Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail or Succeed
Why did Japan, a relatively small isolated society, ultimately succeed to become one of the largest and most influential economies in the world? Why did Norse settlers manage to establish a society on Greenland and then vanish, while in the same geography the Inuit society succeeded? What might have passed through the mind of the person who cut down the last tree on Easter Island, thereby sealing the fate of his society? Jaren Diamond is a Professor of Geography at the University of California at Los Angeles. His studies of evolutionary biology and biogeography led to this provocative and informed examination of the “tragedy of the commons,” the ways in which societies have managed the resources toward outcomes of failure or success.
Collapse opens with an examination of present day Montana and the tension between the historic industries of agriculture and logging and the new industries of tourism and outdoor sportsmanship, while dealing with the legacy of consumption of natural resources left by mining and farming. The author makes clear that the examination of the survival of communities is a discussion of present challenges. The clash of objectives and values of historic residents and new settlers in Montana is a microcosm of the political environment that we face today, both in the United States and between nations in the global context, with regard to a fixed supply of natural resources.
The next section of the book investigates societies of the past and why they failed, including Easter Island, the Anasazi of the Southwest United States, the Mayans, and the Viking settlements of the North Atlantic, including Iceland, Greenland, Newfoundland. According to Diamond’s analysis, some of their challenges were common among these societies, such as fragile ecosystems undone by excessive foresting and fishing, and some were unique to their circumstances. Some of these societies tipped due to events beyond their control, such as the Mayans who faced a prolonged drought, and some failed because they made poor decisions, such as the Norse who chose to develop an adversarial relationship with the Inuit, who had also occupied parts of Greenland.
The author then turns to societies of the present that face challenges of survival, including Rwanda, China, and Australia. The author contends that Rwanda is actually not a case of historic tribal feudalism. Rather, it is a case in which the population has grown beyond the capacity of ecosystem to support it and now competition for resources has caused fatal conflict among neighbors. This section includes an interesting chapter that compares the paths of the Dominican Republic and Haiti, opposite sides of an island that, while both poor by the standards of developed countries, have achieved contrasting degrees of sustainability. The differences in their pathways is explained by Diamond as a mix of their histories, their political leadership and their management of the natural resources at their disposal.
Final section discusses the logic of group decision-making processes and how they can easily lead to poor and ultimately fatal decisions on how societies manage the natural resources upon which they rely for their survival. In doing so, he frames the discussion in the context of the conditions that one finds when societies have failed, such as a fragile natural environment, a change in climate, a rapid and sustained consumption of the natural resources, and a change in relationships with trading partners. In reviewing the author’s summary, it is easy to understand how the societies studied in this book failed to sustain themselves.
Collapse studies the survival challenges of communities of relatively small scale that must address the management of natural resources held in common. The broader question is how a society of more significant scale with a greater degree of heterogeneity should organize itself to avoid “the tragedy of the commons.” This is the question that we live with today. An important part of that broader question is “how can our local economies in aggregate, strike the right balance between financial benefit from consuming natural resources and the cost of consuming those resources?” At the very least, Diamond’s work has provide important research and context for our political leaders to address those questions.
