GHung wrote:Tanada said ; "In a collapse of civilization you do not just bounce back to prior or better standards of living after the depression/disruption period.... "
Russia had neighbors that didn't collapse and commodities those neighbors needed. Easy to avoid full-on collapse when you can sell stuff. I was in the USSR in the '70s and Somalia in the early '80s, and can testify that both were showing signs of collapse; plenty of people being thrown out the back of the bus. Unlike Russia, Somalia didn't/doesn't have much that others want to pay for. Its only "advantage", for what it's worth, is location.
Anyway, "collapse" is a process, like growth and economic expansion are ongoing processes. Growth=>stagnation=>contraction=>collapse.... all part of the same mess we make. Easy to view in hind-sight. Not so much in real-time, when you're embedded in it,, until it smacks you upside the head..
Tides of change, eh?
I fully agree Collapse is a process, which is why I believe the Seneca Cliff model is unlikely to actually take place. For the cliff model to work collapse has to be very rapid and world wide so that no recovery using remaining resources is possible. The collapse of Rome depending on whom you ask took from 100-300 years because signs were showing up in the 200's AD, but they always weathered those early storms. Even after the 'collapse' when the City of Rome itself fell to the invaders in the early 400's the technology level and lifestyle of the survivors was not greatly changed from what it had been in the 300's. The problem was the culture was no longer on a path of success so things continued to degrade until we got the early 'Middle age' when Charlemange tried to build his own version of Empire in modern day France and Germany. By then the culture was too focused on safety, travel was rare and expensive, there was no reliable means of communication outside of your home village and you didn't know anyone outside worth communicating with. Individual education fell to a bare minimum, infrastructure was not maintained, people eked out a living with stoop labor agriculture or fishing boats that never strayed out of sight of the shore.
While it is true Russia still has a lot of resources to trade with its neighbors the population could see how well its neighbors were doing and it wanted that lifestyle, or some form of it, for themselves. In Somalia there are some resources worth exploiting and trading, but the population is terrorized by various warlords and their focus is first on safety for themselves, their families and their clans. Where there is no security there is no freedom to better your circumstances. In its own way Haiti is another example of the same thing, their are a few very rich folks who control everything and teeming masses of poor who they keep as poor and ignorant as possible so they can stay in control more easily.