This ended up being a lot longer than I anticipated, so basically I can sum it up by saying that while I think Diamond’s conclusions are in some ways inchoate and fatally flawed, I think it is also a mistake to interpret his theory as virtually debunked by specific examples of specific societies and how they fell. I draw a distinction between his geographic determinism theory presented in Guns, Germs, and Steel and his “5 factors of failure” checklist presented in Collapse.
I think the latter is where the majority of his mistakes are made. However, I think “My Buddy” is conflating the two and seeing an issue where there isn’t one: “[Diamond] answers things broadly to some measure of success, but fails to distinguish success on a smaller scale.” I actually think Clayton addressed that point before it was even posted: “Diamond isn’t even addressing the question of why the Romans were powerful for a while and then the Ottomans and then the British and now the Americans. All of these extravagantly powerful empires were light-years ahead of their contemporaries in the Americas, the African heartland and Islands and I think Diamond really has nailed down why.”
That is the point. Guns doesn’t attempt to explain the micro reasons Rome could fall to barbarian tribes from Central Asia. And the fact that that happened does not discredit his theory, but My Buddy is implying it does, even if just in part.
In the context of what the book was most focused on, I think it is.
This and all the other questions you raise sound exactly like that review posted earlier in this thread, which I was talking about in my last post. I think in the context of Guns, Germs, and Steel Diamond isn’t so far off. It is when he set out to answer a new question of why societies and civilizations fail…that’s when he runs into the shortsightedness and ignorance you speak of.
With Guns, he is mostly concerned with developments from prehistory up to about AD 1500, and pays no real attention to the questions of what it is specifically within societies that makes them prosper and falter. His primary focus is on accounting for the relative differences between societies around the world throughout history. In other words, with the first book, he was taking more of a macro look…whereas with Collapse he attempts to answer questions on a more micro level, within individual societies over time, as opposed to an assessment of human civilization on a world scale.
And while he decidedly does a good job of weaving together the multiple disciplines required to build such an all-inclusive theory in Guns (history, geography, anthropology, ecology, genetics, archeology, and botany, to name a few), when the content of the question leads farther into the realm of economics, I’m afraid Diamond is simply ill-equipped to answer the questions he’s asking. Of course there were factors of economics involved in his original determinism theory—as economics is virtually everywhere—but in prehistoric times these factors were not all that complex, as without much capital to speak of, there wasn’t much capitalism able to take place. And even though his study is taken all the way up to the beginnings of the mercantilist period, the questions of economics are never fully applied to any one civilization, but are more kept to a relativist approach, simply pointing to one society’s advancements over others.
Collapse
It is only when Diamond attempts to look on a micro scale and explain why societies collapse that he goes off base…and even there he gets so close, yet remains so far away. He offers a 5 point checklist of factors that can contribute to a societal collapse…over-working the environment, climate change, failure of a supportive neighbor, bad relations/war with neighbor, and political/economic factors…what he calls “how people react to the first 4 factors.”
It’s remarkable how he is able to identify the problems, yet so easily misattribute their roots. A great example is here in this lecture…Diamond talks about how his undergraduate students would ask him the question: “Why on Earth would these societies do all these dumb things? Why did they cut down all their trees? What did the Easter Islander who cut down the last palm tree say, and why did the chiefs allow this?” See the problem here? Why is the assumption that the elites are wise all-knowing leaders who just fell down on the job? Why is the question not "why would the chiefs order this to be done? And “why would the people go along with it?”
I think this is a perfect microcosm for Diamond’s overall problem in his assessment…while he does have other methodological issues, such as looking only at slanted examples of fragile, mostly isolated or island landscapes that witnessed colonists, renegades, or adventurers who sought in their greed or ignorance to put too many people in the wrong place…his major problem is more one of chronology and cause and effect. He is “putting the cart before the horse”, as they say.
A couple minutes later in that same lecture, as he tries to answer the question posed by his students, he actually says that one of the reasons groups can make bad decisions is that they fail to see the problem growing around them…because it creeps up slowly. He even uses Leonard Read’s “how to cook a frog” analogy. Not kidding. He uses a libertarian economist’s analogy for the creeping infringement by the state as a way to describe how people don’t see the problems growing around them…while he blames the fall of societies on mishandling of the fragile environment. The irony is almost palpable.
How Societies Choose to Fail
Diamond’s assessment more or less is that people over-exploit their environment, and that causes problems which manifest in hostilities with neighboring societies as well as within, which leads to a collapse. He refuses to acknowledge (I think in his historic and economic ignorance) the reasonings behind these things. It’s a lot like the way Keynesians explain economic changes: “A recession happens when, for whatever reason, a large part of the private sector tries to increase its cash reserves at the same time.” Diamond does the same thing. He doesn’t really answer the question his students ask him…the why or how people could and would do these things that are so detrimental. He only sort of answers it…he starts in the middle, never really getting to a true cause…instead more pointing to a symptom in the chain of events (again like most Leftist arguments). Kind of like saying: “The reason for the house burning down is quite obvious. It burned down because it caught fire.” It’s ambiguousness like this that the author of the review actually touches on:
“The main problem, however, with [Collapse] is that Diamond’s well-meaning, environmentally correct storytelling cannot impart any coherent lesson of why in fact societies fail. Environmental degradation, climate change, hostilities, political and cultural failures, and trade are cited as the roots of collapse, but are used so interchangeably that we never learn to what degree mismanagement of nature or of people brings on doom. As a result, when Diamond ventures into systematic analysis of historical questions that he knows nothing about, he has a predictable propensity to say things that are not simply wrong but hilarious.”
What’s so funny, ironic, and sad at the same time, is that Diamond actually does touch on the answer, but misses it completely. One of the reasons he points to to answer “why/how” is a mismatch between short-term interests of “the elite” and the long-term interests of the entire society. Which of course, is by and large a great explanation…the only problem is, Diamond, like most academics, (at least in part) defines “the elite” as “modern American CEOs”, which he actually uses as a comparison in his book to the Norsemen of the past who caused the collapse of their societies through their greed and zeal in conquering other societies…while portraying them as, what the reviewer calls, "caricatured chauvinists who proclam “the unconscious message, ‘We are Europeans, we are Christians.’”
Diamond makes almost no connection to the true source of elite power…the State. Because of course it was no doubt ancient versions of modern CEOs that were in charge of depleting stores of resources on small islands and isolated areas in order to erect monuments to gods and rulers. It had absolutely nothing to do with the chiefs of those societies who actually held all the power in commanding their people. No, it was the merchants, with all their greed and short-sightedness, with focus only for the short-term “gains” to be had by constructing scores of 100-ton statues.
Next, after using the global warming farce as an example of people not recognizing a problem because of its slow-growing nature, he carries on into answering another question of how even when people see a problem, they don’t act…using as an example mining companies, who through (apparently) a severe lack of regulation—who didn’t see this coming?—found that they “could make a lot of money” by dumping toxic waste into rivers and streams. But he’s not done. In another confounding display of irony, he launches directly into explaining “the tragedy of the commons”—which he actually defines as “a lack of privatization” which in turn makes it difficult to have an agreement as to how a resource will be harvested—and he uses it as another example of the exact same problem: people seeing a problem and doing nothing about it. So just to be clear, it’s a “lack of regulation” that leads to the pollution and debilitation of communally-held property, but it’s the fact that property is communally held that leads to detrimental exploitation of resources. Are you seeing why this so funny yet so sad at the same time? Obviously the lack of privitization is what allows the pollution just as it allows for resource depletion. Just as someone would care how resources are harvested if he owned the property, he would also care what condition the property is in…particularly if it were a valuable resource (like a lake or river).
Once again the root cause is not only staring him in the face, he’s actually making out with it and he still doesn’t see it. Here again he steps over the arsonist lying on the ground with a torch and lighter-fluid in his hands, so he can get a better look at the charred remains of the house that burned down. And now we get to hear his eureka proclamation about how the house caught fire because it wasn’t fireproof.
Diamond in the rough
But if you’ve decided Diamond is a typical anti-capitalist Leftist academic, prepare to be surprised again. Right after this, again in the same lecture, he mentions how until 8 years prior, his view of big businesses was they were nothing but evil institutions that trash the environment and have no conscience or care for anything but the bottom line and are essentially the enemy. Sounds about on par with what you’d expect. But he tells a story of how he was sent out on consulting work for Chevron in the oil fields of Papua New Guinea. While working there he discovered that the Big Oil company’s oil fields were “managed environmentally more rigorously than any national park that [he’d] ever been in.” He mentioned how endagered plants and animals are more abundant inside the borders of Chevron property than outside them. After seeing this and scores of other examples across the globe of private businesses actually taking not only a concern for the environment and local peoples, but actually providing an even better existence than where their presence is not felt, he realized that because businesses care about the bottom line, they do, more often than not, end up doing things that benefit the environment. Part of the reason for this is because it is actually more cost effective to be clean and cautious, than to have to clean up billions of dollars worth of toxic mess. He said it also makes financial sense because image and reputation play a large role in profitability…and that it is therefore the consumer that largely determines a company’s behavior.
The guy is just one surprise after another. He goes on to say “a blueprint for disaster is when the elite—those in political power in a society—are capable of insulating themselves from the consequences of their actions…so that they don’t feel the bad impacts that they are responsible for”. Seriously that could have just as easily come from the mouth of Lew Rockwell himself.
Honestly after hearing more of this guy talk I’m more and more convinced that Clayton’s sense about Diamond was correct…he’s really just seeking some truth, at least for the most part, and doesn’t have a problem going where his investigations lead him. I think the flaws in his reasoning are more the result of simple ignorance and a lack of exposure and education in sound economics and political theory, as opposed to some closed-minded bias or quest to demonize Western culture and capitalism.
Based on the way it seems Diamond takes in evidence and considers it, and is willing to change his view based upon it, I really wouldn’t be surprised that if someone sent him enough Rothbard, Block, and Hoppe, he’d end up being ancap.