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Societal Collapse benefits 99% of people who survived
Unfortunately, I think this will not ring true in this case. Climate collapse is going to be rough for the 1-10 million people alive after the next 100 years.
...except for, you know, all the people that die.
And the people who survive but suffered during, it's not like societal collapse is a quick weekend activity.
Yeah, I feel there's an "eventually" missing off the end of that.
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.
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.
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 violent game, and I can see how narcissism or a 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 doesn't really explain how the chain was never broken.
Most of the world now lives in huge cities. A societal collapse probably would be devastating for a much larger proportion of the population than in previous times. A lot of dead people as well as lot of dog eat dog behaviour due to no food in cities.
yeah we have never had a global societal collapse.
It'd be pretty easy to migrate out of cities. And necessary, if we had to go back to more primitive, labour intensive kinds of agriculture for some reason (although I question how easy fully forgetting mechanisation would be, at this point).
Indeed, it's exactly what tends to happen after a collapse. Rome was whittled down to a minor center, almost a village, before it started to grow again IIRC.
Billions of people migrating to the country. Sounds like fun!
Only problem is, we are by now in a technological position that the next collapse has a decent chance of being our last collapse.
So we’ll be healthy and egalitarian forever, hooray!
About 80 years.
Historically, the only thing we've learned from past events is that we can't ever learn from past events
the words many and most are doing a lot of heavy lifting here
Except for nuclear bombs in the hands of a toddler with dementia.
It largely depends on us choosing to organize hegemony for more equality, or not.
this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2025
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