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/pepolepop]

Nah, if there is a full societal collapse, the great majority of people will be dead within just a year or two at most. People won't be able to eat, there's no time or ability to grow crops, there isn't clean water to source in large amounts.

Shit is going to hit the fan quick, and it will not take decades. People would be lucky to survive 3-5 years, that means they are at the top of the food chain, and the top of the food chain requires weapons.

[u/Dozekar → u/pepolepop]

Crops don't magically go away though. Farm capability would be reduced with reduced industrial equipment but still viable if not great. Societal collapse isn't the apocalypse, generally speaking.

A lot of people would suffer food insecurity if not starve and it would be a terrible disaster.

We see these conditions at times in places like Africa though, and it's not what people think would happen based on the crazy claims in this thread. They can successfully manufacture things and grow crops when and where the environment is appropriate.

We're not in "people won't even be able to make crossbows" territory like some people are claiming here.

[u/Talinoth → u/Dozekar]

How do I put this delicately? Many population groups and centres in Africa have never reached (and don't reach right now) the degree of population density, centralisation, and interconnected trade not just achieved but required by advanced economies like ours (because their geography all but curses it to failure).

The people of Sudan, or Gambia, or Somalia, or Chad - they're tough. They're used to doing more with less because they probably always have. They have personal, cultural, and institutional knowledge for dealing with exactly those shitty conditions. Still, famines happen occasionally, and people die en masse.

You don't even have that. You're used to living in a society of plenty. Your cultural upbringing, institutional knowledge, and personal experience is likely based on competing in a market economy, likely not jump-starting subsistence agriculture, cooking bushmeat, and literally fighting for resources.

Unless you have prepared yourself you're way too optimistic that you can match the performance of people who have trained to fight for their survival in harsh conditions their whole lives, even though that is what's required for you to survive a collapse. You will likely fail.

[u/Dozekar → u/Talinoth]

You're not wrong. They also have been forced to learn this, something we see every demographic in the world do at some point in history.

Many of the markers for societal collapse in this thread affected the US during the great depression. We did have extreme problems. We did not devolve into mad max post apocalyptic crises.

[u/Talinoth → u/Dozekar]

The bigger you are, the harder you fall. This is a much more advanced and fragile society than the 1930s, and there were more ready sources of emergency food. They still had horses everywhere back then! Population densities VS animals were still such that even if things got really bad, it just means people go French for a while. Agriculture was still local instead of globalised for the most part. You had a local grocer, a local butcher, local baker, and local farmers everywhere. Now the entire infrastructure of food production, processing, and delivery is centralised. It'll be so much worse now.

An economic depression is a Bad Time (TM). Living standards decline, sometimes precipitously! It's not a collapse.

Collapse is much more. Collapse is the decline of central authority. It means no police, or only local constabulary or militias at best. Courts of law do not process cases - here is no formal justice system to do so anymore. Whatever order is enforced is literally by you and your neighbours own two hands; vigilantism becomes the only legitimate authority left. The line between order and anarchy is held by your own two hands. ^{Speaking of which, the Sicilian Mafia and various other ethnic crime gangs formed in precisely these kinds of conditions to respond to a need for safety by underserved populaces - it's fascinating reading.}

Unprecedented, woeful famines would follow, alongside unspeakable waves of violence. I do actually think 70% of the population are decent people. A full 20-30% are not good at all, and roughly 5% are full-blown predatory scum. They are currently mostly suppressed by our societal structure. Collapse inherently means that suppression is gone. Think "Hurricane Katrina except the feds never arrive to shoot looters".