16 thoughts on “Collapse Proofing Our Society”

1. There seem to be two things going on. First a desire to centralize power. Second to fail to appreciate the value of simplicity. Both contribute to fragility.

   When I was programming as part of a team another guy had responsibility for a work order module that consisted of about 10,000 lines of code. After working on it for about a year it ballooned to over twice that. Eventually I inherited responsibility for that code (as last man standing.) When I got done it had more functionality and slimmed down to less than the 10,000 lines it started with being much easier to understand and maintain (programmers love tricky code which I abhor.)

   I’ve seen this in so many other areas of life that it seems to be a universal trait of humans.

2. That’s one of the great features of a free market: failure of one part is adapted to, rather than the cascade failure likely to happen in a tightly coupled centrally planned system.

3. I read Tainter’s book a few years ago, it could be summed up with ‘as society becomes more complex to address its problems marginal returns decline’, and it’s the same process that goes on in companies as they get older, if those companies are operating in a competitive market though there’s always the pressure to trim the fat and to keep doing so or else they lose in the market and fall over.

   I have come up with a political structure that is supposed to duplicate the market function in the political arena, using economically competing noncontiguous states within a common boarder, in which citizens could switch state as easily as consumers switch the make of car they drive, but I’ve never been convinced it would be stable.

   1. I’m having difficulty seeing how that could work without being open to all kinds of abuses, where you routinely deal with a majority of people adhering to different sets of laws.

      1. The usual idea is to farm out enforcement to protection agencies, who negotiate conflicts because they don’t want to get into a shooting war with each other. It’s an interesting idea, but I’m not convinced it would work in the real world, either.

         Personally, I think we’re heading to a future of small proprietary communities, where you leave if you don’t like it.

4. I can’t help it. This reminds me so much of… (begins with an A)….

   So Jimmy Whales sets up a duplicate set of Wikipedia servers to a remote island continent nation (Australia or New Zealand) with a staff dedicated to preserving the knowledge of all things western and USA in particular.

   Eventually a technology hub forms around the boundless and cheap information stored in the Wikipedia that is gradually lost back in the home empire through decay of institutions and infrastructure because of heavy debt and taxation.

   The archivists role diminish as the new civilization develops into an international technological power. A century or two pass and there is a new superpower in the world! The United Commonwealth of New Austrazealia… 😛

   1. :0

   2. New Zealand is an interesting case of increased centralization and fragility. Provinces with their own legislatures have been replaced by a central government where the balance in parliament is often held by an ethnic minority party eager for pork barrel spending and special privileges.

      1. The New Zealand provincial system was abolished 140 years ago, one of the justifications was pork-barrel politics.

         While there’s certainly a case that Maori have been able to get “settlements for past injustices” (the standard political and media terminology) that many feel are excessive, Minority parties like The Maori Party have not been a significant player in gaining those settlements. The settlement process was after all formalised into New Zealand law with the 1975 the Treaty of Waitangi Act, which established the Waitangi Tribunal to hear claims of Crown violations of the Treaty of Waitangi. In 1985 the Government extended the Tribunal’s powers to allow it to consider Crown actions dating back to 1840, including the period covered by the New Zealand Wars. The number of claims quickly rose, and during the early 1990s, the government began to negotiate settlements of historical (pre-1992) claims. Wiki.

         There was never any ethnic minority party holding the balance in parliament prior to the 1996 adoption of the MMP system, prior to the New Zealand had used the FPP system under which there had rarely been minor parties of any type gaining seat in parliament and certainly no ethnic minority party had held such a balance of power.

         And even since the introduction of MMP the minor parties that have been in the situation of holding the balance of parliamentary seats have rarely, if ever, been ethnic minority parties.

         1. While I will admit I was wrong on some details, the general point holds. MMP is unnecessary, the various parties’ attempts to gain Maori votes en bloc undermine any chance of better unity and the never-ending Tribunal brings constant uncertainty into affairs.

            1. If New Zealanders really want to increase their country’s robustness, it might not be too late to ask admission to a certain federation across the Tasman… or just move to the Gold Coast like everyone else is doing.

   3. Yeah, but what about the mutant dude, who everyone thought was a harmless entertainer, but took over by exercising mental powers over New Austrazealia?

      1. Ah, the mutant, in his red cap and buffont hairdo was entertaining to millions but not enough to overcome his meeting with James Carville first citizen of the New Democrats the alligence to which the mutant returned.

      2. Ah, the mutant, in his red cap and buffont hairdo (and small hands) was entertaining to millions but not enough to overcome his meeting with James Carville first citizen of the New Democrats the alligence to which the mutant returned.

   4. “The United Commonwealth of New Austrazealia”

      Don’t you mean the Foundation of New Austrazealia?

5. Don’t you mean the Foundation of New Austrazealia?
   😉

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