ABSTRACT
One of the most prominent theories of societal collapse is the idea of diminishing returns on complexity. This model proposes that complex societies gain in socio-political complexity to address new problems. Eventually a threshold is reached, past which the returns on complexity drop, and societal decline and/or collapse ensues. This chapter challenges and revises this theory by bringing in politics and new evidence. A view that is truer to history suggests that state hierarchies more often reduce rather than increase complexity. State hierarchies are not innocuous solvers of collective problems but are more often vehicles for capital accumulation which occasionally address a few elite-selected problems. Solutions to these problems are not rationally chosen but are frequently tokenistic, wasteful, or even counterproductive. Instead of being an abstract theoretical blanket across all societies, the phenomena of diminishing returns mainly influence empires through overexpansion and military overspending. Without remedying action, the eventual result is deep fiscal drain and fragmentation. For any political structure, diminishing returns on energy are rarely the sole cause of decline. Instead, they are accompanied by decay created through inequality, corruption, intra-elite struggle, and hindered response abilities against new challenges. All of these have now well-studied, empirical relationships to capital concentration and inequality. These coalescing forces of fragility have a common source, and it is not too much complexity, it is unequal, extractive states.
