The current "first principles" theory of the collapse of "complex societies" like large Empires is that their system hits a point of diminishing returns, then inexorably collapses. The Roman Empire expanded because conquests 1 through N-1 were profitable and allowed it to expand further for a time, but the Nth conquest was too costly. The explanation makes sense. The "collapse" is really like a going out of business sale. All the infrastructure and organizations that built the society get liquidated or fall into disrepair because they eventually become too costly to sustain.
The Western Empire expanded from the 1400s through the 20th century. It extracted wealth from around the world and piled it up in national capitals like London and New York. It built up industry and infrastructure internally until recently. Then in the 1980s, it started to burn the working class and the middle class by shipping manufacturing overseas.
It offered ostensible benefits to society at large with these economic changes, such as increased productivity and more efficient use of resources, but really it was just an attempt to concentrate wealth in fewer hands. That process continued through the present day and new strategies for wealth extraction that incorporated government to form cartels, like the covid vaccination campaign, Obamacare, and many others.
The top of the pyramid is consuming the rest of the society like a giant parasite. I'd say that's well past the point of diminishing returns.
No comments:
Post a Comment