Luke Kemp, a research associate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, has written a book about his research called 'Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse'.
He makes the case that, from looking at the archaeological record, when many societies collapse, most people end up better off afterward. For example, people in the post-Roman world were taller and healthier. Collapse can be a redistribution of resources and power, not just chaos.
For most of human history, humans lived as nomadic egalitarian bands, with low violence and high mobility. Threats (disease, war, economic precarity) push populations toward authoritarian leaders. The resulting rise in inequality from that sets off a cycle that will end in collapse. Furthermore, he argues we are living in the late stages of such a cycle now. He says "the threat is from leaders who are 'walking versions of the dark triad' – narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism – in a world menaced by the climate crisis, nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence and killer robots."
Some people hope/think we are destined for a future of Universal Basic Income and fully automated luxury communism. Perhaps that's the egalitarianism that emerges after our own collapse? If so, I hope the collapse bit is short and we get to the egalitarian bit ASAP.
Collapse for the 99% | Luke Kemp; What really happens when Goliaths fall
Hmm, looks like this guy is an economist. The basic idea that collapse is redistributive has been kicking around for a while, so that's fine. The idea that collapse happens because of inequality has to deal with a mountain of counterexamples, and the idea that all leaders are evil has to deal with the fact most of them are just random people with the right family, historically.
Without buying his book, I'd love to know what the citation for the post-Roman thing is, and what area and period was being analysed.
It's good to be skeptical, so I'll apply the same to your comment. The idea that leaders aren't evil because they were selected based on genes/heritage relies on the assumption that being surrounded by power and examples of inequality working to your benefit as a child does not affect a person's character and that evil leaders are more often made evil either as a selection trait for, or a result of, having climbed social strata from a position outside of power to one inside of power. I find this assumption hard to accept, personally
It's fair to say there's cultural continuity, and the kid of a conqueror is unlikely to take issue directly with conquest, but then the generations roll by, and you get the people that seemed awful being more sympathetic in a later chapter of history. If, like me, you're a white person in North America, you probably try to be an example.
It's pretty easy to find examples of aristocrats sympathetic to the plight of the common people, like the left wing of Victorian politics, aristocrats who were any other flavour of ideological you want, or just ones recorded as personally kind. Raising bad kids isn't necessarily easier than raising good ones, as far as I can tell. People are just going to have their own story regardless of what their parents would like.
To be clear, are you also arguing all leaders are evil? I think that's actually a minority position which the author seems to be leaning on; most people have some leader they think was cool, or at least alright.
What's so hard about that one? Really, I see it in person. The successful politicians I know aren't evil, exactly, but they're definitely pretty manipulative. Because if you aren't willing to play the game, you don't win. In less democratic countries, it's a whole different, more corrupt and violent game, and I can see how narcissism or psychopathy would be major assets.
If you're saying all leaders are influenced to be evil, you're either talking about an ancient global conspiracy, or you have to deal with the fact there's been a lot of history and a lot of totally different groups of people that ended up on top. It would be hard to explain how the chain was never broken.