Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Allaway. Tracy, do you
Speaker 1: remember the episode that we did was not long after
Speaker 1: the election at the time and maybe still is one
Speaker 1: of our biggest most popular Odd Lots ever. Oh, it's
Speaker 1: definitely one of my personal favorites. And it was one
Speaker 1: of the earliest odd Lots episodes as well. Right, I
Speaker 1: guess maybe at the time being the biggest at the
Speaker 1: time is not saying as much, but nonetheless it was.
Speaker 1: It was very popular. We talked to an archaeologist about
Speaker 1: civilizational collapse, right, not just any archaeologists, though, one who
Speaker 1: has been called at various times the real life Indiana Jones. Right. So,
Speaker 1: I was like right after the election, and of course,
Speaker 1: like half the country was really freak out. You know,
Speaker 1: half the country is probably thrilled. They half the country
Speaker 1: that was really freaking out was very interested in this idea, like,
Speaker 1: oh God, what does the end of civilization looks like?
Speaker 1: Look like? Because maybe that's what we're seeing now, right,
Speaker 1: And so we brought on an expert, a literal expert
Speaker 1: in the end or collapses of civilizations, right, And so
Speaker 1: very all the ominous signs we walked through it. He's
Speaker 1: an expert on the collapse of the minds. And you
Speaker 1: know what parallels, if any, there are between then and
Speaker 1: what we're seeing in modern society in the US, Well,
Speaker 1: we have them back. That is very exciting. Exactly. So
Speaker 1: we were once again talking about collapse and ancient civilizations,
Speaker 1: but our guests this time. He has been doing more
Speaker 1: work lately, specifically on like parallels to kind of the
Speaker 1: business world and sort of taking theories from management and
Speaker 1: ekenn mix and applying them to see what parallels there
Speaker 1: are between that and again the what causes an organization
Speaker 1: to collapse? So I find this really interesting because at
Speaker 1: the moment, in particular, you have a lot of handwringing
Speaker 1: over what's going on with the big tech firms, and
Speaker 1: of course, for technology, culture is such an embedded aspect
Speaker 1: of a tech firm, and so people are talking about
Speaker 1: whether or not those tech firms are maybe not going
Speaker 1: to collapse, although I guess you know there's a question
Speaker 1: mark over things like we work, but whether or not
Speaker 1: they're heading for hard times and how that culture is
Speaker 1: feeding into that and even if you don't get outright
Speaker 1: collapse Like this idea of sort of endemic cultural problems
Speaker 1: that lead to rot, I think is a really important
Speaker 1: phenomenon across all kinds of businesses beyond tech. Like just
Speaker 1: think about banks and or think about a bank like
Speaker 1: Wells Fargo that has had numerous fines and scandals over
Speaker 1: the years. Despite the best efforts of management to root
Speaker 1: out all that stuff. It should extraordinarily difficult, it seems
Speaker 1: to undo the rot that can form and set a
Speaker 1: complex organization. Right, So, how does that culture, how does
Speaker 1: that organizational structure within a company actually impact its business,
Speaker 1: and how does it change over time? And what can
Speaker 1: we learn from the mayans to preserve the robustness of companies?
Speaker 1: All right, So, without further ado, we want to bring
Speaker 1: back for a repeat performance on odd LODs. Arthur Demrist.
Speaker 1: He's the Ingram Professor of Anthropology and director at Vanderbilt's
Speaker 1: Institute of Mesoamerican Archaeology. Arthur, thank you very much for
Speaker 1: joining us. Hi. Yeah, I'm happy to be on here.
Speaker 1: You know, this is an audience that I think matters.
Speaker 1: Thank you, It's it's good to be on here. I
Speaker 1: make one quick correction that that collapsed got little to
Speaker 1: do with Trump. I've been doing this since eighty nine
Speaker 1: and it's been building slowly, and then in the last
Speaker 1: ten years, all of a sudden, I'm in great demand
Speaker 1: everywhere to give talk. So I didn't mean that you
Speaker 1: just started jumping on the collapsed bandwagon. I do think
Speaker 1: that helped explain the interest. At least you know that there.
Speaker 1: I think it's the stuff that I worry about is
Speaker 1: more serious, as as the information technology people and business people,
Speaker 1: and of course it's the global warming issue and uh,
Speaker 1: but there's really I was surprised, that's one reason why
Speaker 1: I'm doing this, that the interest was coming from beyond
Speaker 1: academics and for people who can actually make a difference.
Speaker 1: And so I sort of shifted over to communicating on
Speaker 1: these kind of venues. And then I learned that business
Speaker 1: strategic management theory, partnership theory, these things work really well
Speaker 1: on looking at ancient civilizations. And so you know, me
Speaker 1: and my collaborators, who one of them isn't expert in
Speaker 1: strategic management. It became a feedback cycle, you know, where
Speaker 1: we're providing information, we're trying to we have articles submitted
Speaker 1: to business journals and on the other hand, um, we're
Speaker 1: using that for my archaeology journals to try to explain collapse,
Speaker 1: although I'm getting, you know, some plaque on that because
Speaker 1: business is bad, it's evil capitalists like you guys. So thanks,
Speaker 1: uh so, Arthur, maybe just to begin with, can you
Speaker 1: walk us through the parallels between a society like the
Speaker 1: Mayan civilization and what we see in business today? Wow?
Speaker 1: Well I will, that's my that's a book. But um,
Speaker 1: a civilizations people don't think if they sort of think
Speaker 1: like a bunch of people who kind of do the
Speaker 1: same things. Civilizations that their core networks they're primarily political
Speaker 1: and economic networks because the ideas and the religion, the idiot,
Speaker 1: that's tradition that continues even after collapse and so on.
Speaker 1: But their networks and the political and economic networks are,
Speaker 1: you know, as today are always almost inseparable. So you
Speaker 1: start to look at why whole networks can collapse, and
Speaker 1: then how how responses are because most collapses don't happen
Speaker 1: the government's corporations whatever, they're problem solving institutions. So there
Speaker 1: are responses and you can see which ones succeed or fail.
Speaker 1: And of course that leads right into the kind of
Speaker 1: theory that everyone is doing in management, strategic management, investment.
Speaker 1: I mean, you guys are in the you know, your
Speaker 1: channels in the prediction business, which is what I'm kind
Speaker 1: of into. So a lot of that applies a lot
Speaker 1: of the same thing partnership networks. We were using it
Speaker 1: to explain the relationships between cities economically, in trade and politics,
Speaker 1: and then ways in which those go bad and you have, uh,
Speaker 1: basically the equivalent of bankruptcies. Before we get into like
Speaker 1: I want to like really sort of pull on some
Speaker 1: of these reads here and the similarities and how you
Speaker 1: can use management theory to understand archaeology and vice versa.
Speaker 1: But before we dive down into that, Tracy mentioned in
Speaker 1: the intro that people call you the real life Indiana Jones,
Speaker 1: and so just to set the scene a little bit more,
Speaker 1: like you're a real archaeologist in terms of what people
Speaker 1: have in their heads, or you go to some remote
Speaker 1: location and you squat down a lot and you dig
Speaker 1: up dirt and you look at stuff, probably mostly pottery
Speaker 1: and things like that. I'm guessing, just sort of talk
Speaker 1: to us about what you've been up to a little
Speaker 1: bit in terms of your day to day life since
Speaker 1: the last time you appeared on the show. Well, you
Speaker 1: know what, I I the Indiana Jones thing. I don't
Speaker 1: mind it. I used to not like it that, you know,
Speaker 1: I was told that once by Harrison Ford, and that
Speaker 1: I discovered that it's good for business. You guys know
Speaker 1: about that. I would be so flattered if Harrison Ford
Speaker 1: call me Indiana Jones. Yeah, I'm sorry. It helps to
Speaker 1: get the port. But I do exploratory archaeology. I accidentally
Speaker 1: started working during the Civil War in El Salvador as
Speaker 1: a graduate student, and because very few people are crazy,
Speaker 1: I ended up being one of two archaeologists and then
Speaker 1: finally just one of one, and I had a whole
Speaker 1: kind of country to myself that was not much explored,
Speaker 1: and I discovered it. Well, I mean that led to
Speaker 1: a very accelerated career and so ever since then, I
Speaker 1: actually go to those areas where nothing has been done before,
Speaker 1: very little, and I do explore exploration and then we
Speaker 1: do large scale, multi disciplinary projects. And that's the part
Speaker 1: that's not like the Indiana Jones thing. I mean, you
Speaker 1: don't like, you know, read the glyphs and kissed the
Speaker 1: girl and shoot the guns and all that. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's always and one ninety, but I'd say sixty. Extent
Speaker 1: of it is lab work. But we study ancient cities
Speaker 1: and right now, my entire project for the last twenty
Speaker 1: years is studying an ancient economic network that holds together.
Speaker 1: And we're following I mean, we're literally the research design
Speaker 1: is we do neutron activation other analyzes. We discovered that pottery,
Speaker 1: jade or city in the volcanic glass is coming from
Speaker 1: another place, so we go and dig that place, and
Speaker 1: then we dig what we see about that and week
Speaker 1: so we've we've actually covered I don't know, a thousand
Speaker 1: square kilometers. But it isn't just the usual regional We
Speaker 1: are following an economic, an economic network. So there's I mean,
Speaker 1: we do have we do dig lost cities in the jungle,
Speaker 1: and we do have shootouts with the bad guys and
Speaker 1: open tombs and all that, but that's just, you know,
Speaker 1: that's just what you have to do to get started.
Speaker 1: Then it becomes essentially the study of economy, politics, and
Speaker 1: sociology of of cities and regions and networks. Uh. And
Speaker 1: as as that work's gotten bigger, it's gotten more and
Speaker 1: more parallel to contemporary economic networks. And I don't know
Speaker 1: multinational corporations. So talk to us about what you've discovered then,
Speaker 1: because you know, I remember a little bit from the
Speaker 1: previous episode, but the mind civilization was quite unique in
Speaker 1: many ways, and I remember you were talking about how
Speaker 1: they developed a big trade network where goods were distributed
Speaker 1: all over the jungle. What does that have to do
Speaker 1: with modern corporations or the modern economy? Well, um, and
Speaker 1: again academic there's I've learned that there's a great range
Speaker 1: of business theory and academic strategic management theory and so
Speaker 1: on is probably a little different. But their break their
Speaker 1: studies than lead to uh, you know, the CFOs reading
Speaker 1: about it and lead to something else. But one of
Speaker 1: the things that they've been talking about for a long
Speaker 1: time is just just an example, community networks, which would
Speaker 1: be like the EU or or even the Western economy,
Speaker 1: where you have partnerships that are based on multiple partners.
Speaker 1: They have an ideology that they develop and business practices
Speaker 1: have to be within a range of legitimation and all
Speaker 1: of that, and those kinds of community networks. A very
Speaker 1: tight one is what was developing in the jungle between
Speaker 1: all these different cities and then it's stabilized and there
Speaker 1: was great wealth. But just as today when you when
Speaker 1: you read these journals about UH innovation network, those are
Speaker 1: very profitable, but that kind of slows and they have
Speaker 1: a tendency to fall behind. So then you have uh
Speaker 1: some firms or in this case city states that make
Speaker 1: breakaway networks which are very high risk. Uh. It's it's
Speaker 1: very much like the initial trading with China, you know,
Speaker 1: which is a very high risk but very profitable. There's
Speaker 1: high there's high gains, but there's high risk. We're seeing
Speaker 1: right now in dealing with culture societies, economic systems that
Speaker 1: have a different ethic, that have a different economic culture,
Speaker 1: and reading about that, that is exactly what happened with
Speaker 1: this great city state Conquent. They they were the big
Speaker 1: center for trade and of city and all sorts of
Speaker 1: things coming from the highlands. The Maya economic network that
Speaker 1: was so successful, this community network, all interacting with each
Speaker 1: other very stable, started to have a lot of problems
Speaker 1: and the rulers and the nobles of this city part
Speaker 1: of the South made a decision to kind of turn away.
Speaker 1: And it was very surprising. I mean, in the terms
Speaker 1: of today it would be like China and given transport
Speaker 1: more and they started trading with long distance partners in
Speaker 1: other areas, forming you know, initially it's like dietic relationships
Speaker 1: that they say. It's just like you know, on city
Speaker 1: with another city. It doesn't have the stability of a
Speaker 1: multi partner network. They were they in forty years. They
Speaker 1: just boomed into this incredibly wealthy center and there was
Speaker 1: this giant it's like Venice, this giant purely commercial, non
Speaker 1: non territorial kingdom, and uh it ben crashed and the
Speaker 1: whole story is just just just like stuff out of
Speaker 1: your journal. So, Arthur, how did how did Conquin manage
Speaker 1: to sort of um differentiate itself from the rest of
Speaker 1: the mind civilization Because often when people think about big companies,
Speaker 1: big multinationals, there's a lot of conformity there, and there's
Speaker 1: a sort of organ organizational structure that encourages, I guess, cohesiveness.
Speaker 1: You're not necessarily rewarded for taking a risk and going
Speaker 1: off and doing something completely different. Conformity tends to be rewarded.
Speaker 1: So how did this particular city managed to break away? Well, again,
Speaker 1: this is where this is where the theories coming from
Speaker 1: management schools really help. You know, this institutional entrepreneurship where
Speaker 1: you have entrepreneurship. But it changes. It's like it changes
Speaker 1: the game. It's playing a different game. And that's one
Speaker 1: thing people don't realize. It is very high risk. And
Speaker 1: these rulers were not stupid. You know, they would make
Speaker 1: these innovations. And the scary part about responding to collapse
Speaker 1: is that they would do the right thing, but it
Speaker 1: would usually fail because of this legitimacy because both you know,
Speaker 1: the consumers and the other firms, let's say, would would
Speaker 1: not buy into it. Give me, what's an example. Okay,
Speaker 1: so when you say they did the right thing when
Speaker 1: confronted with the risk of collapse, but it but it
Speaker 1: didn't work. It failed what specifically given? Give an example
Speaker 1: of Okay, here's give an example. If you're talking about again,
Speaker 1: well again, you know there's I am just written something
Speaker 1: on four different and using a straw tgic Man with
Speaker 1: my colleague, I collaborate with UH Endowed Share and Strategic
Speaker 1: Management and and khon Quent for example. I can tell
Speaker 1: you about four four other states we just wrote on this,
Speaker 1: but in khon quin the decision was too first shift
Speaker 1: away in terms of their trading partners and what happens
Speaker 1: when you have throughout history. When you have new trading partners, Uh,
Speaker 1: there's these risks and stuff, but new ideas come in,
Speaker 1: not just products, but new ideas about structuring, uh, your
Speaker 1: own economic system. And when the Maya of kahn Quin
Speaker 1: started trading with Mexican states that were far away and
Speaker 1: had more market oriented economy. Every time they added a
Speaker 1: new trading partner, the structure and economic system at khon
Speaker 1: Quin changed. And one of the things is this vertical integration.
Speaker 1: They were shipping stuff out, you know, in and out,
Speaker 1: they were import exports. Then they started instead processing it,
Speaker 1: first stage processing it, which of course increases the value,
Speaker 1: and then they were shipping it out semi processed. And
Speaker 1: then later they started whole new industries in like the
Speaker 1: production of jade, and again preliminary state, not the final product,
Speaker 1: but sort of reforms and uh, and they did it.
Speaker 1: They started doing mass production, I mean just uge. It's
Speaker 1: the largest jade workshop ever found in the Americas. And
Speaker 1: so you see these business ideas coming in and again
Speaker 1: studies of business architecture, you see it in everything. You
Speaker 1: see the palace changing from a great royal residence over
Speaker 1: forty years as eight reconstructions to a giant almost like
Speaker 1: an office building. It's just like like Venice, the nobles
Speaker 1: are rising in power. They are they are almost they
Speaker 1: the merchants involved. The king uh and his family eventually
Speaker 1: get sort of pushed literally to the side of the
Speaker 1: palace and the rest of it is like offices. And
Speaker 1: this is very nice. But you know he is now
Speaker 1: kind of legitimate or in chief. He's like head of marketing,
Speaker 1: and it seems that he doesn't really have that much
Speaker 1: power and it's divided up so and you see it
Speaker 1: in the architecture. In order to win over these foreign
Speaker 1: partners and to uh, you know, legitimate these new relationships,
Speaker 1: they build architectural things within their center that are of
Speaker 1: the religious system of their new partners. So you know,
Speaker 1: like there's this giant ball court. The Maya ball game
Speaker 1: was so important that you know that the game that
Speaker 1: was a sacred and it was also entertainment. It was
Speaker 1: it was it was worse than Brazil. Is that the
Speaker 1: one where they killed the losers? Now? Oh that that
Speaker 1: that's the killing or the not of the losers? Is
Speaker 1: there's so many I mean, all that stuff comes from
Speaker 1: a thousand years later in another region. You know, it's
Speaker 1: uh the Maya ball game is kind of like wish
Speaker 1: you would say that. You know, with baseball cricket, you
Speaker 1: know that it varied and transformed into different things. But
Speaker 1: this kind of ball court is not like that. It's
Speaker 1: not sort of a sacred religious thing. It's a big, giant,
Speaker 1: open ball court with eating vessels and broken you know,
Speaker 1: probably corn beer vessels all around it, like some modern stadium.
Speaker 1: And you don't find that anywhere in the Maya, you know,
Speaker 1: lowland civilization. And so where does it come from? It?
Speaker 1: Where do you find it in the area up in
Speaker 1: the highlands where the jade comes from, where the jade
Speaker 1: sources is. So they're you know, they're cultivating these relationships
Speaker 1: by creating religious similarities. It's it's actually marketing. So, if
Speaker 1: I understand it correctly, in moving away from the mind
Speaker 1: civilization or in trying to build new relationships with new
Speaker 1: trading partners, this particular city starts introducing new elements of
Speaker 1: different societies, and eventually that starts undermining its own previous
Speaker 1: rituals and legitimacy of its authorities. Is that, right, there's
Speaker 1: just a gigantic boom and then there is a bust,
Speaker 1: I mean a one day destruction, and the analysis of
Speaker 1: the spearheads and so on from that show that it
Speaker 1: was their trading partners they went too far. And this
Speaker 1: is a real This is something that when we're responding
Speaker 1: to all the crises today, I hear a lot of
Speaker 1: you know, people saying the right things we should do,
Speaker 1: except they're not going to succeed because you you really,
Speaker 1: you know, you have to change economic cultures and so
Speaker 1: all this construction of these different ideological systems, and it
Speaker 1: was too much, it was too fast, and it led
Speaker 1: to this boom. But you know, in the end, there's
Speaker 1: a kind of lack of sincerity perhaps in this the
Speaker 1: local regional, subregional population may not have been happy with
Speaker 1: all of these other practices, and it was it just
Speaker 1: really was a sudden It was like a bankruptcy, but
Speaker 1: with the ritual sacrifice. They sacrifice the king and the
Speaker 1: queen and all of the nobles. Though some bankruptcies can
Speaker 1: be like that. Yes, so if you know, businesses want
Speaker 1: to hear from you, and uh, you know, I know
Speaker 1: you're skeptical of all of them, and you know they're
Speaker 1: all going to fail. Nonetheless, they want to I don't
Speaker 1: think that you know, people think that. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just I'm like a coroner. I mean, this is my job,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. But along the way they
Speaker 1: are positive. Okay, well what is it? What is the
Speaker 1: lesson in terms of balancing risk and reward. The city
Speaker 1: is changing its economic model, it's opening up to new
Speaker 1: trading partners, but it didn't work. So what kind of
Speaker 1: management or within an organization take away from that to
Speaker 1: make a better informed decisions about new strategic ventures. Well,
Speaker 1: I should defend con Quinn by saying that they did
Speaker 1: really well, and the others also they you know, they
Speaker 1: went down more slowly, so but yeah, what you were.
Speaker 1: The first thing that I've discovered is people don't really
Speaker 1: believe in collapse. So that's the first thing you have
Speaker 1: to get that. And then the other is what I
Speaker 1: just said, that the right thing to do is not
Speaker 1: necessarily going to be successful. But what is positive is
Speaker 1: that some of these collapses didn't happen, and that is
Speaker 1: as problems were developing. Uh, they anticipated it, as con
Speaker 1: quin tried to do, and they did some other things.
Speaker 1: Those are high risk, but it's just like in business investment.
Speaker 1: If you got that right, the other things it led
Speaker 1: to success, and they didn't do it. This is the
Speaker 1: problem to They didn't do it because oh they want
Speaker 1: to save the world and they want to save the
Speaker 1: civilization or whatever. They did it for their own success.
Speaker 1: And yet it can be the right thing to do.
Speaker 1: And so that kind of thing which worked short term
Speaker 1: in the case of conquent we see examples. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not as exciting to talk about non collapses, but
Speaker 1: you know, we study. When I say we, there's a
Speaker 1: there's maybe twenty people who have gradually joined collapse studies.
Speaker 1: I've been doing it, I think longer than anybody. But
Speaker 1: it's not a field. If you anticipate those things, you
Speaker 1: can make changes that lead to success. And that's sort
Speaker 1: of what we're working on now. Because again I'm I really,
Speaker 1: I've done this all my life. I want to see
Speaker 1: I don't want to give talks on campus or publishing
Speaker 1: a journal nobody reads. The people that can make a
Speaker 1: difference are people in business and government who first and
Speaker 1: foremost are interested in their own success. So let's stipulate
Speaker 1: that most entities will ultimately probably fail. Nonetheless, it sounds
Speaker 1: like a key thing is this idea of taking the
Speaker 1: risk of collapse seriously, and you hear a lot from
Speaker 1: business leaders like, oh, we're always paranoid, and there's like
Speaker 1: the sort of pride in being paranoid. Only the paranoid survive.
Speaker 1: I think that's a famous book from a founder of Intel. Uh. Nonetheless,
Speaker 1: it sounds like what you're saying is that maybe people
Speaker 1: give lip service to the risk of collapse, but they
Speaker 1: don't really internalize it. So I mean, I would starved
Speaker 1: by asking what are the signs of internal organizational collapse
Speaker 1: that if you're a business leader, you're like, actually, we
Speaker 1: should really take the fear of collapse seriously, so that
Speaker 1: it goes beyond just being a motivational mantra, so to speak, Well,
Speaker 1: I should say that the like, there's a lot more
Speaker 1: positive lessons. I was about to talk about non collapses,
Speaker 1: but I mean a lot of it's very obvious right now.
Speaker 1: I think I may have talked to about this in
Speaker 1: the lectional, but hypercoherence is our biggest problem, bigger than
Speaker 1: global warming um because it inhibits responses and that like
Speaker 1: a lot of these you know, eventual causes of collapse
Speaker 1: is a great thing. It's it's just it leads to success,
Speaker 1: but eventually it can go too far and lead to crises.
Speaker 1: And right now, the degree of integration of corporate systems,
Speaker 1: of overall economic systems, of medical systems, is military systems
Speaker 1: worldwide is fantastic. It leads to greater profits, that helps this,
Speaker 1: that and the other. But it is also dangerous because
Speaker 1: something that happens in one place radiates through the system.
Speaker 1: And you see this every day. You just saw it.
Speaker 1: I mean that you know, hey, fifty years ago, who
Speaker 1: would give a damn if some plant and Staudi Arabia
Speaker 1: blew up or drones hit it. Now everything radiates through
Speaker 1: this system and that makes it very difficult to respond.
Speaker 1: And we see it every day. Every I fly a lot.
Speaker 1: Every time I fly, the system is down. Um. Once
Speaker 1: there was a storm in New England and we couldn't
Speaker 1: get from Hong Kong to Kuala Lampour because you know,
Speaker 1: there weren't enough The planes were tied up somewhere. Uh.
Speaker 1: And every time, you know, the system is down. Just
Speaker 1: here all the time, Arthur, I was going to ask,
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of people will look at global
Speaker 1: integration or kype hypo coherent excuse me um as evidence
Speaker 1: of progress. Right, this is how the world is supposed
Speaker 1: to go. We're supposed to be heading towards more integration,
Speaker 1: more connections with other people. So how do you how
Speaker 1: do you walk that back? Because once that gets set
Speaker 1: in motion, it feels like it becomes very, very difficult
Speaker 1: to make the argument that actually, maybe we need to
Speaker 1: reconsider some aspects of that. Well, that's that's the legitimation
Speaker 1: problem that that leads to, which I don't think is
Speaker 1: taken seriously enough. I mean, what you just said not
Speaker 1: not this thing and that thing, but the ideology that
Speaker 1: is so hard to accept. And that's really what you
Speaker 1: have to work at. But the secret of success is success.
Speaker 1: So you look at some of these things where you
Speaker 1: they are predictable, you make modifications, you invest in those.
Speaker 1: It's going to be middle term or long term. But
Speaker 1: you know, Warren Buffett says, that's you know, the way
Speaker 1: to do it, and and then you can see that
Speaker 1: there are profits to be made in that at the
Speaker 1: same time or mitigation of losses, and at the same
Speaker 1: time it helps the system be less hyper coherent. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm just the you know, guru type. I mean the
Speaker 1: people who would I hesitate to talk about specific operationalizing things.
Speaker 1: But the transport system is really in trouble, and the
Speaker 1: communication systems in trouble, and so a lot of people
Speaker 1: have said things like eat local and all of that, um,
Speaker 1: But there is something to be said in restructuring things
Speaker 1: so that there's more regional autonomy. I want to go
Speaker 1: back to a question that I sometimes wonder with businesses,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, obviously sometimes business leaders management guru
Speaker 1: types they talk about they talk a lot about pivoting.
Speaker 1: Are they sensing an opportunity and rotating the business and
Speaker 1: way to take advantage of that? And it's the site
Speaker 1: historical examples of oh, maybe some tech company shifted to
Speaker 1: the internet at just the right time or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: But I'm curious, like, how much of when a when
Speaker 1: a you know, in your work and your archaeological work,
Speaker 1: and you see a city, you see some network shift
Speaker 1: its focus, how much was it the result of some
Speaker 1: intentional choice to do something new versus a sort of
Speaker 1: sequence of maybe haphazard or accidental decisions that sort of
Speaker 1: firmed formed in an emergent basis where no one really
Speaker 1: made the decision, but some sort of natural order progressed
Speaker 1: and took the organization into a new direction. We'll both
Speaker 1: happened and both happened today. I mean this discussion about
Speaker 1: you know that this has been noticed by people, and
Speaker 1: there are people doing it to some degree. But I
Speaker 1: think there's a tendency to look back on these divine
Speaker 1: kings and so on and not realized that they were smart. Uh,
Speaker 1: and they had. I mean in the case of khn Quinn,
Speaker 1: I think that he was the chief of marketing for
Speaker 1: I mean that this office building there are offices for
Speaker 1: different nobles and they I think that most of this,
Speaker 1: in the case of khn Quine, it's surprised me. I
Speaker 1: think almost all of that was conscious. It happened too fast.
Speaker 1: I mean, you don't like to say, oh, well, we're
Speaker 1: gonna build a ball court in this weirdass style that
Speaker 1: just happens to be that of the where the jade
Speaker 1: comes from, or we're going to start using our caves
Speaker 1: for you know, hill and hill worship to a greater
Speaker 1: degree than normal, and that just happens to be the
Speaker 1: form of religion, uh, in one of the places that's
Speaker 1: right on a major nexus of trade routes. It's clearly
Speaker 1: conscious and you see that in and I mean I've
Speaker 1: been working on this lay in about four cases, and
Speaker 1: they do different things, and each of the different things
Speaker 1: they do correspond to contemporary decisions in business strategy and
Speaker 1: the fact that you know, I talked about collapses, so
Speaker 1: I'm talking about when that fails, but it usually succeeds.
Speaker 1: I mean, there was a maya near collapse around two fifty.
Speaker 1: They had grown, it was a big boom, but they
Speaker 1: were using an agricultural system of this slash and burn agriculture.
Speaker 1: You cut down the jungle, you burn it. It makes
Speaker 1: ash that allows for production. They were doing too much
Speaker 1: of it, and then they started to have a crisis, uh,
Speaker 1: and some of the city's really declined, some almost ended,
Speaker 1: others kind of continued. But during the subsequent years they
Speaker 1: shifted their agricultural system. They and that was a lot
Speaker 1: of that was probably decision making at the level of
Speaker 1: villages and communities, but they're also built giant reservoirs for
Speaker 1: the rainy season and a lot of things that would
Speaker 1: require labor. Had done that before, but they really intensified it.
Speaker 1: And what happened then is that there was a recovery
Speaker 1: and the giant boom, which we call the Late Classic period,
Speaker 1: you know, starting around six hundred or so, just this
Speaker 1: incredible boom and industry and grow well their versions of it,
Speaker 1: I mean jade workshops and all that, and you structures,
Speaker 1: and it was a big boom. Uh. But you know
Speaker 1: a lot of the collapses I study. We've labeled them,
Speaker 1: that's me and my strategic management expert as appage collapses,
Speaker 1: apag slash collapses where you can see this incredible progress
Speaker 1: and identify a bunch of symptoms that indicate that it
Speaker 1: might totally collapse. And most people have this model of rome.
Speaker 1: That's the big one. You know, there's going to be
Speaker 1: these signs and decline, and but it can be very sudden,
Speaker 1: especially if a lot of the problems are inherent in
Speaker 1: this tremendous prog sts and the things that are making
Speaker 1: stuff successful, which makes it hard to change. But it
Speaker 1: also makes hard to change what you guys just talked
Speaker 1: about the legitimacy getting people to to buy into this
Speaker 1: idea of making these changes that in the short term
Speaker 1: might cause you know, less impressive constructions. And then the
Speaker 1: other thing, and this is true with my economic leaders
Speaker 1: and then anger and everywhere and with us, is that
Speaker 1: short term thinking is a problem. And again I'm not,
Speaker 1: you know, the warrant about the lots of people. They
Speaker 1: tell you that, but also that, um, you you get
Speaker 1: these feedback cycles. In crisis, leaders tend to do more
Speaker 1: of what they do and that's what a lot of
Speaker 1: the you know, they do temples in war, and the
Speaker 1: temples get the support of the gods. So they intensify
Speaker 1: this and it looks like, I mean, my colleagues talk
Speaker 1: about it, Wow, the Great Golden Age, But it was
Speaker 1: really a way of they knew what was coming, they
Speaker 1: saw signs there were dietary problems, and they were intensifying
Speaker 1: what they do and it was counterproductive, so sort of
Speaker 1: spinning their wheels ever faster and getting in more trouble
Speaker 1: that way. So just on the short term incentive part,
Speaker 1: I mean, that feels like a real issue for societies
Speaker 1: and civilizations and also for corporates in very similar ways.
Speaker 1: How how would you actually go about changing that thinking
Speaker 1: because we can all identify that short termism is a problem,
Speaker 1: but it feels very very hard to actually counteract that
Speaker 1: it is. And you know, when you get to be specific,
Speaker 1: I really believe in the collaboration. When I talk about
Speaker 1: these these digs of the big cities in this trade network.
Speaker 1: I mean that's like forty people, and there's all these
Speaker 1: different experts, and I really believe that the ideas we
Speaker 1: have I have to collaborate with, you know, people in
Speaker 1: business and strategic management. But one of the big of
Speaker 1: thems today and it's it's the main problem with war
Speaker 1: is that that CEOs and so on are being judged
Speaker 1: really short term, and the changes for legitimation, the changes
Speaker 1: and investments. It can't like be oh, let's change everything,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, it could be a part of
Speaker 1: your investment in these future things. And then as some
Speaker 1: of that starts to have success, you don't have to
Speaker 1: force people to do it. Like I said, when they
Speaker 1: avoided the collapse, uh, you know in the around two
Speaker 1: fifty years three hundred and they had a big recession
Speaker 1: you could say, and a recovery that I don't think
Speaker 1: that was because they didn't have a concept of civil
Speaker 1: They weren't trying to save the world. They were trying
Speaker 1: to succeed in their own areas. And then some places
Speaker 1: did and and started doing pretty well, and some farmers
Speaker 1: and of course the others saw that and began to ship.
Speaker 1: It was a small percentage that started doing that probably
Speaker 1: in the beginning. So you know, as you know, nothing
Speaker 1: succeeds like success. You don't have to just put all
Speaker 1: your eggs in one path and do some cosmic change.
Speaker 1: Just as you said, that would really be hard. It does.
Speaker 1: It does seem like in terms of the things that
Speaker 1: have allowed these companies to grow at an extraordinary rate
Speaker 1: are currently the very things that threaten, you know, to
Speaker 1: be their undoing and so obviously liberal use of individual
Speaker 1: data and is breaking norms regarding privacy has obviously allowed
Speaker 1: a lot of these companies to grow, make incredible profits,
Speaker 1: and grow extremely fast. Now those are the very things
Speaker 1: that are causing people to freak out. What were some
Speaker 1: examples of, as you said, some places they thrived for
Speaker 1: a while, they staved off near collapse by doing something different,
Speaker 1: by sort of recognizing that the existing trajectory was unsustainable.
Speaker 1: What were some pivots that the successful entities did to
Speaker 1: hold off on collapse a little while longer. Rulers are
Speaker 1: very conscious of and when I say rulers, they always
Speaker 1: think it's the king that does this, because that's the
Speaker 1: guy recorded. But we know from Konquin there's a lot
Speaker 1: of other people and economic advisors and economic agents. But
Speaker 1: if they you know, they can see what's going on
Speaker 1: below and its effect on them. And so you know,
Speaker 1: decisions were made at the local level but also at
Speaker 1: the higher level to respond. And uh, that's a very
Speaker 1: specific decisions. You know, when they you dig its gigantic reservoir,
Speaker 1: it takes an enormous amount of labor. It's a giant investment.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a high risk investment. But you can
Speaker 1: see there are water issues developing. So you go in
Speaker 1: that direction, and the states that did that became very successful.
Speaker 1: Now you just pinpoint it a real problem. And the
Speaker 1: thing about these appage collapses where right at the peak
Speaker 1: suddenly everything falls apart, those are the most dramatic ones.
Speaker 1: Are not all like that. But one of the things
Speaker 1: you just mentioned is what again, if this weren't confusing
Speaker 1: enough to my colleagues, the strength slash weakness, The strength
Speaker 1: of a civilization in that kind of collapse are the
Speaker 1: very things that over time become weaknesses as the impact
Speaker 1: of them develops more and more. And uh, those are
Speaker 1: really hard to change because they look at it and
Speaker 1: they say, as you just said, this is the key
Speaker 1: to progress, This is the key to success. But again,
Speaker 1: if some if some people start doing these other things
Speaker 1: and they're successful at it, you won't have to you know,
Speaker 1: you were mentioned. I mean there's lessons of collapse. It's
Speaker 1: almost always finger shaking, you know, when you just go, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: you guys, should you know you should stop doing that.
Speaker 1: You should wear a hair shirt. It ain't gonna work.
Speaker 1: And so that, you know, you have to be stick
Speaker 1: accessible in some ways and then attract more people. But
Speaker 1: it isn't going to be easy. Arthur. The last time
Speaker 1: we had you on, we did we focused on this
Speaker 1: idea of the collapse of civilizations and you were sort of,
Speaker 1: I guess pessimistic about a lot of things. Um, what
Speaker 1: do you think now? You know this is uh what
Speaker 1: is it two or three years after the original podcast recording.
Speaker 1: When you look at civilization or society, Now, what are
Speaker 1: you seeing and how does it relate to your area
Speaker 1: of expertise? Well, it's I'm doing this because you know,
Speaker 1: I'm writing for these journals and being on this channel.
Speaker 1: It doesn't help my career and academics. It's like, what
Speaker 1: are you doing? These evil capitalists? But I think we
Speaker 1: can I feel like we can make a difference because
Speaker 1: people are listening to me. People are now and I
Speaker 1: didn't really feel that. I felt it a little bit.
Speaker 1: But the reaction has been quite interesting since that last show.
Speaker 1: And um, and you know the Journal of of of
Speaker 1: the Journal of Academy Management. We just submitted an article.
Speaker 1: They had a doomsday issue. They have a special upcoming
Speaker 1: doomsday issue, and it's like wow, and it's about negative
Speaker 1: scenarios in grand schemes and how you know, how they
Speaker 1: can ess. I'm curious to see what else comes in.
Speaker 1: I think maybe we helped inspire that a little bit,
Speaker 1: because of course those people listen to this show and
Speaker 1: other things like it. But so I'm feeling a little
Speaker 1: more optimistic. But you sound more optimistic than the last
Speaker 1: time you were on the show. So maybe that's a
Speaker 1: good place to end it on an optimistic note. For once,
Speaker 1: Arthur Demerist. It's always fascinating to talk to you. We'll
Speaker 1: have you back on again in three years, maybe after
Speaker 1: the next election. Uh you know, if we're still around
Speaker 1: in three years, if civilization is still around, we can't
Speaker 1: wait to uh have you back. Really appreciate your joining.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you guys. Uh So Joe I found
Speaker 1: that conversation fascinating, as always with Arthur. But I have
Speaker 1: to say I had no idea that archaeological academia hated
Speaker 1: us so much. Yeah, I didn't either, I thought like that,
Speaker 1: but I think there is I don't know much much
Speaker 1: about it academia, but I do think, uh, I do
Speaker 1: sometimes get the impression that they look down upon anyone
Speaker 1: whose ideas are able to be digested by the public.
Speaker 1: Let's put it for the record, we like archaeological academia.
Speaker 1: Do you ever? You know what I was thinking about
Speaker 1: that conversation. It's like you could really tell all that
Speaker 1: stuff from like shards of pottery. Yeah, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, right, So, one thing I found really fascinating
Speaker 1: was when he was talking about con Quin and the
Speaker 1: development of this sort of big office building and how
Speaker 1: you could see that the space allocated to royalty got
Speaker 1: progressively smaller as their legitimacy changed or deteriorated. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: I love this idea of the city sort of building
Speaker 1: monument to their trading partners culture. And I think that's
Speaker 1: that feels very modern as a phenomenon. Or you like,
Speaker 1: go to Las Vegas and there's obviously all kinds of
Speaker 1: things that are built, like specifically with Chinese tourists in mind,
Speaker 1: things like that where trade is certainly becomes the conduit
Speaker 1: for ideas, for better or worse. And in some cases
Speaker 1: that's good, but in other cases you could see how
Speaker 1: that could eventually become a problem, right, and you could
Speaker 1: see how society would sort of eventually maybe revolt against
Speaker 1: that idea or that change. But I think the most
Speaker 1: disturbing aspect of these conversations that we end up having
Speaker 1: with Arthur is the notion of societies or civilizations or
Speaker 1: entities thinking that they're doing the right thing, but then
Speaker 1: just going about it in the wrong way or getting
Speaker 1: it wrong, and then causing their own collapse. Well, you
Speaker 1: know what I was gonna say that I didn't find
Speaker 1: to be disturbing, is this idea that to stave off collapse.
Speaker 1: What's not needed for someone to say like, oh, we're collapsing,
Speaker 1: we got to do something about this, per se, but
Speaker 1: rather for a new success model to emerge, and so
Speaker 1: that the way to stave off collapse is not just
Speaker 1: to reverse what you're doing or to stop what you're doing,
Speaker 1: but to take a take a totally different turn and
Speaker 1: to show people that some other way of organizing society,
Speaker 1: some other way of farming, some other way of creating
Speaker 1: a product, whatever it is, can thrive. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of a hopeful idea just that success could be contagious
Speaker 1: and replicable once someone shows the way, right, you don't
Speaker 1: have to convince people that this is necessarily the right
Speaker 1: thing to do, because it just sort of unfolds and
Speaker 1: becomes obvious in a way. All right, Well, on that
Speaker 1: happy note again, this has been another edition of the
Speaker 1: All Thoughts podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Tracy Alloway, and I'm Joe wi Isn't Thal.
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Twitter at the Stalwart. And
Speaker 1: you should follow our producer on Twitter, Laura Carlson. She's
Speaker 1: at Laura M. Carlson. And check out all of the
Speaker 1: Bloomberg podcasts on Twitter at the handle at podcasts. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.