Complexity and Collapse

Due to improved communications, travel, the Internet etc., the world has been steadily shrinking and the BRIC economies have been increasing in importance. Perhaps US global dominance and ability to act unilaterally is scaling back in favor of potentially a long term future of positive leadership.

The US will undoubtedly retain a position as the single most important economy in the world. As such the world needs the US as a positive example of democracy, as a bulwark against leadership by states with questionable human rights records such as China, Russia, India and some of the Arabic nations.

As the use of social networks and the Internet increase around the world, and as use of those same sites is taken away from users by their governments, the positive example of the US will regain its place, and will arguably be even stronger than in the Cold War.

Prof. Ferguson in his haste has attributed the independence of Bangladesh to Britain! Actually, it was India, in 1971, by fighting a war against Pakistan tore off its eastern part and created Bangladesh. Bangladesh did not exist until then.

America is not a conventional empire along the lines of all those he talked about. If by demise of the empire he means the financial decline of US, it is easily curable. A little national sales tax will balance the books.

Other than that, the institutional strength of the US in all spheres of life is unrivalled in the world.One weakness seems to be the primary, secondary, and high-school education system of the country. The weakness of American public education system could be the harbinger of the evils he talks about:

What then would proceed after such a failure? Would the wealthy and powerful individuals who were pulling the strings, behind closed doors, still be in power after a government collapse? History would show that they may still be in power after a great revolutionary change.

History is nothing but an example that when revolution takes place, it can quickly and effectively be hijacked by militant and extremist elements, often resulting in a situation worse than that prior to the revolution. Often, these elements themselves are co-opted by the ruling elite, ensuring that whatever regime rises in the ashes of the old, no matter how militant or radical, it will continue to serve and expand the entrenched interests of elites. This is the worst-case scenario of revolution, and with history as a guide, it is also a common occurrence. To understand the nature of co-opted revolutions and entrenched elites, one need only look at the revolutions in France and Russia.

Could your description of the falling government of the United States be the beginning of a push toward a New World Government, where the powerful stay in power?

This article is an inconsistent dud.

If empires are complex and inherently unpredictable systems, then how can Mr Ferguson tell us anything about what will happen to the US in the future? Couldn't China equally be a complex and unstable 'empire'?

Mr Ferguson touches on demographics but ignores a key fact - the US is likely to grow sharply over the next 50 years and to maintain a young population. China is ageing rapidly. The US is also huge, with room to grow without destroying its own environment. China has exploited every square inch of its territory already.

Mr Ferguson underestimates the strengths of the US position which are unlike any previous 'empire'.

He also seems to discount entirely the ability of nations to determine their own future. Does he think that the US / UK revival after 1980 was an accident? It happened because people voted for new leaders and for a new, capitalist direction.

Finally, another specific example from the article caught my eye. Mr Ferguson talks about the collapse of French power at the time of the French revolution. He therefore ignores Napoleon who came close to dominating the whole of Europe and close to defeating Britain. Had he done so, the 19th century would have looked very different. French power was arguably greater in 1805 than it ever was before the revolution.

The more I think about this article the more there is to challenge.

For example, is it really true that empires tend to collapse quickly? Although the western half of the Roman empire collapsed relatively quickly, the eastern half carried on for another 1,000 years.

The Ottoman empire also seems to have hung on far longer than it perhaps should have done given its power relative to the rest of the world.

And British power was clearly waning as early as around the 1880s. The real peak of British power - relative to the rest of the world - lasted for quite a short time, around 1815 to around 1880. After this it went into a long, slow slide for about 100 years with lurches downwards along the way. It did not suddenly pop in 1945.
The causes of the relative decline in British power are quite simple. From 1815 to 1880, by an historical fluke, there simply was no other power big enough and strong enough to challenge Britain. However, from 1880 onwards a whole series of powers began to emerge onto the world stage; Germany, Japan, the US, the Soviet Union, China and others. Inevitably relative British power went down. From 1880 to 1945 the appearance of British power was almost certainly much greater than its reality. Appearance and reality began to match up in the years 1945 to 75.
Indeed in those years Britain talked itself into believing that it was much less powerful than it really was. By the late 1970s Britain has reached a very sad psychological state. I see the same thing happening now with the US. Much of power is about confidence, self-belief and morale. The west, and the US in particular, must not keep telling itself that it is inevitably in decline and that the future belongs to Asia.

"The Hutu ... killed other Hutu. Why? Look at the land: steep hills farmed right up to the crests, without any protective terracing; rivers thick with mud from erosion; extreme deforestation leading to irregular rainfall and famine; staggeringly high population densities; the exhaustion of the topsoil; falling per-capita food production. This was a society on the brink of ecological disaster, and if there is anything that is clear from the study of such societies it is that they inevitably descend into genocidal chaos."
...
"When archeologists looked through the ruins of the Western Settlement, they found plenty of the big wooden objects that were so valuable in Greenland—crucifixes, bowls, furniture, doors, roof timbers—which meant that the end came too quickly for anyone to do any scavenging. And, when the archeologists looked at the animal bones left in the debris, they found the bones of newborn calves, meaning that the Norse, in that final winter, had given up on the future. They found toe bones from cows, equal to the number of cow spaces in the barn, meaning that the Norse ate their cattle down to the hoofs, and they found the bones of dogs covered with knife marks, meaning that, in the end, they had to eat their pets. But not fish bones, of course. Right up until they starved to death, the Norse never lost sight of what they stood for."

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/01/03/050103crbo_books?currentPage...

"Norse society's structure created a conflict between the short term interests of those in power and the long-term interests of the society as a whole.Yet the society's values were at the root of its strengths as well as its weaknesses.The ...Norse did succeed... for 450 years as Europe's most remote outpost. ...Ultimately...the chiefs found...the last right they obtained for themselves was the privilege of being the last to starve." JD --Collapse..

A testimonial to the value of sustainability.

"Over the last three years, the complex system of the global economy flipped from boom to bust -- all because a bunch of Americans started to default on their subprime mortgages, thereby blowing huge holes in the business models of thousands of highly leveraged financial institutions."--Of the six page article, this sentence grabbed my attention more than any other. While I concede that in the words of the author, "a bunch of Americans started to default on their subprime mortgages," I cannot help but ask why loans were granted to these individuals in the first place? Herein lies the answer. Failure to honestly and intellectually recognize this, whatever the reason, portends collapse due to simplicity rather than complexity.

Dare I say it: I think Ferguson has a simplistic view of complexity. Yes, complex systems break down suddenly. However, in the example of the straw, the camel's back must be ready before collapsing under it. In our case, an increasingly decimated middle class and loss of job base leads to a very, very ready back. I think NF's only lesson to us here is to be ready for the sudden, unexpected downfall caused by the whisper of expectations/perception rather than attempt to read the signals of a gradually building storm (really!).

In the end, because of his limited view of complexity, Ferguson provides little in the way of solving the Collapse problem other than "be wary of a sudden one rather than a prolonged one". I disagree - it is more "complex" and integrated than that. While collapse may be sudden, it is the prolonged structural issues which allow for it.

PS - thank you to Carl L., et. al. for the reference to Tainter's work in this area. I will be looking this up.

Most empires appear to be destroyed by another power rather than merely collapsing.
The European empires that existed in 1910 seem to me to have been fatally undermined by Germany and Japan in WWI and WWII (and finished off by the Soviet Union).
The demise of these Empires was to some degree inevitable when rival powers of similar or greater power arrived on the scene simultaneously in the early 20th century. For example, fifty million people in the UK could not possibly deal with Germany, Japan, Russia and others.
However, had the UK had five hundred million people in 1910 it probably could have defended itself successfully against all these powers.
If a power ever emerges which has 25%+ of the world population and 40%+ of world GDP it will be very hard for any other power to emerge to challenge it. It is not obvious to me that the dominance of such a power will merely collapse over time.
China is the obvious example of such a power which, because of its sheer size, could gain such a permanent global dominance.
Who would or could dislodge China from such a position?

The image of the beat of a particular butterfly's wings causing a tempest in a distant location is an ill-used metaphor. In terms of energy and physics, this could only result when the figurative chain of dominoes has been assembled in precise order, with sequentially larger dominoes positioned in the required erect posture and orientation such that the falling of one will trigger the falling of all subsequent units. It seems to me that the likelihood of such a state of entropy is vanishingly small.
A more compelling case can be made that, in the growing complexity of economic organization, that knowledge of wealth creation absents itself from the thinking and actions of politicians, bureaucrats and rent-seeking sectors. These actors, wittingly or not, confuse money with wealth, and have the means to acquire the former at the expense of the growth of the latter, and more particularly, at the expense of those who create wealth. The parasites ultimately kill the host, which rarely has the insight to comprehend its debilitation or the means to prevent it.
The decline of the American Empire has not been a result of a sudden, unpredictable gust from an unseen butterfly. It was a foregone conclusion upon the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913 and the practice of fractional reserve banking. This ended the solid link between wealth and money, allowing the creation of "claims on wealth" to be made in the absence of savings, the foregone/deferred consumption of wealth. Once governments, corporations and individuals could borrow money "created out of thin air" the dice were cast. The discipline of interest rates at levels necessary to balance borrowing with savings was lost. The proportion of borrowing failing to fall within the category of "self-liquidating" debt grew and grew and now practically all true growth-enabling investment is crowded out. The mal-investment (with non self-liquidating debt) in the dot-com bubble and the subsequent real estate bubble are directly attributable to easy fiat money and unrestrained credit expansion. These trends were recognized and criticized in real time by Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley and Douglas Noland of Tice Associates.
Now we are on the threshold of widespread revulsion of US debt securities. The biggest purchasers have already expressed their concern and recent TIC reports show they are beginning to act. Wall Street, the military-industrial complex and the "best Congress that money can buy" have purloined the substance of the economic edifice, oblivious to the damage being done to the wealth creators. The milk cow is now skeletal and yet there is no respite from the vampires. The hour and manner of her demise is not knowable, but the end seems inevitable.

One agrees with Servant C's observations over hindsight and studies done in retrospect. Usually they are meant to avoid a similar situation in the future. About dire warnings - well! Ozymandias by P.B. Shelley and Paul Kennedy's observations over the Imperial Overstretch together come across as an useful blend here - if caution is the note and import.
One always finds it useful to combine a psycho-cultural study with studies of structural factors when diagnosing any problem or even apparent non-problem. Much more important when one is offering certain prescriptions. Should the prescriptions be very valid and good and promises enough probabilities to look as a good decision in retrospect - it is usually difficult to recognize and accept them when one's socialization comes in as the psychological barrier. Iran seems to have a problem when faced with prescriptions the United States may have to offer (even if it finds someone genuinely concerned). The US may find problems with someone from the Iranian establishment offering it diagnoses and prescriptions. So with China - if from the US or vice cersa! So with the US if from China or vice versa! So with Russia and so with Germany - in such interactions with the United States. And vice versa! Life is always boring unless a retrospective Eureka. Not everyone is an Archimedes and deals with the present!
The more precise reason would be: are you reading yourself correctly? Are you reading your friends correctly? Are you reading your enemies correctly? These with a wonderful retrospective study usually makes things a little better. It does help in cutting down on unhealthy habits that seem to magnify over inherited problems.
Reiterative mistake-making behaviour is barely useful and sometimes makes non-friends out of old friends!

I begin to see why Ferguson's conservative-revisionist economic history is suspect. Britain certainly didn't grant independence to Bangladesh, as surely any primary school history pupil knows, and was decidedly a gone goose as a world power by the end of World War I if not much earlier, though the catastrophic economic over-extension of the Great War brought it all into clear focus. Much of Canada's early raillery against the limitations of its compromised sovereignty as a "British Dominion Beyond the Seas" arose from Britain having control of its foreign affairs and kowtowing to the Americans whenever an issue arose. That was clear by 1867 when the chosen name for the Canadian confederation, "The Kingdom of Canada" was nixed in Westminster lest it offend the Americans. The Alaskan Boundary Dispute at the turn of the 19th century (see all that chunk of British Columbia that is US territory?) clinched it. Not to speak of much earlier concessions along the ever-northwards moving international boundary.

The grand narratives, while flawed in that it is formed in hindsight, explains WHY things happen. Yes, diplomatic miscalculations happened, but why? Yes, the internal politics of Saudi Arabia was tense, but why? Yes, there was a problem in housing loans, but why?

If you don't explain the "why", you're just abdicating responsibility and just walking away from the burning capital, and you risk the dangers of repeating those same mistakes that plagued these previous empires. A system may be complex; it's your job to study it, simplify it so that other people can understand it, and figure out its faults. No, you won't understand it fully except in hindsight; that's why empires do fall eventually. And if the leadership of a empire refuses to embark on short-term pain to prevent a long-term massive disaster, then that empire deserves to collapse.

When the term “Empire” surfaces to describe a specific social system, it usually implies an already dysfunctional system when examined through systems science. The fundamental principles, derived from this scientific discipline that encompass all-inclusive numerous and variable components engaged in reciprocal bidirectional and value-based relationships, are long gone. Such a system is not engaged in self-organization and functional coherence assisted through vertical/governing hierarchy. At that stage, not organized but disorganized complexity is predominant and the entire complex adaptive system is failing; it escaped from its “health territory” of optimal function/adaptation, and entered the zone of chaos. It is here that sudden, unexpected “black swans” occur and randomness prevails; the capacity of such a system to adapt has been exhausted. Three paths are plausible from such a state: One- an exponential “malignant/undifferentiated” growth (analogous to cancer); Two- entropy where non-functionality begins to predominate and the system is nearing a standstill; Three: a rescue path of re-establishing organized complexity and differentiation (See InstaBlog for graphics http://seekingalpha.com/user/139406/instablog). What is also highly relevant to a system in such a precarious state is what kind of “intervention/manipulation” it receives. This is because in the zone of chaos, the “butterfly effect” is highly probable (The metaphor: “a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil causes a hurricane in Texas.” Translation: A small perturbation of a chaotic system at a critical time has dramatic consequences).
Putting systems science aside, a system succeeds or fails as a system; no societal strata are immune. For an analogy, just imagine a patient (a system) with an invasive, metastatic cancer: could the “head” escape in health and survive when the “body” has been ravaged by cancer? An unlikely scenario. A system lives or dies as a system.
For applicability of systems science to the current health care debate or cancer control, see the following references:
Janecka IP: Is the U.S. Health Care an Appropriate System? A strategic perspective from systems science. Health Research Policy and Systems 2009, 7:1
(Highly Accessed) http://www.health-policy-systems.com/content/7/1/1

Janecka IP: Cancer control through principles of systems science, complexity, and chaos theory: A model. Int J Med Sci 2007; 4:164-173. http://www.medsci.org/v04p0164.htm