2018/10/16 by Ugo Bardi, Bardi, Ugo, Sara Falsini +3
Energy · Environmental Science · #FOS: Physical sciences #Global Energy and Sustainability Research #Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) #Sustainability and Ecological Systems Analysis
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1810.07056
openalex publication_date 2018/10/16 · openalex created_date 2022/08/02 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The collapse of large social systems, often referred to as civilizations or\nempires, is a well known historical phenomenon, but its origins are the object\nof an unresolved debate. In this paper, we present a simple biophysical model\nwhich we link to the concept that societies collapse because of the diminishing\nreturns of complexity proposed by Joseph Tainter. Our model is based on the\ndescription of a socioeconomic system as a trophic chain of energy stocks which\ndissipate the energy potential of the available resources. The model produces\nvarious trajectories of decline, in some cases rapid enough that they can be\ndefined as collapses. At the same time, we observe that the exploitation of the\nresource stock (production) has a strongly nonlinear relationship with the\ncomplexity of the system, assumed to be proportional to the size of the stock\ntermed bureaucracy. These results provide support for Tainter s hypothesis.\n