Have been digging around in my notes for revising ‘Darkness’ the third of the ‘Stars’ trilogy, and found this snippet:

How Civilisations end

• Prolonged warfare, dramatic over expansion of administrative function, catastrophic environmental changes or destructive social movements destabilise the supply chain of resources.
• If the burden on general resources grows too destabilised, the overall living standards of the general population declines. Critical infrastructure maintenance also declines while yet more resources are diverted for administrative purposes without return.
• Resource flow declines as available resources shrink. More resources are diverted into administration.
• Administration leaders and their contacts unsustainably divert public resources for their own benefit.
• Increasing authoritarian control and surveillance is required by administration to ensure that the general population continues to comply with increased resource reduction and other constraints, even if administrative demands cannot be reasonably met by the contributing population.
• In this final phase of collapse, administration turns against its own people, treating them like an enemy. Economic and social collapse occurs, often marked by excessive unrest and riots, capital flight, excessive inflation, and the permanent exit of the most productive.

File creation date: 8th September 2014, last edited 29th January 2019,