Analyzing the Political and Economic Change - Essay Example

According to the author, there are five factors that may have been responsible for the complete disappearance of the civilization in the past: damages that the people have inflicted on their environment; climate change; enemies; changes in friendly trading partners; and the society’s political, economic and social responses to these shifts. The author has quoted the cases of the fall of Polynesian and Maya civilizations. Maya civilization of the Yucatan peninsula and Central America has been one of the most advanced and highly sophisticated but by 910 A.

D their societies collapsed as a result of power struggles among the various kings resulting in damages to the environment and poor management of natural resources that culminated in a total wipeout of the civilization. The Polynesian societies in Pitcairn and Henderson islands, despite having vast natural resources, were destroyed mainly because of the fact that they depended on their import of canoes, crops food, etc. on Mangarevan island, and once the Mangarevan island trade collapsed due to environmental damages, Polynesian societies suffered the same fate and perished.

On the other hand, societies in Japan, Tonga, Tikopia, New Guinea, Central, and north-east Europe survived and flourished through the centuries. The main reason for this was that they anticipated the changes in environmental degradation and made efforts to combat that with appropriate strategies and innovative economic ventures. In the same way, we must also understand that to survive and maintain socio-economic power, appropriate strategies must be devised and implemented with sincerity. One can, therefore, say that the three most significant priorities for promoting movement toward a market economy are; anticipating change; understand and exploiting local and other resources for economic gain; and formulating strategies and methodologies to implement the change.