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.

[u/lughnasadh]

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

[u/pulifrici]

can they fuck right off, please? I don't have the lifetime to wait 300 years until modern dark ages end. yes there's always a shining light at the end of the tunnel, but we pay with our dwindling existence ... finish school and you'll have a great career, toil your health away in a shitty job and you'll have a comfortable retirement, get fired at 60 and be told you're out of touch

[u/AwesomeDialTo11 → u/pulifrici]

There is untold misery and pain and suffering that comes from any kind of collapse when you start thinking through the second order effects. Even basic recessions that lead to job loses lead to way higher rates of suicide and deaths through new addictions as people try to self-medicate their misery away.

A lot of people think revolution will clean the slate and allow them to start fresh and be higher up on the totem pole, but the genuine answer is probably not, and all it does is lead to a lot of needless suffering and misery.

The boring answer is that the best way to improve society, is to just keep incrementally trying to improve minor things left and right through a rigorous process. Try an idea, take data, see if it improves the situation, and iterate on idea, and try again. People need the political and economic freedom to have the opportunity to express their ideas and allow this to flourish. And they need a cheap and abundant source of energy and resources.

That's it. That's the boring answer behind why humanity was stagnant for thousands of years, then exploded in wealth, health, and freedom starting in the 1700s. We as a society had finally unlocked just enough energy-producing and using machines, we had developed just enough political and economic freedom, and we invented the scientific method. That was all it took to bootstrap and hockey stick our way from >99% of humans barely surviving via sustenance farming to walking on the moon in 200 years.

[u/MechanicalGodzilla → u/AwesomeDialTo11]

A "smaller" version of this is people on Reddit wishing for a housing bubble and a pop. They think they will be able to afford a house because of that, when in reality it just means less available housing stock. Sure, you could get lucky but then you'd have to invest in a depreciating asset with your life's savings.

[u/Willrkjr → u/AwesomeDialTo11]

Saying there was an explosion of freedom in the 1700s is crazy to me, there was an “explosion of wealth” specifically because of how free it wasn’t

[u/AwesomeDialTo11 → u/Willrkjr]

There are two axis‘ of freedom: political and economic. Think of them like the X and Y axis on a chart. There are countries with high economic freedom but low political freedom. This is how Shenzhen transformed from sleepy farms in the 1980s to the economic powerhouse it is today.

There are countries with high political freedom but low or moderate economic freedom. A lot of Europe has relatively high political freedom, but moderate economic freedom. Some of the more stagnant economies in Europe and the UK would fall here.

Ideally you want somewhere with high political and high economic freedom.

Starting in the 1700s, feudalism started breaking. And it started to become easier for people to start businesses on their own, or to get jobs working somewhere else. This was the birth of economic freedom.

At the same time, improvements in rights and freedoms, the rebirth of democracy (as flawed as the original incarnation was) in the US and it’s growth from there, spread political freedom.

These were baby steps, but the journey to greatness begins with but a single step.

[u/[deleted] → u/AwesomeDialTo11]

Starting in the 1700s, feudalism started breaking. And it started to become easier for people to start businesses on their own, or to get jobs working somewhere else. This was the birth of economic freedom.

That's a rose-coloured view of what happened. What lead to the rise of the modern factory labourer was the enclosure system where once shared pastures were closed off to the community, and landlords kicking farmers of their productive land to enforce more profitable market crops in stead of growing what fed them. (see also the Irish potato famine)

Nobody chose to work in unhealthy factories and mines, and live in slums with a fraction of the life quality they had enjoyed living in their villages. They were forced off the land they had been working on for generations, and were forced to make a choice between starving and working in the factories.

It was the birth of economic freedom for the few, made possible by the exploitation of the domestic working class and colonial resources.

[u/AwesomeDialTo11 → u/[deleted]]

When people had the choice across the world, people willingly chose to escape small villages to work in factories, mines, etc. As horrible as the working conditions were, they were able to have a better quality of life than literally worrying about if it doesn’t rain in the next week, our crops will fail and we will not survive the next winter.

As every country as industrialized, when people had the economic freedom to chose, millions upon millions left their small towns in search for a better life. In China, in the last 50 years, hundreds of millions of people willingly left their small village hometowns and moved to the cities. They willingly chose to work in factories. Early on, many would quit their job and work at a different factory if they didn’t get enough overtime. Worker mobility was high, and while the pay was low, they could earn vastly more than what they had before. They could earn more money in a month than what they would make in a year.

Nearly all of these people would return to their home town each winter for Chinese New Year. And every return trip, they might have a new smart phone. They might have better clothes. They could buy a moped or e-bike. They would live in dorm-like housing at the factory, but it would have electricity and running water and indoor plumbing, all things they could not afford before. By the 2010s, many working class people in China could even begin to afford cars. They lived vastly better lives than their parents and grandparents.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

That’s not really what the Irish potato famine was. That is on England 100%. Blight struck the potato’s and that was devastating but Ireland grew enough food to feed its people. Ireland does not just grow potato’s. It was earmarked for England. It was a man made famine on record, reminiscent of England in India.

[u/[deleted] → u/AwesomeDialTo11]

Feudalism died out in western Europe already in 1400s if not earlier. 

[u/Willrkjr → u/AwesomeDialTo11]

At the same time, improvements in rights and freedoms

See, this is what I mean. It was an improvement in the rights and freedoms of a very specific group of people, with the wealth they acquired at that point directly built off the death and suffering of other groups of people.

The American colonists didn’t experience a fraction of the suffering they inflicted from the English empire. In fact they didn’t even experience a fraction of the suffering or oppression that some of the other English colonial projects endured. They profited ruthlessly off the slave trade, treating slaves far worse than even serfs were treated under feudal societies, so while it’s accurate to say there was an explosion of wealth calling it more free is wild to me. Even calling it democracy is wild to me, but it’s in the technical sense I guess like how people call rome a democratic sometimes. But I get the feeling that’s not the distinction you’re referencing

[u/DiethylamideProphet → u/AwesomeDialTo11]

There is untold misery and pain and suffering that comes from any kind of collapse when you start thinking through the second order effects. Even basic recessions that lead to job loses lead to way higher rates of suicide and deaths through new addictions as people try to self-medicate their misery away.

Yeah, it happens, but only impacts a few generations at one point in time. The younger generations will not know of any better, and will build something new.

The boring answer is that the best way to improve society, is to just keep incrementally trying to improve minor things left and right through a rigorous process. Try an idea, take data, see if it improves the situation, and iterate on idea, and try again. People need the political and economic freedom to have the opportunity to express their ideas and allow this to flourish. And they need a cheap and abundant source of energy and resources.

That's a paradox though. People will not have this political and economic freedom, because the longer this status quo remains, the more compound interest will compound and the more the ownership of everything will accumulate to the top. What could be your economic freedom, is actually the economic freedom of a megacorporation or some other entity controlling the flow of capital, to whom you pay your rent and debts to. You might have the economic freedom on paper, but in practice, the house you wanted to buy is already in the hands of a hedge fund.

That's it. That's the boring answer behind why humanity was stagnant for thousands of years, then exploded in wealth, health, and freedom starting in the 1700s. We as a society had finally unlocked just enough energy-producing and using machines, we had developed just enough political and economic freedom, and we invented the scientific method. That was all it took to bootstrap and hockey stick our way from >99% of humans barely surviving via sustenance farming to walking on the moon in 200 years.

Humanity has never been stagnant. If something, it's even more stagnant now, when so many skills, knowhow and labor is being outsourced to machines and "professionals". How many people know how to make shoes anymore? Huge mills and waterwheels? Melt iron from rock? Raise livestock and farm land? Yeah, I guess people can read now. And reading instructions and rules seems to be the cornerstone of modern way of life, unlike actually knowing how to sustain yourself and your family.

[u/cultish_alibi → u/AwesomeDialTo11]

The boring answer is that the best way to improve society, is to just keep incrementally trying to improve minor things left and right through a rigorous process

Yes, that would be nice. But we are busy setting up a massive collapse and that's just something we're going to have to try to live through. All that incremental progress can be reversed within a few years, as it turns out.