Flutterby™! : Collapse of Complex (Business) Models

Clay Shirky points out the obvious in The Collapse of Complex Business Models, but it's good to be reminded of a few things:

The ‘and them some’ is what causes the trouble. Complex societies collapse because, when some stress comes, those societies have become too inflexible to respond. In retrospect, this can seem mystifying. Why didn’t these societies just re-tool in less complex ways? The answer Tainter gives is the simplest one: When societies fail to respond to reduced circumstances through orderly downsizing, it isn’t because they don’t want to, it’s because they can’t.