The Cost of Sustaining Government

Z-Man posts a good 'think of it this way' essay.

...Joseph Tainter argues that societies collapse when their investment is sustaining their societies reaches the point of diminishing returns. The complex systems they evolved to solve the problems they have faced come with a cost. Complexity itself brings a cost, as maintaining any complex system has special requirements. These costs are not fixed. They increase over time and at some point, they exceed the benefits.

In modern life, this is obvious in software systems. They are initially created to solve a specific set of problems like accounting or tracking parts in a warehouse. Over time they become increasing complicated as they are expanded to solve other problems like tracking costs or forecasting cash flows. They are patched, upgraded and modified continuously until they reach a point where the cost of maintaining them is greater than the cost of replacing them with something new.

This idea of diminishing returns is useful in thinking about how the custodial state is evolving and how it will end. There is a cost to making sure you are not using the wrong pronouns or teaching your kids the wrong values. There is a cost to bullying people into taking certain medicines or avoiding certain foods. Of course, there is a cost to dreaming up these new taboos. The American university system, which is the primary source of production for this stuff, is not cheap....

 That last--the American university system--is about to be sorely tested as men increasingly shun college (leaving women to earn the majority of degrees) and as the raw numbers of college-age kids diminishes over the next 20 years, as it has for the last 10 or so.

That is a good thing.  Colleges long since abandoned the Idea of a University and have become trade-schools, something that German students study and learn in high-school years.  Colleges have also added exotic-fauna and hothouse-flora "education" in "studies" which are not only useless, but largely ad-hoc invented curricula.

The collapse of colleges will be a good thing.

The collapse of Government MAY be a good thing.

Interesting times.