The Collapse of Complex Societies

1. Collapse is a Rapid Loss of Sociopolitical Complexity.

Collapse, as viewed in the present work, is a political process.

Defining collapse. Collapse signifies a swift and significant reduction in a society's established level of sociopolitical complexity. This isn't merely a decline, but a fundamental unraveling of the intricate structures that define a complex society. It's a political event, though its repercussions ripple through economics, art, and literature.

Manifestations of collapse. When a society collapses, it exhibits a lower degree of stratification, less economic and occupational specialization, and reduced centralized control. There's a noticeable decrease in investment in monumental architecture, artistic achievements, and the flow of information. Resources are shared and traded less, coordination diminishes, and the integrated territory shrinks.

Relative to scale. Collapse isn't exclusive to empires; it's a general process affecting societies across the complexity spectrum. A simple society can collapse just as surely as a great nation, losing its established level of complexity relative to its size. This could mean sedentary horticulturalists reverting to mobile foraging or a chiefdom decentralizing into independent villages.

2. Complex Societies are Costly Problem-Solving Organizations.

Human societies and political organizations, like all living systems, are maintained by a continuous flow of energy.

Energy and complexity. All human societies, from the smallest family unit to the largest empire, require a continuous flow of energy for their maintenance. The level of energy harvested by a population directly correlates with its cultural complexity. More complex societies demand vastly greater per capita energy support than simpler ones.

Increased costs. As societies grow in complexity, they incur escalating costs. This involves creating more networks, establishing more hierarchical controls, processing greater amounts of information, and supporting specialists not directly involved in resource production. Consequently, a larger portion of the society's energy budget must be allocated to maintaining these organizational institutions.

Problem-solving nature. Complex societies emerge as problem-solving organizations, adapting to changing circumstances like population growth, resource stress, or external threats. Whether driven by elite ambition (conflict theory) or societal needs (integration theory), complexity is a response to perceived problems, requiring continuous resource mobilization to maintain legitimacy and function.

3. Investment in Complexity Inevitably Faces Declining Marginal Returns.

It is suggested that the increased costs of sociopolitical evolution frequently reach a point of diminishing marginal returns.

The core thesis. A central argument is that the return on investment in complexity is not linear; it follows a characteristic curve where benefits per unit of investment eventually begin to decline. Initially, increased complexity yields favorable returns, but as the easiest solutions are exhausted, further investments become disproportionately costly.

Diminishing returns defined. This principle, also known as the law of diminishing marginal productivity, means that after a certain point, additional investments in complexity fail to yield proportionately increasing benefits. Marginal returns decline, and marginal costs rise, making complexity an increasingly expensive strategy with decreasing benefits.

Universal application. This phenomenon is not limited to specific sectors but applies across crucial spheres of societal activity. From agriculture to information processing and sociopolitical control, the pattern of needing to invest more for less proportional gain is a recurrent aspect of sociopolitical evolution.

4. Resource Production and Information Processing Show Diminishing Returns.

Rationally-acting human populations will first exploit those resources that yield the best return per unit of effort, and still meet the needs of the population.

Resource depletion. In agriculture, intensifying land use (e.g., from forest fallow to multi-cropping) increases labor per unit of output, leading to declining productivity per unit of labor. Similarly, in energy and mineral extraction, the most accessible and abundant resources are exploited first, meaning subsequent efforts target costlier, less efficient sources.

• Agricultural intensification: Increased labor for diminishing returns (Boserup).
• Energy/Minerals: Costlier extraction as easy reserves deplete (e.g., shift from wood to coal).
• Modern energy: Declining BTUs per dollar invested (1960-1976).

Information overload. Processing large quantities of information, essential for complex societies, also faces diminishing returns. As social groups grow, communication loads increase faster, eventually leading to hierarchies that are less efficient and reliable.

• R&D productivity: Patents per scientist/engineer declined significantly (1900-1954).
• Education costs: Specialized training is costlier, yields narrower benefits than generalized learning.
• Healthcare: Ever-larger investments yield smaller increases in life expectancy.

Costly solutions. As societies exhaust simpler, cheaper solutions, they are forced into more expensive, specialized approaches in both resource management and knowledge creation, where the marginal benefit of each additional investment is lower.

5. Sociopolitical Control and Economic Growth Become Increasingly Costly.

As systems develop more parts, and more complex interactions among these parts, the potential for problems, conflicts, and incongruities develops disproportionately.

Bureaucratic bloat. Complex societies exhibit an inexorable trend toward declining marginal productivity in hierarchical specialization. Bureaucracies grow larger and more specialized, consuming more resources while often yielding disproportionately less real value or competitive advantage.

• British Admiralty: Ships and personnel declined, but officials increased by 769% (1914-1967).
• British Colonial Office: Officials increased by 447% as the empire shrank (1935-1954).

Cumulative problems. Organizational solutions tend to be cumulative; once developed, complex social features are rarely dropped. This leads to exponential growth in complexity and costs, as new problems arise from the very solutions implemented, creating an unending spiral of increasing expenditures.

Legitimization costs. Rulers must constantly legitimize their reigns, which involves costly activities like defense, public works, and social welfare. As populations become accustomed to these benefits, maintaining compliance requires even greater investment, leading to declining marginal returns on legitimizing activities. If benefits decline, coercion costs rise, further straining resources.

6. Declining Marginal Returns Lead to Societal Vulnerability and Disintegration.

Once a complex society develops the vulnerabilities of declining marginal returns, collapse may merely require sufficient passage of time to render probable the occurrence of an insurmountable calamity.

Loss of reserves. A society experiencing declining marginal returns invests more heavily for proportionately less gain, often depleting excess productive capacity and accumulated surpluses for current operating needs. This leaves little or no reserve to counter major, unexpected stress surges like climatic shifts or foreign incursions, making the society increasingly vulnerable.

Reduced attractiveness of complexity. As marginal returns deteriorate, the advantages of complexity diminish compared to less costly social forms. Localized groups perceive greater benefits in independence, leading to increased resistance or outright attempts to break away from the regional entity. This further drains resources, as the hierarchy must allocate more to legitimization or coercion.

Downward spiral. This creates a downward spiral: declining resources and rising marginal costs sap economic strength, services cannot be sustained, and unrest grows. The support base weakens, and its members reduce their contributions. Ultimately, the society either disintegrates as local entities break away or is so weakened that it is easily toppled, reducing sociopolitical organization to a locally sustainable level.

7. The Western Roman Empire: A Case of Declining Returns on Expansion.

By the time of the Principate the marginal return on investment in empire had declined considerably from the level of the later Republic.

Initial success, eventual burden. Roman expansion under the Republic was highly profitable, with conquered provinces funding further conquests and eliminating taxes for Roman citizens. However, with the end of expansion under Augustus, the Empire faced fiscal insufficiencies, as the costs of administering and defending a vast territory had to be covered by yearly agricultural output, a strategy with declining marginal returns.

Fiscal crisis and debasement. Faced with stress surges like barbarian incursions and plagues, emperors resorted to debasing currency, shifting current costs to future taxpayers through inflation. This strategy, while politically expedient, undermined the economy and further reduced the marginal return on imperial investment, especially as the crises escalated in the 3rd century.

Over-taxation and collapse. The Dominate, under Diocletian and Constantine, vastly increased military and administrative complexity to save the Empire, but at an unsustainable cost. Heavy taxation, conscription, and occupational freezing decimated the population, led to abandoned lands, and impoverished cities. The benefits of empire declined so severely that many peasants welcomed barbarians as liberators, demonstrating a complete loss of legitimacy and an economically preferable alternative in collapse.

8. The Classic Maya: Overburdened by Costly Competitive Complexity.

The Maya of the Classic period were engaged, then, in a system of competitive relations in which advantage would accrue to those centers that were larger, that invested more in competitive display, and that could mobilize greater populations.

Population pressure and conflict. The Southern Lowland Maya, a densely populated and territorially constrained people, faced increasing population pressure by the Preclassic. This led to agricultural intensification, sociopolitical complexity, and military competition, as communities vied for scarce resources in an environment with limited diversity for economic symbiosis.

Costly display and declining health. Warfare and competition drove an "art race," where monumental architecture and public art served as costly signals of power and deterrents, compensating for the lack of standing armies. This, alongside agricultural intensification and support for a growing elite, placed immense burdens on the peasantry. The population's health and nutritional status declined throughout the Classic period, indicating a deteriorating marginal return on their investment in complexity.

Vulnerability and disintegration. Late Classic increases in social costs, coupled with a weakened, undernourished population, made the Maya ripe for collapse. Whether triggered by invaders, environmental deterioration, or internal conflict, the collapse was a predictable adjustment to an insolvable dilemma of high costs and diminishing returns. The subsequent depopulation suggests the intensive agricultural systems were unsustainable without the now-defunct hierarchy.

9. Chacoan Society: Diluting the Benefits of Regional Integration.

The result was that later Chacoan communities realized a proportionately lower advantage when some region experienced a surplus, and proportionately less could be distributed to each community experiencing a deficit.

Energy averaging in a marginal environment. Chacoan society developed a hierarchical system of regional economic integration, centered in Chaco Canyon, to buffer subsistence fluctuations in the arid San Juan Basin. This "energy averaging" system, leveraging environmental diversity, provided security and supported a growing population by pooling and redistributing resources.

Over-expansion and declining effectiveness. Initially, the system expanded by incorporating diverse, productive communities. However, later expansion added more Outliers in closer proximity, often in less productive, low-diversity areas of the Basin interior. This diluted the system's effectiveness, as productivity fluctuations became more synchronized, and the marginal benefit of adding new communities declined.

Costly investment, low returns. This deterioration coincided with a major construction boom in Chaco Canyon, increasing the system's overall cost. Communities derived less subsistence security at higher costs, leading to withdrawal from the network. The final severe drought (1134-1181 A.D.) was not the cause but a catalyst, accelerating a collapse already made inevitable by declining marginal returns, as the costs of maintaining the complex system outweighed its benefits.

10. Collapse is an Economizing Process, Not Always a Catastrophe.

To a population that is receiving little return on the cost of supporting complexity, the loss of that complexity brings economic, and perhaps administrative, gains.

Re-evaluating catastrophe. The common perception of collapse as a uniform catastrophe is often biased by the perspective of elites and later observers who value complex societies. However, from the perspective of the broader population, especially those bearing the brunt of supporting complexity, collapse can be an economizing process.

Rational adjustment. When the marginal utility of increased complexity becomes too low, collapse can be the most appropriate and rational response. Societies don't "fail to adapt"; they adapt by shedding costly, unproductive organizational layers. For populations receiving little benefit from supporting a hierarchy, its dissolution can bring economic and administrative relief.

Benefits of simplification. The post-Roman Germanic kingdoms, for instance, resisted invasions more successfully and at lower administrative costs than the late Empire. This suggests that a drop in complexity can lead to a significant rise in the marginal return on social investment, benefiting much of the population, even if it means a "dark age" for artistic or literary traditions.

11. Power Vacuums Enable Collapse; Peer Competition Prevents It.

Collapse occurs, and can only occur, in a power vacuum.

The condition for collapse. Collapse is not merely a decline; it requires a power vacuum—the absence of a competitor strong enough to absorb the disintegrating polity. Where such a competitor exists, a weakening society will be dominated or absorbed, leading to a change of regime rather than a loss of overall complexity.

Peer polity dynamics. In systems of "peer polities" (e.g., Mycenaean states, Mayan cities, post-Roman Europe), societies interact and compete on a relatively equal level. In such a scenario, the option to collapse is an invitation to domination by a neighbor. This forces each polity to maintain organizational complexity and competitive investment, even if marginal returns become unfavorable.

Simultaneous collapse. Peer polity clusters, like the Maya and Mycenaeans, tend to collapse simultaneously when they collectively reach economic exhaustion, as none can unilaterally withdraw from the competitive spiral. The Eastern Roman Empire, for example, could not collapse because its disintegration would have been immediately absorbed by the Sassanian Empire, its powerful peer.

12. Global Collapse Looms Without New Energy Subsidies.

World civilization will disintegrate as a whole. Competitors who evolve as peers collapse in like manner.

Modern vulnerabilities. Industrial societies, despite their technological prowess, are subject to the same principles of declining marginal returns seen in past collapses. Disturbing trends in agriculture, energy production, R&D, healthcare, and governance indicate that current investments in complexity are yielding diminishing returns.

No power vacuum today. Unlike ancient societies, today's world is globally interconnected and filled with complex societies. There are no power vacuums. This means that individual national collapse is unlikely; instead, a weakening nation would be absorbed or supported by a dominant power or international agency.

The global competitive trap. Modern global society operates as a system of competitive peer polities. This competitive spiral drives increasing complexity and resource consumption, regardless of declining marginal returns, because unilateral economic deceleration is not a rational option. If this trend continues unchecked, and without a new, abundant energy subsidy, the ultimate outcome will be a global collapse, as world civilization disintegrates as a whole.

Last updated: October 30, 2025