Have you looked into "collapsologist" Peter Turchin's work?
Turchin asserts that civilizations collapse when they have an "excess of elites" who consume too much of the civilization's resources — y'know, folks like Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, and Gates.
And probably Taylor Swift, too, although she seems to have a certain consciousness about it.
I've read a bit of his work. Tainter touches on class conflict and elite mismanagment/behaviour as well as resource depletion aspects in his text and other papers. He seems to acknowledge the role of each of these but discounts both as 'primary' causes. Rather they contribute to the stresses and diminishing returns that a society experiences over time.
Heaven knows it is the elite class (especially if one includes the political ruling class) that are responsible for a significant percentage of resource misuse. For our governments this misuse includes a massive and ongoing misallocation of expenditures on everything from imperial endeavours to political junkets to nepotism to excessive remuneration to bureaucratic expansion, etc. etc..
And then there's also the 'lesser' elites (i.e., the top 10-20%) that feel obliged to take advantage of all that modern technology has to offer and waste resources on a variety of 'entitlements', especially massive material consumption and leisure and entertainment activities that include a lot of hydrocarbon-driven movement all over the globe...
But as I'm sure you know, Peak Oil has arrived and will bite all of us in the ass soon enough.
Yes - this too is a process which appears to be accelerating: "For some, then, the option of detaching from larger sociopolitical forms is more attractive since fewer benefits are resulting from the costs they are incurring. As a result, smaller social units begin to pursue their own goals, forsaking those of larger units. The status quo may respond to this shift through greater legitimisation activities and/or control. Peasant revolts may occur or, more commonly, apathy towards well-being of the polity increases."
Have you looked into "collapsologist" Peter Turchin's work?
Turchin asserts that civilizations collapse when they have an "excess of elites" who consume too much of the civilization's resources — y'know, folks like Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, and Gates.
And probably Taylor Swift, too, although she seems to have a certain consciousness about it.
I've read a bit of his work. Tainter touches on class conflict and elite mismanagment/behaviour as well as resource depletion aspects in his text and other papers. He seems to acknowledge the role of each of these but discounts both as 'primary' causes. Rather they contribute to the stresses and diminishing returns that a society experiences over time.
Heaven knows it is the elite class (especially if one includes the political ruling class) that are responsible for a significant percentage of resource misuse. For our governments this misuse includes a massive and ongoing misallocation of expenditures on everything from imperial endeavours to political junkets to nepotism to excessive remuneration to bureaucratic expansion, etc. etc..
And then there's also the 'lesser' elites (i.e., the top 10-20%) that feel obliged to take advantage of all that modern technology has to offer and waste resources on a variety of 'entitlements', especially massive material consumption and leisure and entertainment activities that include a lot of hydrocarbon-driven movement all over the globe...
But as I'm sure you know, Peak Oil has arrived and will bite all of us in the ass soon enough.
Yes - this too is a process which appears to be accelerating: "For some, then, the option of detaching from larger sociopolitical forms is more attractive since fewer benefits are resulting from the costs they are incurring. As a result, smaller social units begin to pursue their own goals, forsaking those of larger units. The status quo may respond to this shift through greater legitimisation activities and/or control. Peasant revolts may occur or, more commonly, apathy towards well-being of the polity increases."