(This is Part 17 of a series. Go back to Part 16.)
The anthropologist Joseph Tainter, in 1988, proposed that the concept of marginal returns could apply to the very complexity of society itself. In other words, as a society increased its investment in complexity it would find that its return on that investment—its benefits from it—would increase at a declining rate and eventually turn negative.
As Leslie White pointed out in 1949, complexity and energy are intimately related. Like any open system, a society can only exist by processing energy. A society invests in complexity, then, as a problem-solving strategy, one that allows it to maintain or increase its access to some energy source.
A greater energy source basically comes about in one of two ways: Either through conquest, which gives access to the wealth and resources of conquered states—a strategy followed by countless empires throughout history—or by gaining access to a higher-density energy source, such as the monumental switch from wood to coal at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.
To make this more clear, let's look at a famous example— the rise and fall of the Roman Empire.
Basically, Rome went through three stages: The first stage was the Roman Republic, which lasted several centuries and culminated with the establishment of the Empire by the first emperor, Augustus (14 BC to 27 AD).
In this first stage Rome acquired new sources of energy by military conquest of neighboring states, appropriating their wealth, resources and productive capacity. The results were bountiful:
In 167 BC Rome defeated Macedonia, seized its treasury and became so wealthy that it eliminated all taxation on itself. In 130 BC Pergamon was seized and Rome's budget now doubled, from 100 million to 200 million sesterces annually.
After the conquest of Syria in 63 BC the budget was increased again, this time to 340 million sesterces. And Julius Caesar's conquest of Gaul brought so much gold into the Imperial treasuries that the price of the metal dropped 36 percent.
This process was capped by Augustus' conquest of Egypt, which brought the nascent empire to its full size. Rome could expand no more because at its boundaries it ran into tribal kingdoms and empires which it could not defeat at such vast distances.
During this first stage the Empire's marginal return on its investment in conquest was increasing, as more and more wealth flowed into its treasuries from expropriation and taxation of provinces.
However, as time went on a hidden cost began to appear. In order to occupy and hold its provinces Rome needed greater complexity—more soldiers, more bureaucracy, more specialization, more network among them. As its armies, arms factories, road network, civil service, public works and so on all increased, Rome needed more money to support this increased complexity.
In other words, the primary effect of Rome's conquests was its new wealth, which showed up at once. However, the cost of defending and administering all this went on for centuries, and became an increasing energy burden. This was the secondary effect, the longer-lasting one.
(This is the end of Part 17. Go to Part 18.)
—jim sloman, 10.12.04 for Feb 16
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