This is where I think John Michael Greer’s theory of catabolic collapse becomes really important–because while I think Tainter’s model is theoretically quite sound, when you look at any given collapse, you need to disentangle it. Rome’s an almost perfect example of a society crushed under the weight of its own complexity, but some of the more sudden collapses like those in the New World provide examples of what happens when a society hits a problem its diminished efficacy can’t handle.

(Looks like I was fast too, or rather “too fast”, judging from the many spelling errors I now detect in my post - apart from language errors, which I am unaware of).

Maybe I don’t quite grasp the meaning of your first paragraph, but most certainly there is a difference as to whether the Roman state/society collapsed from lack of, say, iron (arguendo; in reality of course it did not), or because the state had gotten too big for the central administration/emperors to handle its defence against the barbarians any longer?

Side remark: See you have been looking at my blog and must have gotten the impression that it’s all in German. However, there are a few exceptions, like “The (B)rat in the box at the ultimate lever” of 25/05/2005 (http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=12398231&postID=111445581805951097).
My Website proper is http://www.beltwild.de, but that, too, is nearly all in German language.

But, with diminishing marginal returns, a complex society’s ability to answer such lack may become diminished, so that the very same depletions that complex society formed to address, and addressed successfully in the past, become too much to handle.

Think of it like prying doors open with a crowbar. You can’t explain why the crowbar broke by saying, “Well, he tried to open that door with it!” You explain it in terms of how it got weaker over time, and as it got weaker and all those doors stayed the same as they always had been, the same doors the crowbar opened with ease later in its life by the end were too much for it to handle.

And you’re right, there is a very strong relationship between complexity and population, and it’s not 1:1. Complexity and population are both functions of energy.

Since I have not read many other posts, I cannot know whether that statement is true or not. But I would wholeheartedly agreee with what
Patrick says: “excellent post … again, very informative”

Very now and then in the last two or three years, the term “meme” has been popping into my perception. It sounded like it must mean something, but again, and in particular as used in “memetics”, it had the ring of some esoteric teaching.

Having read the above entry of Mr Godesky with the description of how the “meme” of monotheism has originated, I might even feel confident using the word “meme” myself.

Actually, the notion behind the word “meme” has been familiar to me long before I read the term.
Oswald Spengler in his “Untergang des Abendlandes” (”Decline of the West”) is postulating a “Kulturseele” (civilisational soul) as the driving force behind the course of each civilisation. Translating that metaphor into a more modern one, you might speak of “operating system” or “cultural gene”. Or, as I have now learnt, of “meme”.

Besides opening my eye for the content (and usefulness) of the word “meme”, I have also gelaned stimulating information about the origin of monotheism, or about the “Oxygen Holocaust”.

Also, the comments present some interesting ideas.
As for Mr. Godesky’s understanding of “collapse” (#8) however, I ‘respectfully dissent’. IMHO, ‘a collapse is not a collapse’.
Rather, there are two distinctly different ways to cause a collapse.
Think of the collapse of an individual person: it can be brought about by intrinsic factors (disease), or by someone hitting you with a hammer on the head (or putting you in jail and depriving you of food).

Equally, the breakdown of a society, or of a civilisation, can be a “Tainterian” collapse due to excessive complexity. These days, however, mankind more likely seems to be heading towards a situation where (contrary to Mr. Godeskys opinion) even an increase in complexity will not enable us to “harvest more resources”. But of course, there is always a chance of the complexity collapse (or a certain degree of it) will precede the depletion collapse.

It is also conceivable that we will be seeing an interplay of both. I am convinced that there is a relation between complexity and sheer mass of people. The relation is not 1 : 1. If take the Wikipedia statistics as an indicator, it shows some 70.000 entries for some 260 Mio. speakers of Russian (some 270 articles per Mio. speakers), but some 380.000 articles for 124 Mio. German speakers (around 3.100 articles per 1 Mio. speakers).
In English, the statistic shows around 1 Mio. articles for 1 billion speakers, or around 1.100 articles per 1 Mio. speakers.

So obviously, while there seems to be more information per head in the German Wikipedia (some of which may simply be a translation from the English edition), the total information storage in English is much larger.
The obvious conclusion is that with economic conditions and cultural advancement being roughly equal, a larger population can afford a much higher complexity (and I guess knowledge itself is a form of complexity?) than a smaller population.

Therefore, if the depletion collapse curbs the size of the world population, we are also going to loose much of the knowledge necessary to keep up the complexity which in turn would be necessary to postpone depletion (for a little while, because eventually you cannot stop it).

Anyway: life is going to change drastically some time in the next 50 years.
If I am lucky, I will not be around any more when it happens. While it would be a situation interesting to watch, I’m afraid it won’t be quite as nice to live through.

Well, this sums up my recent career shift beautifully. It’s back to my roots. Hope you don’t mind if I quote you. With attribution of course, as always.

Look around and what do you see? The escalation of “involuntary simplicity.” Do the revelations of John Perkins in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man have anything to do with a hungry Bolivian subsistence farmer? A Vassar grad in art history and a Christian Scientist tells me that “people are poor because they want to be poor.”