientists. He is accordingly pessimistic about the prospects for long-term productivity growth (Scherer 1984: 239, 268-9). Colin Renfrew correctly points out (in the context of discussing the development of civilization in the Aegean) that economic growth is itself susceptible to declining marginal productivity (1972: 36-7).

For human societies, the best key to continued socioeconomic growth, and to avoiding or circumventing (or at least financing) declines in marginal productivity, is to obtain a new energy subsidy when it becomes apparent that marginal productivity is beginning to drop. Among modern societies this has been accomplished by tapping fossil fuel reserves and the atom. Among societies without the technical springboard necessary for such development, the usual temptation is to acquire an energy subsidy through territorial expansion. The occurrence of this temptation runs the gamut from simple agriculturalists (Vayda 1961a) to great empires. Whenever the marginal cost of financing a social system's needs out of local yearly productivity becomes perceptibly too high, this solution must seem attractive.

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