In particular, at these times, the US is shifting towards demand-side economics. This is like the early 1980s period, a transition that does not make many people happy.
2 Likes
Youâre right that Kemp sees most, if not all, materially advanced societies today â including Nordic countries â as Goliaths, because they are built on hierarchy, surplus, and centralized power. But that doesnât mean he thinks any surplus or specialization inevitably leads to collapse. Rather, his warning is about the concentration of power, not surplus itself.
Kempâs argument isnât that material prosperity always causes collapse, but that unchecked power structures enabled by surplus lead to domination, inequality, and fragility. The solution is not to abandon prosperity but to redesign systems that share power, democratize surplus, and resist elite capture. Historical patterns show how domination tends to emerge â but they donât prove itâs inevitable.
Pete
2 Likes
Thatâs my bad. Iâm throwing around words like equal that are being taken very literally. That causes problems. When we live in a society where a few have luxury yachts, while millions of people starve, that suggest extreme inequality. I still hold by my point that capitalistic societies can be made more equal. They donât necessarily have to end up with extreme wealth being hoarded by a small group.
Thatâs the justification weâve had forced down our throats for a long time now. Itâs a false choice. We can both fight climate change and have cheaper energy. But, this goes against the interests of the few who are paying off those who make the laws.
I respectfully disagree. While he does argue that most people are not inherently greedy, there are still some bad seeds who ruin it for the rest of us.
âThe key thing is this is not about all of humanity creating these threats. It is not about human nature. It is about small groups who bring out the worst in us, competing for profit and power and covering all [the risks] up.â
2 Likes
Again, the article is just a snapshot - but isnât he saying that concentration of power always results from surplus? He talks about the mere existence of something like grain as âGoliath fuelâ - something of value that can be âseen, stolen, and stored.â But the implication of that is really, really bad. Who want to live in a society that has nothing that isnât of value that is capable of being seen, stolen, and stored? It certainly seems to argue that the mere existence of prosperity - here defined as the very lowest of all low bars as being able to produce surplus food that can be retained from one time period to another - has to be avoided to avoid Goliaths.
Last I checked, those small groups were also part of human nature. Itâs human nature that in any group of people, there will be those who compete for profit and power. It sure seems like what heâs arguing for (or at least the only non-Goliath society that can exist) is a society thatâs completely lacking in anything that allows for either profit or power. Which sounds like a really awful society to live in.
1 Like
Again, youâre right that Kemp identifies surplus â especially storable, stealable surplus like grain â as a necessary condition for the emergence of Goliaths. But crucially, he does not argue itâs a sufficient condition. Surplus enables domination, but doesnât require it. The deeper issue isnât surplus itself â itâs how that surplus is governed and distributed.
The âGoliath fuelâ metaphor is meant to describe historical mechanisms, not prescribe eternal laws of human society. Kemp isnât saying, âall prosperity must be avoided.â Heâs saying, âwe need to consciously design systems where prosperity doesnât become a tool for domination.â
We already have contemporary counterexamples â limited but real â where surplus exists without extreme elite capture: worker co-ops, participatory economies, certain Indigenous governance models, and even experiments like citizensâ assemblies in Ireland or Taiwanâs digital democracy. These arenât utopias, but they show surplus doesnât inherently lead to domination.
So the implication isnât âavoid all surplusâ â itâs:
Avoid building systems where surplus gets hoarded, weaponized, and used to dominate others.
Kempâs real challenge is imaginative and structural: if we know the historical risks of inequality and elite power, why not design surplus-based societies that prioritize accountability, participation, and fairness, rather than resigning ourselves to domination as the price of civilization?
Pete
3 Likes
If he had identified a single other society on earth that had surplus but no Goliath - or indeed if we could amongst ourselves point to one - that might hold water. But the only ones that he mentions are all hunter-gatherer societies that lack any surplus. The existence of surplus provides both the motive and means by which small groups within a society can achieve a differential level of power within the society. Thatâs true even of Ireland and Taiwan, BTW - those arenât egalitarian societies, and I canât see anything in his description of a Goliath that would exempt them from being that.
If he wants to make the argument that systems where the elite and dominate other members of society are bad systems, thatâs fine. But categorizing any society that has any elite as a Goliath and then arguing that all Goliaths are unstable isâŚunhelpful? Because weâre never going to voluntarily go back to societies that have absolutely no surplus and nothing of material value for anyone - and if any society that has surplus and things of material value are all Goliaths, then the unstable nature of Goliaths is itself not really an additional argument in favor of any particular change in society.
Itâs just a weird argument. Any society that can produce things like medicine or books is going to have to have the sorts of attributes that he claims are indicia of Goliaths. They have to have an elite, because those things can only exist if there is an elite that relies on âsurplusâ being directed towards them to fund a lifestyle that not everyone in that society can have. And not just material things or possessions - you canât have things like government or schools without an elite (because some people will get to be in those institutions, and others wonât, and there will always be hierarchies in those institutions).
It doesnât help to know âthe historical risks of inequality and elite power,â as you put it, because any society worth living in will have inequality and elite power. Every society thatâs ever existed outside of subsistence hunter-gatherers as had them. You can constrain those things within a certain band, but you canât ever eliminate them and still have any kind of prosperity at all.
1 Like
The Minoans? How about Tiwanaku?
Agreed. Elites donât necessarily have to hoard, weaponize and dominate others.
Perfect is always the enemy or better. There are plenty examples of modern societies that are more egalitarian than what we experience in the US. For some reason, weâve been convinced that itâs unavoidable that thereâs extreme wealth inequality and extreme justice inequality. Itâs not.
I have enjoyed reading this thread. My 2 cents is that Kemp is making an assumption that the most stable society is one based on Western enlightenment values. I donât believe that has much historical support. The most stable societies that I can think of are autocratic ones supported by a powerful state religion (see the Egyptian and Chinese dynasties). Unequal societies run by elites have tended to be far more stable and long lasting than democratic ones. The Persian Empire was around for a lot longer than the Athenian democracy, even if Darius/Xerxes did lose a battle or two to the Greeks.
Kemp also appears to ignore historical context.
For example, I believe educating women is a good thing. However, it also appears that regardless of culture, the education of women inevitably leads to a reduction in the birth rate. This will tend to reduce a nationâs population and as a consequence the size of that nationâs army. In any era where army size is critical for national security, educating women may not lead to long-term survival. This isnât as much the case today, when a nationâs security is based more on technology, but it certainly was in 18th century Europe.
I would also note that the most productive societies are ones where the more productive individuals are rewarded more than less productive individuals. In other words, inequalities are necessary for the more efficient production of surpluses. And typically in any conflict the nation with the most surplus usually wins.
3 Likes
Nope. Per the wiki entries on each, the Minoans had an elite that governed:
But, in notable contrast to contemporary Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations, âMinoan iconography contains no pictures of recognizable kingsâ,[92]: 175 and in recent decades it has come to be thought that before the presumed Mycenaean invasion around 1450 BC, a group of elite families, presumably living in the âvillasâ and the palaces, controlled both government and religion.[98] Rejecting both a monarchy and an aristocracy, David Graeber and David Wengrow recently concluded: âPretty much all the available evidence from Minoan Crete suggests a system of female political rule â effectively a theocracy of some sort, governed by a college of priestesses.â[99]
âŚ.as did the Tiwanaku:
As the population grew, occupational niches developed, and people began to specialize in certain skills. There was an increase in artisans, who worked in pottery, jewelry, and textiles. Like the later Inca, the Tiwanaku had few commercial or market institutions. Instead, the culture relied on elite redistribution.[17] That is, the elites of the state controlled essentially all economic output but were expected to provide each commoner with all the resources needed to perform his or her function. Selected occupations include agriculturists, herders, pastoralists, etc. Such separation of occupations was accompanied by hierarchical stratification within the state.[
Goliaths both. Indeed, they certainly seem even more Goliath-y (Goliath-esque? Goliath-like?) than any modern western economy, including our own.
It seems unavoidable that as soon as you have stuff that worth being in charge of, someoneâs going to try to be in charge of it. That the people who are successful at becoming in charge of it will then have more resources to allow them to be in charge not only of the material surplus, but other aspects of society. They may set up a TPTB system thatâs different from a classic monarchy, but thereâs still a TPTB. If there hasnât existed a society on earth that hasnât followed that model (other than societies with nothing of any material value at all), then it doesnât really add anything to give every one of those societies a label like âGoliathâ and point out that none has lasted forever.
Oh, sure. I just donât think much of the argument that he presented in the article (again, the one in the book is sure to be more detailed). Thereâs lots and lots of arguments for making all sorts of changes to our society (and probably any society). But the specific one that heâs making is: i) our society is a Goliath; ii) all Goliaths eventually collapse; and iii) the collapse of a global Goliath will be terrible. And thatâs a lousy argument, because thereâs no way to change our Goliath society into a non-Goliath society - and we would never want to. So what does it add to point out that risk of collapse is a huge part of being a Goliath?
1 Like
I also think Kemp is making the mistake of fighting the last war and so his argument is mostly obsolete. I told my college age kids that the two big social/ethical/moral issues that they will likely face in about 40 years is what to do about technology that can greatly extend life span and that can merge human intelligence with computer processing.
Rapidly increasing understanding of human aging as well as advances in bioengineering that allow replacements of an increasing number of organs will very likely provide the wealthier of our children the opportunity to have active lives for a century or two.
Rapid advances in neural implants will allow the human brain to directly access vast data bases and to perform rapid computational analysis. Humanity will survive the AI singularity (when AI becomes âsmarterâ than humans) by physically merging with AI.
I wonât even consider the possibility of genetic engineering producing humans with enhanced specialized traits.
The question that needs to be discussed now is what kind of society is best for humans that have achieved the capability of an extended life span (near immortality?) and artificially enhanced cognitive abilities. We are now talking about elites and inequality at a much different level.
2 Likes
Ah, sadly Iâm old enough to have seen enough of yesterdayâs visions of tomorrow not come true to be skeptical of this sort of stuff. And this seems really unlikely. Take a moment to think about how much more advanced todayâs medicine is than 40 years ago, in terms of drugs and medical procedures (including robotics and arthroscopic surgical techniques and imaging) and computers and just four decades more of research. And with all that, the average life expectancy of a 65-year-old woman in the U.S. has increased from 18.63 years toâŚ.20.8 years, between 1985 and today. About two more years of life, after 40 years of medical advancement. And some non-trivial component of that life expectancy increase is due to life history factors, such as declines in the rate of smoking and the like. It just seems a bit wild to think that weâll go from adding two years of life in the last 40 years to adding a full century in the next, no matter how much weâre learning.
Returning to the topic at hand, I think Kemp is trying to tie in what he sees as major societal problems of the day into his area of study and the very long-term review of societies over Earthâs history. I donât know that heâs fighting the last war, so much as trying to engage the current one, as his choice to use climate change as an example issue illustrates. As you observed, he seems to be trying to marshal an argument that Western enlightenment values are somehow additionally supported by looking at societal longevity through this âGoliathâ framework - sort of a defense against the real decline in liberalism (small âlâ) weâre seeing around the globe. I donât think itâs a conclusion that flows from his Goliath framework, though.
(forgot the link)
3 Likes
Again, just because there were elites that governed, doesnât necessarily mean that they hoarded resources, weaponized them, nor dominated others. Samesies for Tihuanacu.
You mentioned earlier that weâre basing a lot of our arguments on an article and not the actual book. Thatâs a very fair point. Has anyone posting actually read the book?
It is good to be skeptical, but it is also worth noting that there are times when technology reaches a point where there is a quantum leap. We may be reaching such a point in human evolution with the confluence of genetic engineering (CRISPr tech), nanotechnology, human genome sequencing, mapping the human brain, and AI. We can manipulate the genome, create devices small enough to be implanted in the brain, and know enough about the brain so that specific behaviors can be elicited. Now we have AI that can very quickly analyze the enormous amount of data from the human genome and brain that can potentially accelerate discovery.
Just one example. The military has a helmet that allows a pilot to control a plane through thought alone. No reason why information going in one direction canât go in the other. The Military Is Developing a Helmet That Will Allow Fighter Pilots to Maneuver Their Jetsâand Fire WeaponsâBy Just Thinking About It.
But you are right, it is all speculation.
His objective strikes me as being similar to the defense of western liberal enlightenment against WWII fascism and/or against Cold War communism. Fighting the last war. He is just replacing the State or the Party with the economic 1%.
The future issue I believe will be more along the line of defining humanity, itâs role and purpose. On one hand will be societies where a large portion of the human population will have no significant economic role in society because of automation, robotics, and AI. What do we do with and how do we support that group? The second is that actual physical alteration of humans through genetic engineering or neural implants.
The questions will be how do we value people who provide no significant economic contribution, should we allow the enhancement of human beings, and if so how should we treat these folks. Suppose we are entering a phase in human evolution where birth rates are low but life span is very long. How should that change society?
1 Like
FWIW, his publisher put the first 50 pages online as a sample. You can find it at the link below. I donât see anything in a more extended discussion of his thesis (which he sets out over many pages in the introduction) thatâs much different than the briefer overview in the article. It also indicates that heâs using his category of âGoliathâ pretty much as we discussed here - any society that has an organized system of hierarchies that allow some subset of the populace to exercise control over resources, energy, or decision-making for the broader group. He talks about a lot of hunter-gatherer and forager societies that donât have that system. I donât see any indication that he talks about any modern examples, except perhaps Somalia (which he praises the collapse of as having improved the lives of the people there).
2 Likes
Does it matter? The cultures you mention are pretty much asterisks in human history. They hardly argue for the superiority of an egalitarian society.
One can also look at todayâs Amish, or native Americans (depending on what anthropology book one reads) for societies with low levels of elitism. How do they fit in Kempâs argument?
1 Like
Thatâs not my understanding. I could certainly be wrong, but probably not.
Itâs not any society that has an organized system of hierarchiesâŚyada, yada, yada, itâs those societies that control their populations through violence. He explicitly mentions the requirement for violence as a control mechanism a couple of times.
Thatâs where the dark triad comes into play. Itâs quite possible for Society X, with an organized system of hierarchies, to hum along quite nicely for millennia. Then some yahoo comes around and disrupts the system by being a dick. Next thing you know, itâs Goliath X.
As I mentioned earlier, I donât think Kemp is strictly arguing against elitism. The Amish certainly have an hierarchical organization. That organization exercises control over resources. I think Kemp would say that the Amish could do very well for themselves, unless a dick comes around and throws everything outta whack.
1 Like
I think youâre wrong, or at least not supported by the text.
All modern societies control their populations through violence. The state has a monopoly on lawful violence, is in possession of weapons and police/soldiers to use them, and has violence as the permissible sanction for violations of the law. Heâs not just talking about dictatorships. Heâs also talking about wealthy western democracies where the wealthy have lots of power and have the threat and the means to use violence through their control of the state.
I mean, we know this from context, because he clearly intends to include the United States as a âGoliathâ country - and this 600-page heavily researched book was only just published, meaning that the central thesis (and most of the writing) would have been developed before Trump took office or even won re-election. This is a structural critique of modern states, not one thatâs contingent on the personality of whichever lackey of the ruling class and wealthy elites happens to be holding office at any given time.
1 Like
It wouldnât be the first time, probably not the last.
Fo sho. I agree. I donât think that means he isnât saying what Iâm suggesting.
Hereâs some text.
âInstead Kemp uses the term Goliaths to describe kingdoms and empires, meaning a society built on domination, such as the Roman empire: state over citizen, rich over poor, master over slave and men over women.â
âHistory is best told as a story of organised crime,â Kemp says. âIt is one group creating a monopoly on resources through the use of violence over a certain territory and population.â
âAll Goliaths, however, contain the seeds of their own demise, he says: âThey are cursed and this is because of inequality.â
âInstead, it is the few people high in the dark triad who fall into races for resources, arms and status, he says. âThen as elites extract more wealth from the people and the land, they make societies more fragile, leading to infighting, corruption, immiseration of the masses, less healthy people, overexpansion, environmental degradation and poor decision making by a small oligarchy. The hollowed-out shell of a society is eventually cracked asunder by shocks such as disease, war or climate change.â
His is a cautionary tale, citing historical references to sound the alarm.
âKemp says his argument that Goliaths require rulers who are strong in the triad of dark traits is borne out today. âThe three most powerful men in the world are a walking version of the dark triad: Trump is a textbook narcissist, Putin is a cold psychopath, and Xi Jinping came to rule [China] by being a master Machiavellian manipulator.â
I was mistaken, itâs not possible for most to read the entire book yet, itâs full release date is 9/23/2025. Kemp said it took him seven years to write this book, which would have put the start date in 2018ish.
I guess weâll just have to agree to disagree.
1 Like
Well, I was referring to the text of the book that his publisher put out. If weâre looking outside of that, I think the publication blurb summarizes it most cleanly:
12,000 years ago, human history changed forever when the egalitarian groups of hunter-gathering humans began to settle down and organize themselves into hierarchies. The few dominated the many, seizing control through violence. What emerged were âGoliathsâ: large societies built on a collection of hierarchies that are also terrifyingly fragile, collapsing time after time across the world. Today, we live in a single, global Goliathâone that is precariously interdependentâunder threat from nuclear war, climate change, and the existential risks of AI. The next collapse may be our last.
Heâs not critiquing a specific Administration, or providing a cautionary tale about the latest trends in politics over the last several years: heâs leveling a structural critique at the core concept of a society organized around a modern state that has the ability to make laws, allocate resources, and enforce those laws and allocations through the ability to inflict violence. Heâs drawing a contrast between the idea of âhaves and have notsâ and the pure egalitarian nature of foraging and hunter-gatherer societies, not between âgoodâ modern democratic states and âbadâ modern democratic states. Those are all Goliaths because of the formalization of hierarchies between those who are wealthy and powerful and those who are not, and not because of any temporary and contingent decision of the wealthy and powerful to act nicely or beneficently for the time being.
At least, thatâs what it looks like to me. Maybe Iâll be able to get a copy from the library in a year.
1 Like
I sincerely appreciate your thoughtful responses, but I disagree.
Maybe we can book club it up when we both get a copy!
1 Like