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Thanks for the excerpt, meme. I started reading it but fell asleep before getting too far. I was wishing you would steer us to the meat!
"However, in modelling of pandemic influenza in modern societies, it was found
that once more than about 10% of people are randomly removed from the workforce, the
risks of large-scale societal dislocation increases significantly. is because at this level
of removal it is likely that key people with specialised knowledge will disappear from the
workforce, meaning that key teams or functions cannot operate, which further cascades
through other co-dependent functions throughout social and economic networks."
I'd think that, in our society, the number would be lower than 10%. 10 percent is 30 million people, after all. With so many dead, or incapacitated, or CARING for the aforementioned, our leaders would be running in circles, giving orders in a blind panic (or, even worse, hiding.) More importantly, it feels to me as if our society has fewer leaders/professionals per capita than at other times in the last hundred years. Maybe I'm mistaken, but it really does seem that the U.S. is heavily laden today with "bottom rungers." Assuming that the disease or war... or whatever it is... takes out 10 percent of the population without regard to class, the nation would REALLY be hurting at the upper end. The managers, businessmen, doctors, professionals, and other leaders who really make things happen, would be in short supply at the very time when the press, politicians and teeming masses put out the greatest demands for their service.
To me, 5 percent (15 million dead/disabled/removed) seems high enough to cause utter, irreparable carnage.
Gold is $1,581/oz today. When it hits $2,000, it will be up 26.5%. Let's see how long that takes. - De 3/11/2013 - ANSWER: 7 Years, 5 Months
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The above is a reply to the following message:
what is collapse?
By: meme
in
ROUND
Sun, 22 Jul 12 11:11 PM
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Msg. 42745 of
45651
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#msg-735781
III.5 What is Collapse?
As this paper is opening up a discussion about a collapse in the globalised economy, it
would be useful to have a definition of what collapse might be. Following Tainter32 and
Homer-Dixon33 we could associate collapse with a sudden loss of complexity. However,
there has been confusion in such studies where collapse has been also identified with a
break-up of empires but which did not significantly alter the socio-political complexity of
the constituent parts.
The shock from a collapse depends upon the level of complexity lost. The Black Death
which killed about one third of Europe's population in the middle of fourteenth century did
not fundamentally alter the socio-economic complexity of the time3. A dead producer
represented a dead consumer. The same small number of social functions (farmer, mason,
and cleric) remained before and after, there were just fewer people doing each role. This
reflects low levels of complexity and interdependence within and across functions in
society. However, in modelling of pandemic influenza in modern societies, it was found
that once more than about 10% of people are randomly removed from the workforce, the
risks of large-scale societal dislocation increases significantly. This is because at this level
of removal it is likely that key people with specialised knowledge will disappear from the
workforce, meaning that key teams or functions cannot operate, which further cascades
through other co-dependent functions throughout social and economic networks.
What is needed is a general complexity measure that might provide at least a rough guide
for such a complex system collapse. Using simple thermodynamic argument, Eric Chassion
has defined rising free energy rate density Φ (measured in ergs/s/g or W/kg), where free
energy is the energy available for doing work, as a quantitative metric for rising
3 The Black Death did change the feudal system and raised the living conditions of peasants, but it made little
difference to the types of skills in use, or kinds of production (though quantity obviously dropped significantly).
38
complexity34. It is universal as it charts in time increasing complexity across the history of
the universe from the Milky Way to the Sun, Earth, plants, animals, and society.
With great caution, as we are only considering a very general argument, we might identify
Φ with (Energy flow/ GWP) (per annum) for the globalised economy. We can look at this
on the scale of the globalised economy, as in figure:1 , or at the cutting edge of complexity
within the economy. One analysis shows that the evolution of key manufacturing processes
over the last century saw a six order of magnitude increase in the energy and resource
intensiveness per unit mass of processed materials35. This should be quite intuitive - as we
put more and more elements and functionality onto a micro-chip, the energy and resource
requirements rise. Notice also, the increasing speed of economic processes naturally
correlates with rising complexity as the measure, Φ, is per unit time.
So let us imagine the state of the globalised economy goes from (E
o
/GWP
o
) →(E*/GWP*).
What defines a collapse? One could have a case where (E
o
/GWP
o
) = (E*/GWP*). In this
case, a big drop in economic activity is not necessarily associated with collapse. Here
economic activity may have fallen by the same factor as energy flow, thus though the
economy may be much smaller, the same level of complexity remains.
We can associate collapse with (E
o
/GWP
o
)>>(E*/GWP*). Ignoring physically improbable
arrangements, collapse would be associated with energy flows falling by a greater factor
than GWP loss. This would represent a major fall in the economy’s ability to purposefully
use energy relative to GWP.
A systemic collapse in the globalised economy implies there is connectedness and
integration. It also requires contagion mechanisms; these have been framed within the
trophic web model. (In our framework we are not considering global pandemics, nuclear
war or asteroid impacts, for example). It should be born in mind that a collapse could have
intermediate states, characterised by partial breakdown and semi-stable states. However,
here we are just outlining broad features.
The two other considerations are how big a fall has to be for it to be considered a collapse
and over what time period. A global systemic collapse as framed here is different from
much of the word's common usage in relation to the current crisis - a relatively sudden fall
in income, a significant rise in unemployment, and a forced shift in a societies' previously
held expectations of what the near-to-medium term holds. However, the operational fabric
continues to operate as before, supermarkets are re-supplied, money works, and a diversity
of complex goods and services can operate.
Rather, drawing upon section III.1, it can be argued that collapse happens when a system
crosses a tipping point and is driven by negative feedbacks into a new and structurally and
qualitatively different state, one with a different arrangement between parts and a fall in
complexity. The operational fabric could cease to operate and the systems that are adaptive
to maintaining our welfare could cease or be severely degraded. As a society, we would
have to do other things in other ways to establish our welfare. Functions and specialities, a
diversity of goods and services, and complex interdependencies would be lost.
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