[HonestPessimist]

When a government sense an inevitable societal collapse, it would do everything in its powers to prevent such a collapse and that mean applying gradual totalitarian or authoritarian methods to ease or prevent a societal collapse and preserve the status quo.

[LateGreatPlanetEarth]

Less is known about the Maya, but they, too clustered closer to the cities as the end approached. Likely this was because isolated farms were vulnerable to raids. Too many people, not enough food, and no way out leads to only one outcome: warfare.
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The part about raids of agr lands is a concern. what I haven't figured out yet is how to cash out of gold; can't exchange for dollars, or land. maybe land can be purchase as a co-op to provide some protection from raids.

[nella]

Wonderful thread, even if it is old. I'll have to reread it alittle more carefully.
My 2 cents about the currentd ecrease in population. I find the previous posters left out what seems to be an important detail. Couples did have more children, and for several reasons nobody touched upon. Yes, children were the old energy slaves. They also were their parents retirement fund so to speak. When the parents became aged, they lived with their children. When this is factored into the equation, larger families made more sense.
Also death rates were higher for children in those decades. Having more childen covered the losses.

[deMolay]

When the costs of projecting power and retaining control reach too high of a level, is when collapse of a system occurs. Whether the Roman Empire or the British Empire. Or when the inputs to maintain something far exceed the carrying capacity of the system.

[Iaato]

There were some really great points about changes in complexity with diminishing resources in this thread. Although complexity was discussed at length here, I don't think anyone addressed definitions of complexity, except to say that it was hard to pin down.

Biologists have a really nice, simple indicator for complexity; Simpson's Diversity Indicator.

Simpson's Diversity Indicator

So richness is measured by how many species are in a sample of 1000. Evenness is measured by the relative distribution of those species; is there a predominance of one species, or are species more evenly spread. The example given in the link is buttercups and daisies. You can take that indicator and apply it easily to human systems. Look at a sample of 1000 people in the economy, and count the number of jobs or roles that pop up. More roles/jobs equals more diversity. While a young growing economy might have less diversity/complexity due to overgrowth of successful job roles, a mature complex system would be indicated by a high amount of stable diversity. I would argue that while our current economic system in the first world is incredibly diverse, there has been some loss of diversity in the last decade, with a preponderance of new job in one or two places; service and finance, for example. It will be interesting to watch the diversity collapse in high energy places like NYC.

[bshirt]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('zensui', '
')This life is short, with or without PO. I prefer to survive decently (water and food, not "consumer useless goods") and meditate breathing clean, healthy air near a tree than to be a "slave to the system" (working in a cubicule for funny money to buy like there's no tomorrow).