[extropy-chat] Collapse, by Jared Diamond

[Lee Corbin]

Spike asked about Diamond's book "Collapse". I read it and it's
quite wonderful, especially if you're into history and human
ecology. Diamond is a writer of vast skill, and reading him is
simply effortless.

He presents arguments pro and con with a good deal of objectivity,
well---at least as much as he is able to muster given that he has
a definite message in mind.

I found three things, however, to criticize.  One is that most
the failed societies he analyses didn't have free markets. You
can easily see how the existence of a free market economy would
have ameliorated much of their distress.

Second, he fails to point out that each of the collapsed societies
existed in a period of technological stasis. Of course, for us on
this list, that's a very big deal.  But it really does help wreck
his claims of the utter applicability to our civilization of those
catastrophes.  Now thirty-five years ago I could see that Toynbee
came a cropper on just this same issue; historians and sociologists
simply must try harder to incorporate technological change into
their thinking.

Lastly, he finally---but only belatedly and weakly---gets around
to mentioning the discount factor. (Goods today are worth more
than tomorrow.) I can even imagine that taking this into
consideration, many of those societies (e.g. Easter Island) may
have pursued optimal strategies, at least in terms of the greatest
number of people enjoying the greatest prosperity over the longest
period of time.  And it might be argued that in some cases even
today, humanity is simply better off grabbing the resources and
thus destroying some otherwise completely useless land: after all,
chance are that not too long from now it can be very cheaply
repaired.

Lee