Great book on how inequality kills societies!
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Interesting read, good find
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The author is correct but he doesnât mention that the ending of civilized societies involves loss of technology and the deaths of many, many people for a long time (dark ages).
Our world currently has a population of 8 billion people, many of whom live in cities and are totally dependent on food from industrial agriculture. There is absolutely no way that our global civilization could transition to a small farming/ hunter-gatherer subsistence âequalityâ without billions of deaths.
Wendy
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Agreed. Thereâs part of the article that alludes to this -
âSecond, people in the past were not heavily reliant on empires or states for services and, unlike today, could easily go back to farming or hunting and gathering. âToday, most of us are specialised, and weâre dependent upon global infrastructure. If that falls away, we too will fall,â he says.â
I donât think heâs advocating for a return to a more democratic farmer/hunter-gatherer society. Heâs suggesting that we would not be able to recover from a collapse this time around.
âThe global Goliath is the endgame for humanity, Kemp says, like the final moves in a chess match that determine the result. He sees two outcomes: self-destruction or a fundamental transformation of society.â
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Yes, thatâs exactly the way I understand his words when says we just all cannot go back to farming or hunting and gathering. If society âfalls away, we too will fall.â He talks about this idea of societal collapse, which I interpret as not being a very good outcome for any of us.
Pete
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The problem is that he doesnât identify any solution. At least not in that article. Perhaps his book has the answer. But if the problem he diagnoses is that every society that has even a modicum of actual surplus - every society thatâs above subsistence agriculture - will eventually end, then thereâs no solution to that. Because subsistence agricultural societies are terrible compared to even the most destitute of conditions in wealthy modern societies, even with all the inequality.
I mean, itâs one thing to observe that there are some aspects of the life of the Khosian people that might appear desirable - perhaps especially to an anthropologist looking at economic inequality. But unless you can marry that high level of equality to, you know, not having to deal with high child mortality and a lifetime of physical labor and penury and want, itâs not really anything that offers much insight into dealing with any problems of a modern society. âIf no one had any material possessions but the merest basicsâ might solve inequality, but itâs a worse solution than the problem.
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The solutions I understood him to identify include the following:
- End inequality: Cap wealth (e.g., at $10 million) and tax the rich to stop elite domination.
- Create genuine democracy: Use citizen assemblies, juries, and digital tools for large-scale direct democracy.
- Reject domination: Move away from hierarchical, exploitative âGoliathâ systems toward egalitarian cooperation.
- Hold corporations and elites accountable: Expose and regulate powerful groups driving catastrophic risks.
- Individual responsibility: Donât support harmful industries or oppressive systems; share power and act ethically.
All of them are ultimately collective, societal actions but involve an individual action and determination to arrive there.
Pete
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And it should be noted that all societies (except the present ones) have ended. Since theyâve all ended, how do we know what makes for success (other than oneâs own opinions) and in what proportions/trade-offs?
DB2
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Most societies workâŚuntil they donât.
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The US needs to reinvest in heavy industry. We need to produce our way out of things. We need economies of scale.
Whoever in the body politics forces through higher corporate taxes will own the economy as the issue for the next 30 years. I think next year corporate taxes will go much higher. Those of us here of one persuasion will fail to own the matter. Again bowing to anyone else instead of standing up and truly doing the job.
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But in the absence of a single other society to point to that has been able to ever successfully do that, are any of those things at all feasible? I mean, one can talk about how we should âmove away from hierarchical, exploitative âGoliathâ systems toward egalitarian cooperation.â But it seems fanciful, without any examples or illustrations of how that might be possible. I mean, outside of societies that are so impovershed and lacking in any material advances that they possess nothing about which they can be other than egalitarian.
I mean, the main counter-argument to his prescription is to point out that even the least and worst-off in a Goliath society tends to be better off than even the best off in a hunter-gatherer or subsistence agricultural society. Every society that has managed to get out of subsistence agriculture has been a Goliath society. So unless you have a credible argument that an egalitarian society can stably exist if itâs not at the level of poverty associated with subsistence agriculture, Iâm not sure thereâs much here.
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Study history.
What societies have been stable for a long period of time?
What societies have raised the standard of living of the average person?
What societies have depended on free labor rather than slavery?
Wendy
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âThe Khoisan peoples in southern Africa, for example, shared and preserved common lands for thousands of years despite the temptation to grab more.â
Itâs possible. We just have to overcome âstories that have been hammered into us over the space of 5,000 years.â
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I think people are assuming that the author only studied the collapse of these societies, he didnât. Itâs possible to study the entire history of societies. In looking at how they started, how they flourished, and the causes of their ultimate collapse, one can glean whatâs successful and whatâs not. I mean, geesh, the dude took 7 years to write this book! Thatâs what I meant by my previous comment -
The author isnât making the case that agrarian, hunter-gatherer societies lead to better outcomes. Inequality can lead to those societies turning into Goliaths as well. Take feudalism as an example.
Also, the author is pointing out that previous societal collapses resulted in populations being able to return to an agrarian, hunter-gatherer for survival. When our modern Goliath society collapses, we will not have that option.
I dunno, the Goliath fuels described seem relevant today:
- Surplus food - grain. Another way to look at this is the weaponization of food supplies.
- Weaponry monopolized by one group. Another way of looking at this is violence committed by the state.
- Caged land - Another way of looking at this is our inability to escape tyranny. Given that we live in a global communityâŚwait, maybe thatâs why Musk wants to colonize Mars!
Look, Iâm sure I donât agree with all of the authorâs insights and conclusions. But thereâs something to be said about the extreme inequality in wealth, justice, and freedom that our society is experiencing and how those same conditions played out in previous civilizations.
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I mean - not in the article, at least. The most recent societal collapse thatâs cited is the fall of Rome, which was back in the 5th Century. Lots of other societies have collapsed since then, but they didnât result in a return to an agrarian society (and the fall of Rome didnât even send us back to hunter-gatherer).
Heâs right that the Goliath global economies of the modern era have raised living standards so much that they can support a vastly larger population without starvation, so that if that society collapsed a much larger proportion of the population would die off than in ancient Goliath societies. But thatâs almost entirely due to the fact that ancient Goliath societies didnât do very much to improve living standards for anyone but the elite.
His doomsaying actually contains the contradiction to his argument - the reason why everyone would suffer so much if/when the current Goliath society collapses is because unlike the Roman or Mayan Goliaths, our capitalistic Goliath has in fact made virtually everyone better off (materially) than they would have been in a hunter-gatherer situation. Itâs created adequate nutrition and modern medicine and lower maternal/infant mortality and a host of other things that let more people live longer and better lives than ever in history. So its loss would have much more catastrophic consequences. But that makes its loss so much more unlikely, because unlike in societies past everyone gets made worse off in a collapse.
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Again, I understand how the articleâs message may come across as anti-capitalist, but I donât think thatâs the intent, nor the main point. Is it possible to live in a capitalist society that is more equal and democratic? I believe it is, but itâs not the society we have.
I hope youâre right. My concern is that everyone is not making decisions. I think thatâs where the authorâs point of having a more democratic society plays in.
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My brainâs alarm systems go off with statements likeâŚ
Define inequality. Humans were never produced on an assembly like identical twins or robots. I went on a search for the definition but instead foundâŚ
From the Guardian
Todayâs global civilisation, however, is deeply interconnected and unequal and could lead to the worst societal collapse yet, he says.
Everyone talks about inequality, second on the list, but no one talks about interconnected, listed first.
The threat is from leaders who are âwalking versions of the dark triadâ â narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism â in a world menaced by the climate crisis, nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence and killer robots.
Packed with trigger words and that sell books. But if inequality is the civilization killer, it took 1,500 years to kill off Rome.
No one talks about interconnected! Stuart Kauffman, my favorite Complexity Scientist, makes an interesting point. Life, a complex system, exists at the Edge of Order and Chaos. Kauffman pointed out that the bigger a complex system is, the more nodes it has, the more connections it has, the more likely it is to become chaotic, to die!
Civilizations are complex systems but most people know nothing about the science of complexity yet they want to fix humanity, a system with 8 billion nodes! Letâs fix inequality which is unfair and we all know that.
From the Guardian
This was a form of evolutionary backsliding from the egalitarian and mobile hunter-gatherer societies which shared tools and culture widely and survived for hundreds of thousands of years.
Hunter gatherer societies consisted of relatively small groups of people, little chaos, lots of order.
Read the book with this idea in mind, could it be the complexity?
The Captain
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Itâs probably not possible. After all, capitalism by its nature relies on a degree of inequality in order to produce many of the key outcomes of the economic system. It also exists as a system for managing inequalities - how do you allocate goods, for example, if youâre going to allocate them in a way thatâs different from everyone gets the same amount.
I mean - maybe? He doesnât really support the idea that more democratic societies are more stable. Or even the idea that direct democracy (which he seems to favor) is a better system at compiling and assessing the âpopular willâ than the current system.
Itâs just an article, not the book - itâs unfair to suggest that itâs a thorough or even representative distillation of his argument. But his one statement on the resiliency of democracies is a really weak one, I think:
âIf youâd had a citizensâ jury sitting over the [fossil fuel companies] when they discovered how much damage and death their products would cause, do you think they would have said: âYes, go ahead, bury the information and run disinformation campaignsâ? Of course not,â Kemp says.
âŚ.because I think itâs pretty likely that heâs factually wrong, here. If weâve learned anything from the last decade or so, as societies have grappled with and tried to limit fossil fuel use, itâs that the modern Goliath is actually pretty darn good at reflecting what their citizens really want on climate change, not just what they say they want. They want a solution to climate change. They also want low prices for energy and all the goods that need it. And if thereâs a conflict between the two, they will prioritize the latter, not fighting climate change. So I think Kemp is flat wrong in what he thinks âcitizen juriesâ would do to fossil fuel companies. They might not bury the info, but they certainly wouldnât implement the types of policies or judgments that Kemp seems convinced they would.
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Modern Goliath societies have raised material living standards â Kemp doesnât deny that. But his point isnât to glorify subsistence living or call for a return to the past. His warning is that todayâs global civilization is more fragile than ever because itâs dominated by elites, heavily unequal, and reliant on unsustainable systems.
Kemp calls for a forward-looking transformation: to retain prosperity while democratizing power, reducing inequality, and dismantling domination-based structures. He offers concrete, feasible reforms â citizen assemblies, wealth caps, and digital democracy â not fantasies.
It may be a mistake to assume we must choose between prosperity and equality. Nordic countries, participatory democracies, and cooperative enterprises show itâs possible to have both â even if imperfectly.
Your take seems to accept domination as a permanent feature of civilization. Kemp challenges us to imagine otherwise â not to go back, but to avoid collapse by building something better.
Pete
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Perhaps Iâm misreading his argument, but he would label those societies as Goliath as well. They have all the feature of a Goliath society that he describes. He doesnât identify any other society at all as not being a Goliath except for the hunter-gatherer societies of ancient times, and that the mere presence of things like, âfood that is both preservable and more than you can eat right nowâ as destabilizing, because they enable the growth of people who âhave moreâ than the âhave notâ (my quotes, not his).
His argument seems to be that material prosperity itself leads inexorably to the formation of Goliath - not because people are inherently greedy overall, but if material prosperity exists then the greedy will get it and assert themselves in the society. Thatâs how early civilizations moved from subsistence tribal- or clan-based societies into having things like priesthoods and/or warrior classes. They developed enough surplus food that they could support a permanent segment population that wasnât engaged in getting food or otherwise providing for the material needs of the people. Itâs the existence of prosperity that enables a Goliath to develop.
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