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Lumifer comments on Open Thread for January 8 - 16 2014 - Less Wrong
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A "long collapse" is a bit of an oxymoron -- presumably you mean they will collapse and stay collapsed.
But that raises an interesting question -- can a society/country downscale without a collapse? Theoretically, it's perfectly doable -- you population decreases, so does your GDP but not GDP per capita. You just have more space for less people.
In practice, of course, there are issues.
I don't regard "collapse" as referring to something instantaneous. The fall of Rome, for example, could be referred to as a multi-century collapse.
And in principle, yes, it could happen. But in practice, before people die, they get old. And old people suck, economically speaking.
Taking away the pensions of people who've paid a tax that's supposed to fund pensions all their lives would be political suicide.
It depends on what the alternative is.
If you have nothing to pay pensions with, you have nothing to pay pensions with. See Detroit.
For sovereigns who can print fiat money the situation is a bit more complicated but the same in medium term. The amount of money doesn't matter, what matters is the amount of value that the country produces and which it then redistributes among people. If there is not enough value, printing money will just lead you into an inflationary spiral.