Two books, The Collapse of Complex Societies by Tainer, and The Fall of the Roman Empire by Grant.
Summed up. Taxes and regulation. Productive people from the most humble of occupation cease striving because the cost curve becomes too steep. Honest captains of industry flee to better climes, the wealth is left to be squeezed dry like a slumlord tenement owner, or eventually looted by the welfare state, the government minions like the Pratorian Guards of old, or like copper and wire thieves all over our nation stripping once productive factories and homes. At the other end are lawyers and finacialists paper shufflers of various occupational titles, growing fat like flies off a corpse, or a weak man with a gangrene foot.
Collapse of Complex Societies !!!
been reading that, it is an immense important book.
failure of marginal return on complexity. translation: we went into iraq but didnt get the oil. now we are doomed.