SOC 001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 30: Fossil Fuel, Homophily, Social Inequality

• School: University of Vermont
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC 001
• Professor: Thomas E Macias

Document Summary

Money swindled through white collar crimes estimated at 40 times that of property time. Environmental disaster, unsafe working conditions: save money by dumping toxins into bodies of water. Joseph tainter, the collapse of complex societies, 1988. Complexity: comes with a cost: higher energy input. All societies are subject to the law of diminishing returns: early on access is really easy, as you extract more and more you need more energy to extract more energy, gets more difficult. The roman empire required ongoing geographic expansion. More territory required more administration and military investments. Eventually the cost of complexity outweighs the benefits. Oil and other natural resources are also subject to the law of diminishing returns. At some point, the cost of energy extraction begins to exceed the benefit: risk environmental disasters. Meanwhile, society is structured around the expectation of an energy surplus: dependent on energy. Pushing an suv down the highway at 65 mph would require the strength of 2,000 people.