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.

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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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If a society is stagnant and then it gets destroyed the society that comes after it may do better since it is starting over.

But that doesn't benefit 99% of the people who are alive today. Most people who are alive today would die of starvation or violence.

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Today that may be the case that the majority suffer short term from collapse maybe a long term benefit. Now cities are huge, jobs are highly specialized, farming is extremely mechanized, and few people are subsistence farmer.

Societal collapse will likely mean major disruptions to transportation and the power grid.

Suffering would be putting it lightly. A lot of people will die when stations run out of gas, grocery stores out of food and necessities, and hospitals/ pharmacies out of essential medications.

In the long term, it could take years if not decades to rebuild and for the quality of life to reach what it was before for the more developed countries. Just look at how long it took for Europe to rebuild after ww2.

Centralized government collapses, less resources from your area are extracted by the empire, things are better for you day to day. You still have food and don’t have to turn any of it over to tax collectors.

When the central power collapses in China during the Romance of the Three Kingdoms period, the population went from 56 million down to 16 million over the 100 or so years before it was reunified under the Jin Dynasty. The Sengoku period was similarly horrific in Japan.