The Collapse of Complex Societies (Book Review)
I also highly recommend this book!Regarding the sentence "One that he doesn’t discuss much but that is particularly pertinent to today, is the accretion of laws and regulations." which appears in the review: I think all these laws and regulations can be regarded as being part of the increasing bureaucracy that Tainter identifies as the cause of eventual collapse of complex societies.One thing I would add, in addition to the diminishing marginal return of bureaucracy that Tainter mentions, is the tendency of contemporary administrations to create more bureaucracy even when their own stated goal is to reduce bureaucracy or increase efficiency, for example by trying to collect and compare precise numbers that show how they have become more efficient at a task that is in essence not really quantifiable. A related book I recommend particularly in that regard is Le Règne de la Quantité et les Signes des Temps by René Guénon.