Did you have reactions to his presentation, Donal or others?  Did you find anything he said especially provocative?  Surprising? 

For those who are interested in the summary, from Wikipedia:

According to Tainter's Collapse of Complex Societies, societies become more complex as they try to solve problems. Social complexity can be recognized by numerous differentiated and specialised social and economic roles and many mechanisms through which they are coordinated, and by reliance on symbolic and abstract communication, and the existence of a class of information producers and analysts who are not involved in primary resource production. Such complexity requires a substantial "energy" subsidy (meaning the consumption of resources, or other forms of wealth). When a society confronts a "problem," such as a shortage of energy, or difficulty in gaining access to it, it tends to create new layers of bureaucracy, infrastructure, or social class to address the challenge. Tainter, who first (ch. 1) identifies seventeen examples of rapid collapse of societies, applies his model to three case studies: The Western Roman Empire, the Maya civilization, and the Chaco culture.

For example, as Roman agricultural output slowly declined and population increased, per-capita energy availability dropped. The Romans "solved" this problem by conquering their neighbours to appropriate their energy surpluses (in concrete forms, as metals, grain, slaves, etc.). However, as the Empire grew, the cost of maintaining communications, garrisons, civil government, etc. grew with it. Eventually, this cost grew so great that any new challenges such as invasions and crop failures could not be solved by the acquisition of more territory. Intense, authoritarian efforts to maintain cohesion by Domitian and Constantine the Great only led to an ever greater strain on the population. The empire was split into two halves, of which the western soon fragmented into smaller units. The eastern half, being wealthier, was able to survive longer, and did not collapse but instead succumbed slowly and piecemeal, because unlike the western empire it had powerful neighbors able to take advantage of its weakness.

We often assume that the collapse of the western Roman Empire was a catastrophe for everyone involved. Tainter points out that it can be seen as a very rational preference of individuals at the time, many of whom were actually better off. Archeological evidence from human bones indicates that average nutrition actually improved after the collapse in many parts of the former Roman Empire. Average individuals may have benefited because they no longer had to invest in the burdensome complexity of empire. Tainter notes that in the west, local populations in many cases greeted the barbarians as liberators.

Tainter begins by categorizing and examining the often inconsistent explanations that have been offered for collapse in the literature.In Tainter's view, while invasions, crop failures, disease or environmental degradation may be the apparent causes of societal collapse, the ultimate cause is an economic one, inherent in the structure of society rather than in external shocks which may batter them: diminishing returns on investments in social complexity. For contrast, Jared Diamond's 2005 book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, focuses on environmental mismanagement as a cause of collapse. Finally, Tainter musters modern statistics to show that marginal returns on investments in energy, education and technological innovation are diminishing today. The globalised modern world is subject to many of the same stresses that brought older societies to ruin.

However, Tainter is not entirely apocalyptic: "When some new input to an economic system is brought on line, whether a technical innovation or an energy subsidy, it will often have the potential at least temporarily to raise marginal productivity" (p. 124). Thus, barring continual conquest of your neighbors (which is always subject to diminishing returns), innovation that increases productivity is – in the long run – the only way out of the dismal science dilemma of declining marginal returns on added investments in complexity.

It is an interesting approach which I think can add some value to any discourse on how to address the current issues.  One thing which seems to come from this is approach tends to facilitiate looking at the issue from a singular country perspective.  The world may not be entirely "flat," but it is becoming more so with every day.  One could argue the current global situation is just one huge empire that is in a (perpetual) process of fragmentation and consolidation. The layers are being added by numerous countries, multi-national corporations and NGOs daily as the "empire" goes through its convulsions.

I would add that this empire (one huge complex society - in the way the LA basin is huge city even though there are a bunch of citites and counties claiming their existence) is that it is not just a complex society is a complex adaptive system.  History can show us how others behaved and responded to situations, and human nature being what it is, can offer insights and some predictability about how we will behave and respond in the future.  But in the end we (and our societies) are not destined to any particular outcome.   Just taking Tainter's lingo, there is a possibility that in the near future some new inputs to the economic system is brought on line and takes us all down a path we can't see right now. 

I listen to this stuff, but when he hits specifics, and comes down out of the grand doom-laden pronouncements, he is... wrong.

e.g. He announces that innovations will become... less productive. Oh really? He makes statements like, "This was first noticed in 1879." Which kindof makes me lose confidence in him, because, I haven't really noticed that innovation and productivity thing dying away since 1879.

Take cars. The development of the hybrid car over the last decade offers us the chance to boost the mileage of vehicles by 50% and more, depending on the model. Dozens and dozens of models are now hybridized, or are being hybridized. There has been NO other innovation over the last 80 years which increased productivity this much. 

Now. If you are to support this guy, you need a way to beat this argument. If you can't, you need to accept that probably the #1 user of fossil fuels - the car - has just been innovated upon, in a way which massively reduces its energy use.

I can give you the same for home heating. A furnace is going to operate at 60%-100% efficiency (if gas or electric, etc.) But if you use a new heat pump, you can take those same energy inputs, and get 300%-400% as much output. It's a relatively new technology, but there are already millions operating in the world - including the Empire State Building, Buckingham Palace and the Bush Ranch. And again, I can think of nothing which increased productivity so much  in the field as this.

And then he uses some bizarr-o measure of PATENTS to productivity, and says wind and solar are approaching technological maturity? Look, if the price of solar is 80 cents/kwh, and you can shove it down over 40 years to 40 cents and then 20 cents then 10 cents, but then it's 10 years just to shove it down to 8 cents, this guy says you're a loser. The fact that you've just shoved solar's price - and the price of energy - lower than earlier technologies, and we now have a renewable source of very cheap energy, is completely lost to his chart.

In fact, he'll use it as an example of why we're doomed and all gonna die!!

I didn't watch all his presentations, but I'd love to hear him on the Internet. Somehow, it didn't make his Top 10. But the Internet is absolutely massively opening the door for faster and deeper and wider innovation. It just... is. And it's not a "narrowing," it's a massive widening. So... what's he on about? 

Also, his stuff seemed pretty ferociously Amero-centric, frankly. He talks about all the problems which can't be solved, except a lot of other countries aren't so worried about some of these, because they have - social complexity and all - done fairly well on them. 

In short, a lot of this stuff is Mood Music for Americans, and it's just being tarted up as "science" or "history" when it really isn't. It just hits the right tones. He throws up lots of cool quotes, but I can't see where he's actually got much bite on the detailed reality of the day.

Frankly, I've come to hate these guys. Their grand theories, that can't handle things that are right in front of their noses, only REINFORCE people's sense of helplessness. And that's a dangerous thing. 

So. Let me put it this way. Hybrid cars. His theory needs to answer it, or be thrown out. Because it's a great big innovation, in a great big energy-using, important field, and it involves the very very smart handling of complexity. 

I haven't watched the videos, but read the comments.  I wanted to say that Dylan Ratigan is almost all about energy any more, and is traveling all over the country to learn what works, what doesn't.  Been a bear on recreating the manufacturing sector with green technology.  I ignore him on nuclear and have sincere doubts about B. Pickens and natural gas given the industry's penchant for fracking so far, but...

He often quotes that we lose 60-some per cent of all energy created to inefficiency. Googled to find something written; found this at Huffpo.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dylan-ratigan/free-america-energy-town_b_8...