Greater complexity means less resource use, not more
As we all know we are ever surrounded by those who insist society is about to collapse. Predictions of the End Times might change their flavour - Gilgamesh had his flood, Jesus is coming back tomorrow or capitalism is going to boil us in our beds - but the insistence that it’s right about to happen is a human eternal. Something, we are sure, stemming from that individual long dark night about to arrive for the sort of people with enough social salience to be listened to when making such claims.
But we do have to admit an irritation with this claim:
Brozović says: “But there is one theory of collapse that stands out as the most frequently invoked: Joseph Tainter’s theory of complexity.” Tainter’s theory was published in 1988 and has since been described as “peak complexity”.
Brozović says: “He says the main function of every society is solving problems by investing resources. But as society becomes more complex, the problems become more complex, so you have to invest more resources. Painter says at the end of this spiral, collapse is inevitable, because you cannot do this for ever. Technological innovations can simplify increasingly complex problems. But, again, this cannot go on indefinitely.”
This is to be fundament over embonpoint. Greater complexity means less resource use, not more. That’s what the greater complexity is - having the knowledge and complicated processes to be able to do more with less.
We can test this. The US economy is very much larger than it used to be. It is also more complex. Getting on for five times in size what it was in 1970, for example.
Yet steel usage is a little below what it was in 1968. Thorium usage seems to be only 1% of what it was in 1970. Copper usage is below 1969 levels. Tantalum 60% of 2010 levels. Yes, this includes all the recycling we do now. That is, this is consumption, not abstraction of virgin material.
The US is a hugely richer and very much more complex society than it was those 50 odd years back. Yet physical resource use has fallen in these cases. Sure, have a look at the other minerals listed. But it’s clearly not true that increased wealth, income and or complexity necessarily lead to increased resource use.
In fact, we can use one of those examples, tantalum, to explain why complexity reduces resource use. Back in that 2010 period we just had smartphones really taking off. Capacitors were still - sometimes at least - physical tubes of the metal (well, the material). Then along came the next technological leap, surface mounted capacitors. To butcher the science more than a little, it was akin to moving from vacuum tubes to chips to make radios work. We then had many, many, more mobile phones, each using more capacitors, but total tantalum usage falling. Increased complexity leading to less resource use.
Sure, we can play about with things being imported and all that. But the base point we’re making is still true. Complexity leads to fewer resources being used. Because that’s what the complexity is, the ability to make the whatever with fewer of those physical resources.
Sure, sure, it might even be that society’s about to end and not in only that highly personal manner. But greater complexity leading to increased resource use isn’t going to be the reason. It’s not just that this is the usual millennarian nonsense, it’s that this prediction even manages to get the sign wrong.
Sigh.
Tim Worstall