The document summarizes Joseph Tainter's theory from his book "The Collapse of Complex Societies" that societies like the Romans, Maya, and inhabitants of Chaco canyon collapsed due to becoming overly complex. Tainter argues that early on, increasing complexity provides marginal benefits to societies, but it eventually reaches a point of diminishing returns where the costs outweigh the benefits. When unexpected stresses occur, highly complex societies lack flexibility and collapse. The document relates this theory to complex modern societies.

1. The Collapse of Complex
Business Models
by Clay Shirky, 2010

2. The Collapse of Complex
Business Models
by Clay Shirky, 2010
is a develop of the ideas from…

3. The Collapse of Complex
Societies
by Joseph Tainter, 1990

4. The Collapse of Complex
Societies:
In 1988, Joseph Tainter wrote a chilling book
called The Collapse of Complex Societies.
Tainter looked at several societies that gradually
arrived at a level of remarkable sophistication
then suddenly collapsed: the Romans, the
Lowlands Maya, the inhabitants of Chaco
canyon.

5. The Collapse of Complex
Societies:
Every one of those groups had rich traditions,
complex social structures, advanced technology,
but despite their sophistication, they collapsed,
impoverishing and scattering their citizens and
leaving little but future archeological sites as
evidence of previous greatness.

6. The Collapse of Complex
Societies:
Tainter asked himself whether there was some
explanation common to these sudden
dissolutions.
The answer he arrived at was that they hadn’t
collapsed despite their cultural sophistication,
they’d collapsed because of it.

7. The Collapse of Complex
Societies:
Subject to violent compression, Tainter’s story
goes like this: a group of people, through a
combination of social organization and
environmental luck, finds itself with a surplus of
resources. Managing this surplus makes society
more complex—agriculture rewards
mathematical skill, granaries require new forms
of construction, and so on.

8. The Collapse of Complex
Societies:
Early on, the marginal value of this complexity is
positive—each additional bit of complexity more
than pays for itself in improved output—but
over time, the law of diminishing returns
reduces the marginal value, until it disappears
completely.

9. The Collapse of Complex
Societies:
At this point, any additional complexity is pure
cost.
Tainter’s thesis is that when society’s elite
members add one layer of bureaucracy or
demand one tribute too many, they end up
extracting all the value from their environment it
is possible to extract and then some.

10. The Collapse of Complex
Societies:
The ‘and them some’ is what causes the trouble.
Complex societies collapse because, when some
stress comes, those societies have become too
inflexible to respond.

11. Is Sydney a Complex
Society?

12. mashed together by: peterhac
attribution: Clay Shirky and other stuff found on the web
image: Sydney Out and About 2009