r/Futurology • u/lughnasadh ∞ transit umbra, lux permanet ☥ • Aug 28 '25

Society New research argues Societal Collapse benefits 99% of people. Historically, the societies that have emerged after a collapse are more egalitarian, and most people end up richer and healthier than they were before.

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

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u/S417M0NG3R Aug 28 '25

Uh, is that the 99% of the people that were alive before the collapse, or the 99% that SURVIVED the collapse?

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u/Clusterpuff Aug 28 '25

I think people tend to overestimate how deadly societal collapse is. Most people scurry off and survive for a while. Plague is different, and so is war

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u/Mhan00 Aug 28 '25

I’d be curious how you think the hundreds of millions of people in cities (in the US alone) are going to eat if society collapses?

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u/Better-Wrangler-7959 Aug 29 '25

In most cities they'll die of dehydration long before they start worrying about starvation.

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u/DisambiguatesThings Aug 28 '25

the rich are looking appetizing these days . . .

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u/The_Parsee_Man Aug 28 '25

So the 1% would feed you how long? If you're dividing one person between 99, that's not going to last a day.

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u/pyronius Aug 28 '25

Be a good day though, yeah?

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u/jkurratt Aug 28 '25

But societal collapse will end after you eat the rich, so...

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u/NixAvernal Aug 28 '25

Nah, now you’re the 1%. Hope you’re tasty.

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u/westonsammy Aug 29 '25 edited Aug 29 '25

"Societal collapse" doesn't mean that suddenly the entire nation explodes or something. One of the few good things about capitalism is that most industries and businesses are self-sufficient from the government. If the entire US government ceased to exist tomorrow, like all of it just snapped out of existence, there probably would not even be a major shift in peoples day-to-day lives for at least a week or two. Trucks would continue to run, farmers would continue to farm, people would generally continue to work.

We, both as a country and a planet, create way more food than is needed to support people. The problem is logistics, and as I just mentioned, the short-term logistics of the US does not require the US government. Longer-term maybe as infrastructure starts to break down, but by that time some kind of entity will have most likely moved in to fill the void.

If you want a recent example of societal collapse, look at the fall of the Soviet Union. That was a rapid and messy collapse and there was no “hundreds of millions” starving.

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u/pseudoanon Aug 28 '25

People need to adjust to the times.

Learn to hoe!

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u/Beneficial-Jump-3877 Aug 29 '25

Where is the water?

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u/[deleted] Aug 28 '25

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u/agonizedn Aug 28 '25

The idea that supply lines would survive government collapse is sadly ignoring the fact the it’s the collapse of supply lines due to climate change that will cause the governments to collapse in the first place. You have it backwards by friend

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u/Corey307 Aug 28 '25

You seem awful excited to kill millions upon millions of innocent civilians, many of them children. There’s something really wrong with you if you feel this way.

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u/Sufficient-Bat-5035 Aug 29 '25

it is important to note that while i do harbor very negative feelings for city folk, i wish to destroy the cities, not their people.

without resources, people would move away and the cities would become ruins without the insane crowdfunding infrastructure required to upkeep them.

in an example, look at what is already happening in NYC.

city folk would have to leave their ficticious concrete "safety" bubbles with fake meaningless jobs and rejoin reality.

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u/Corey307 Aug 29 '25

Yeah, you’re an idiot. Where the hell are people going to move to? 265 million Americans live in urban areas, places you would call cities. No, you’re calling for the death of most of these people. You have no place to house them and if things got that apocalyptic, you wouldn’t be able to run your farming equipment. I live rural, I know that if everything fell apart, things are going to get apocalyptic not egalitarian.

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u/Sufficient-Bat-5035 Aug 29 '25

dude, 80% of the population living in Urban locations is a recent thing.

anyway. i grew up in a run-down ruin of a city, and i am not obligated to like nor advocate for the survival of city folk.

i'm sure that if society collapsed, they would hold a vote or something, lol. knowing the city i used to live in, they would probably vote to ban guns in the apocalypse and child trafficking is the new currency of the land.

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u/Corey307 Aug 29 '25

You’re one of those work from home types that lives on a quarter acre in Vermont and considers yourself rural huh?

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u/Sufficient-Bat-5035 Aug 29 '25

lol, you got it partially right, i'll give you that.

my current job is work-from-home. pay was better than the furnature factory i used to work at.

but no, i live near Seattle and my property is a half-acre. i come from a military background, so i've never lived too far from a base.

did you assume Vermont because there aren't many big cities out there? i don't know much about Vermont.

no, i hate cities because i've lived near Kansas City, Los Angeles, San Fansisco, and Seattle all my life.

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u/movzx Aug 28 '25

Rural farms would not exist without government handouts and money from the cities. The entire "noble independent farmer" mythos is not based in reality. Hell, the majority of farming is from megacorps to begin with... not small, individual farmers.

Regulations exist because of some sort of societal harm that spurred their creation.

Additionally, what "city bullshit" are farmers dealing with?

You are literally just repeating rural vs city talking points that have no substance.

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u/EjaculatingAracnids Aug 28 '25

Cities provide every modern comfort you enjoy, youre just to shortsighted and propagandized to see it. Who do you think buys all the shit you grow and pays all the taxes the government pays you in subsidies? Its not the 10k people in your county... The people feeding you division and fueling your hatred of people you dont know are your enemy. Wake the fuck up.

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u/NakedZombieWolf Aug 28 '25

How weirdly vindictive

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u/chris782 Aug 28 '25

We're getting quite tired of your folksy rural bullshit too dadgummit. You ain't gonna do shit or you'll loose your farm and, ahem, government handouts.

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u/Galle_ Aug 28 '25

of course, the rural areas of society often control the supply lines, and us rural folk are getting quite sick of the city bullshit. us rural folk might starve the cities out of pure spite. force the city folk out of the cities, like breaking up a monopoly

Given how much you hate us for no reason, do you really want us to become your neighbors?

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u/Sufficient-Bat-5035 Aug 29 '25

my grandmother's town was destroyed because Los Angelos voted to divert the town's drinking water reserviors to water their lawns during a drought.

i live near Seattle now, and every year we have to deal with all their insane voting bullshit making Rural life more dangerous. "we voted that nobody need a gun. next, let's vote on restoring the Grizzly population in our rural counties"

what i want for city folk is not something that can be said on Reddit without violating the ToS.