Katana VentraIP

Economic collapse

Economic collapse, also called economic meltdown, is any of a broad range of bad economic conditions, ranging from a severe, prolonged depression with high bankruptcy rates and high unemployment (such as the Great Depression of the 1930s), to a breakdown in normal commerce caused by hyperinflation (such as in Weimar Germany in the 1920s), or even an economically caused sharp rise in the death rate and perhaps even a decline in population (such as in countries of the former USSR in the 1990s).[1][2][3] Often economic collapse is accompanied by social chaos, civil unrest and a breakdown of law and order.

For other uses, see Collapse.

Historical examples[edit]

China 1852–70[edit]

The Taiping Rebellion followed by internal warfare, famines and epidemics caused the deaths of over 100 million and greatly damaged the economy.[9]

Alternative theories[edit]

Austrian school[edit]

Some economists (i.e. the Austrian School, in particular Ludwig von Mises), believe that government intervention and over-regulation of the economy can lead to the conditions for collapse. In particular, Austrian theoretical research has been focused on such problems emanating from socialist forms of economic organization. This however is not a theory of economic collapse involving the breakdown of freely functioning financial markets; rather, the focus is on economic malfunction and crisis emanating from state control.


However, many Austrian economists also subscribe to what is called the "ABCT", or Austrian Business Cycle Theory. Economist Roger Garrison describes the bubble as merely a form of unsustainable boom (not a theory of all depressions), as Mises and F.A. Hayek did, despite their disagreements on the exact workings of it.[41] The essential part of the theory is that it is inherently unsustainable to try to manipulate monetary policy to boost both investment and consumption; usually through interest rate manipulation and bond-buying and such. The "boom" was created by "malinvestments," as Mises called them; business decisions that are bad investments and unsustainable in the long run because lowering interest rates by padding the supply of money and credit will only work in the short-term, but will ultimately collapse because the government can only hold down interest rates so long before fear of inflation kicks in (and deflation comes at the peak of the business cycle), or they go into hyperinflation (which is completely outside the realm of the ABCT).

Georgescu-Roegen's theory of Earth's ever decreasing carrying capacity[edit]

Romanian American economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, a progenitor in economics and the paradigm founder of ecological economics, has argued that the carrying capacity of Earth—that is, Earth's capacity to sustain human populations and consumption levels — is bound to decrease sometime in the future as Earth's finite stock of mineral resources is presently being extracted and put to use; and consequently, that the world economy as a whole is heading towards an inevitable future collapse, leading to the demise of human civilisation itself.[42]


Georgescu-Roegen is basing his pessimistic prediction on the two following considerations:

Taken together, the Industrial Revolution in Britain in the second half of the 18th century has unintentionally thrust man's economy into a long, never-to-return overshoot-and-collapse trajectory with regard to the Earth's mineral stock. The world economy will continue growing until its inevitable and final collapse in the future. From that point on, ever deepening scarcities will aggravate social conflict throughout the globe and ultimately spell the end of mankind itself, Georgescu-Roegen conjectures.


Georgescu-Roegen was the paradigm founder of ecological economics and is also considered the main intellectual figure influencing the degrowth movement. Consequently, much work in these fields is devoted to discussing the existential impossibility of allocating Earth's finite stock of mineral resources evenly among an unknown number of present and future generations. This number of generations is likely to remain unknown to us, as there is no way — or only little way — of knowing in advance if or when mankind will ultimately face extinction. In effect, any conceivable intertemporal allocation of the finite stock will inevitably end up with universal economic decline at some future point.[43]: 253–256 [44]: 165 [45]: 168–171  [46]: 150–153 [47]: 106–109 [48]: 546–549 [49]: 142–145  [50]

PBS documentary on the Argentine economic crisis