The Seneca Effect Why Growth is Slow but Collapse is Rapid /

• Main Author: Bardi, Ugo (Author)
• Corporate Author: SpringerLink (Online service)
• Format: Electronic eBook
• Language: English
• Published: Cham : Springer International Publishing : Imprint: Springer, 2017.
• Series: The Frontiers Collection,
• Subjects: Physics.; Phase transitions (Statistical physics).; Complexity, Computational.; Economics.; Economic sociology.; Applications of Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos Theory.; Complexity.; Organizational Studies, Economic Sociology.; Data-driven Science, Modeling and Theory Building.; Economic Systems.; Phase Transitions and Multiphase Systems.

The essence of this book can be found in a line written by the ancient Roman Stoic Philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca: "Fortune is of sluggish growth, but ruin is rapid". This sentence summarizes the features of the phenomenon that we call "collapse," which is typically sudden and...

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• Seneca's times: The fall of the Roman Empire
• The Seneca collapse as a critical phenomenon: why do things break?
• Networks: the Seneca collapse of complex structures
• Fast and Furious Seneca: Financial collapses
• Destroying what keeps you alive: the tragedy of the commons
• The World as a Giant Bathtub: the Seneca Collapse of Complex Systems
• World models and the collapse of everything
• The dark heart of the fossil empires
• Malthus was an optimist: famines and population collapses
• The Seneca asteroid: climate change as the ultimate collapse
• Managing complex systems: how to pull the levers in the right direction
• Conclusion: How to euthanize an empire.