Liberal Europe Podcast I Goliath's Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse with Luke Kemp

Luke: Goliath is largely my replacement term for civilisation. When you go to write a book on collapse, the key question is: what is collapsing? Most people would say civilisation, but there are two big problems here. One is that archaeologists and anthropologists have never had good definitions of what a civilisation is. The second is that civilisation is, by and large, a term of propaganda. When you think about it, it derives from the Latin *civilitas*, which has connotations of virtue, moderation, and restraint. Yet when you look at the very first so-called civilisations across the world, they’re marked by things like large-scale human sacrifice, patriarchy, slavery, and preceded by warfare. The real commonality across all these cases is a change from social egalitarianism to a social blueprint in which a few people dominate the many and extract resources from them using violence. Hence I go for the term Goliath, because these things are based on violence, large in scale and stature, and surprisingly fragile — just like the biblical tale of David and Goliath.

Leszek: It makes an interesting polemic in the title of the book, which I think is great even from a marketing point of view. I also saw a link — maybe it’s just me — to Leviathan by Hobbes, who I think is perhaps the biggest villain of your book. You basically start by arguing with him. Can you prove him wrong briefly on the podcast? What did he get wrong, and why is he so popular even today?

Luke: Of course. For those who don’t know, Thomas Hobbes is one of the most influential political philosophers in history — a 17th-century thinker who proposed that without rulers, without some overarching system of authority, people turn on each other in a scramble for resources, and this leads to lives which are “nasty, brutish, and short.” It’s pretty easy to disprove Hobbes, because he essentially made everything up. He didn’t have access to archaeological or anthropological findings. When we actually look at the Middle Palaeolithic — the period from roughly 300,000 years ago until we emerge into agrarian cultures about 10,000 years ago, so for almost 98% of human history — we lived in situations that didn’t have overarching rulers. There were nomadic egalitarian hunter-gatherers. Interestingly, we don’t seem to have been anywhere near as violent as Hobbes proposed. The best archaeological and genetic evidence suggests that the lethal violence rate was roughly 1% to 2%. For every 100 people, roughly one or two would die at the hands of another human. That’s equivalent to what we have globally today. Similarly, it seems people were actually very capable of cooperating at large scale across multiple groups. Genetically, the average hunter-gatherer group during this period probably had less than 10% of people who were closely family-related. So it wasn’t a group of ragtag families warring against each other. Additionally, they were capable of cooperating because they were constantly moving across groups. This leads to huge zones of shared trade, culture, instruments, and genes. For instance, all the way from the East Coast to the West Coast of Africa 120,000 years ago, we have evidence of shared instruments, culture, genes, figurines, and cave art. So rather than being a bloodthirsty group of ruthless savages, we actually find that, deep down, we are very much capable of self-organising without rulers — and not particularly violent.

Leszek: Well, it sounds great — but do you think, then, that human nature is inherently good, and it’s just institutions that are oppressive? Or is discussing human nature in the terms of Rousseau and Hobbes actually meaningless, because we are social animals bound by institutions, and it’s hard to compare a population of two million to eight billion? I don’t think we’re coming back to two million anytime soon — hopefully.

Luke: I think we can definitely drop the whole Hobbes–Rousseau framing. Rousseau, like Hobbes, had no access to actual empirical, archaeological, or anthropological findings. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have some deeply ingrained evolutionary psychological traits. I don’t think we’re all good, necessarily. In the book, I talk about the darker angels of our nature — different traits that can lead to far more antisocial and malevolent outcomes. These include what I call the authoritarian impulse. There’s a very strong evidence base that when people feel threatened, they start to shift towards more authoritarian values. The old idea that people look for a strong-man leader when they’re in fear is technically correct. Similarly, there’s evidence that all of us want status — but some people want it more than others, and some are willing to take it through violence. In general, men want status much more, and people who rank very high in what’s called the Dark Triad — a set of three antisocial personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy — tend to be much more likely to want power, want status, and be willing to use violence, force, or manipulation to get it. And we do see empirically that even today, these people are over-represented in positions of power. Last but not least, we also have good evidence that power corrupts — that when people are placed higher in a hierarchy, this tends to influence their behaviour to become less risk-averse, less compassionate and empathetic, and more likely to cheat, both in games and on their spouses. So this isn’t a simple Rousseauian narrative of a world that is good deep down inside. There are good psychological reasons why we end up in institutions that don’t seem to bring out the best of us.

Leszek: Even having all this evidence — though of course we can’t really get into the minds of our Palaeolithic ancestors — I don’t quite see how we could return to the Stone Age and to that kind of population density. In your book, there isn’t really a good Goliath yet — at least, it seems that with any complex human society, we tend to end up in a Goliath, and then a Goliath’s curse. We’ll get to the curses. Do you think there’s a possibility of a complex human civilisation of 8 to 10 billion people that isn’t structured around this Goliath framing?

Luke: There have been interesting examples throughout history of large-scale societies with trade, even economic growth, that were far less domineering and violence-based than typical empires. One example — and admittedly we don’t have as much evidence as we’d like — is the Indus Valley civilisation, also known as the Harappan, which is roughly contemporaneous with the early Sumerian city-states. The Harappans had cities of up to 40,000 people. They had a network of different trading hubs. They also had large-scale indoor plumbing, which was just incredible for the time — unparalleled. And as far as we can see, they had no kings and no rulers. They had some military provocations, but not many. And there was large-scale equality. There were no big differences across classes. We don’t know exactly how they operated, but it does seem to have lasted for centuries. There do seem to be examples throughout history of relatively egalitarian societies that may not have had as much domination and actually seem to have prospered better. It’s worth noting that even Goliaths are on a spectrum — from the most brutal despotic empires through to far more egalitarian arrangements. A good example is ancient Athens, which, granted, was a democracy limited to only about 15% of the population — landholding males. But it was still, for those men, far more democratic than almost any other empire. And they ran things very differently. They used sortition — randomly selecting people to deliberate. They had large-scale assemblies to make decisions. Athens is outstanding not just for its cultural achievements, but also because it was one of the few times in world history that a polity did not increase in wealth inequality — instead, it became more equal. And median wages were actually quite high, exceptionally high for the pre-modern period. When we look across history — whether it’s ancient Athens or Florence — we tend to find that more democratic states usually result in a far better outcome for everyone involved. So I don’t think we’re doomed to Goliaths once we reach a certain scale. Rather, we’re more likely to adopt Goliaths when we have certain resources. It’s not the size of a city that dictates whether it becomes a Goliath — we have many cities that started egalitarian. It’s really the resources and the weapons they have access to. Across the world, you find Goliaths only emerging where you have certain types of resources that are easily seen, stolen, and stored — things like wheat, rice, corn. In all these cases, they’re easily seen, easily stored for up to decades. When you have those resources plus certain kinds of weapons that can be easily monopolised by a small group, you tend to get these organised crime rackets — these Goliaths — popping up. This is pretty clear in the case of the Near East, whether it’s Egypt, Mesopotamia, or China. As soon as you have handheld bronze axes and swords being introduced, you start to get Goliaths. This is more a story of organised crime than of humans intentionally adopting a particular framework when we get big enough. So while we can’t return to hunting and gathering, I don’t see why we can’t have far better, more equal, more democratic states across the world.

Leszek: Do you think it is possible to be a herbivore among the predators? Even if you start with an egalitarian version of civilisation, if your neighbours are Goliaths, then you have to arm yourself — perhaps change your institutions, and even become fully autocratic. Is this sometimes an argument for or against the European Union having to arm itself, or the need for an AI competition with China — because even if we don’t go that way, they will, so we have to compete? And the same for nuclear weapons: there’s always going to be a North Korea with nuclear weapons, able to threaten the whole world. Is it basically either/or? Does it have to be a global David — because if there’s even one Goliath left, then everyone has to become a Goliath?

Luke: This is a really critical question. When we look at the very first states, there does seem to be this trend: once you get a Goliath emerging, the neighbours tend to become more autocratic as well. You see this, for instance, between the Germanic tribes and Rome — they started to organise themselves in a more hierarchical, authoritarian fashion once they encountered Rome. The key question is: are they doing this because this is what works — because you need to do this to compete — or is it instead psychological, because, again, when people feel frightened and threatened, they’re more likely to adopt an autocratic regime? In the book, I tend more towards the latter. The idea that we need more autocratic, despotic arrangements in order to better defend ourselves I don’t think really holds true. We see across many military doctrines that having more decentralisation can actually be a better thing. Can you be democratic, can you be egalitarian, and still compete? I don’t see any reason as to why not. And there’s a second aspect: do we have to engage in arms races? Can Europe remain democratic, free, and fair, but also not build up a huge military-industrial complex of dangerous new technologies? On this, I think it’s quite simple. There’s no real alternative. If we have improving technology plus arms races, in the long term — over decades or centuries — where does that lead? There’s only really one route. And I think there are good reasons to believe that we can defeat arms races, that democracies and fairer societies, non-Goliaths if you will, can actually compete with Goliaths. When we look across world history, it’s quite clear we’re capable of solving arms races. There are numerous times where different groups have resolved arms races without resorting to violence or autocratic arrangements. The European Union is actually one example. The idea that Germany and France would not be competing, but would actually be closely cooperating and interlinked, would have been unthinkable 200 years ago. And yet, here we are. There are really good reasons to believe that we can move beyond just competition. And, again, most of this is more psychological than material.

Leszek: So it took several wars, including two world wars, to get there. But I get your point. Let’s get back to the title, the Goliath’s curse. I think one of the curses you describe is abandonment — the first one, where people sign out from the Goliath, from the oppressive state. It’s possible when there is a possibility to flee. Can you describe some of the interesting examples, mostly from Mesoamerica, that aren’t necessarily well known to people who read classical history? How is it possible to abandon a Goliath — and are there any lessons for us today?

Luke: It’s pretty easy. You just walk away. There are multiple good examples here. There’s Tiwanaku in South America. There’s Monte Albán in Central America. There’s Cahokia, the very first city of North America, located on the outskirts of St. Louis. Jenné-jeno in West Africa. What’s interesting is that many of these — excluding a couple like Cahokia — actually began as egalitarian arrangements. They had no clear signs of rulers, no clear signs of wealth inequality. And yet they often had cities and irrigation infrastructure, and large-scale infrastructure in general. The rulers and the wealth inequality come later. In many of these cases, things then start to destabilise. You start to see the first signs of large-scale sociopolitical violence. And often, people simply walk away from these arrangements. We see this in Cahokia, for instance, where rather than a complete collapse per se, there’s just consistent large-scale migration. People just leave the area, potentially in large part because they realise the benefits of having a priestly ruling class do not exceed the costs — particularly the cost of large-scale human sacrifice. So they leave. It’s worth knowing this is part of a longer human lineage. In the book, I talk about how nomadic egalitarian hunter-gatherers, who characterise most of our human history, are not egalitarian because everyone’s equally poor. It appears to be a social choice. When one person tries to dominate the group, everyone else engages in what’s called a counter-dominant strategy. They either walk away, kick them out of the group, ostracise them, ridicule them, or execute them. When you look at many of these early case studies, you can think of them almost as scaled-up counter-dominant strategies. You either have people walking away — a form of ostracism — or, in some cases, revolutions, almost like a scaled-up version of a counter-dominant execution.

Leszek: Thinking of what this story tells us for today: do you think we can become like the Henry David Thoreau, Walden scenario — living in the woods? Or does this exit strategy basically not exist anymore, unless you are somewhere near the Amazon River or in a secluded part of the world? It doesn’t seem likely that people will be able to accept coming back to being hunter-gatherers, unless they’re forced to.

Luke: Precisely. There are eight billion of us today, and hunting and gathering can only support pretty low population densities — often less than one person per square kilometre. Parts of India have over 400 people per square kilometre. So we can’t easily return to hunting and gathering. And there are reasons we wouldn’t want to. There are so many benefits I like — vaccines, renewable energy, train transport. These are all good things we should keep. And the strategy of just becoming more inclusive is not something we can do at scale. Nation states, Goliaths, control most of the world. Instead, I think it’s really a question of: how do we best reform the Goliaths we’re in? How do we make them more democratic, more responsive to their citizens, and far more egalitarian? It’s worth noting that, throughout this talk, I’ve referred to democracy quite a few times, but I’m not necessarily referring to elections. It’s worth noting that the ancient Greeks, if they looked at us today, would say: you’re not a democracy, you’re an elected oligarchy. Because for them, elections were oligarchy. Only the rich and powerful actually had the time and ability and resources to campaign in elections. Most people could not. For them, democracy was sortition — randomly selecting people. Today, I’d say most of us don’t really live in democracies. We live in more democratic systems, but democracy is a spectrum. There’s a long way to go before we can build those real, true, deep democracies.

Leszek: One of the interesting features of the book is that it’s sort of revisionist about collapse itself. Most people would think you are warning against collapse, but you describe different collapses — the Bronze Age collapse, and especially the most popular one in the Anglo-Saxon and European world, the Roman Empire collapse — as not necessarily bad things. They’re basically stories written from the perspective of the 1%. Can you explain why you think collapse might actually be a good thing? Even in the long term, it can benefit some people who survive, but most of the time a lot of people got killed. Do you think we should, instead of trying to prevent a collapse, try to accelerate it? Or should we be more fatalistic about it — is it going to happen because all civilisations, or Goliaths, collapse in the end?

Luke: Definitely do not accelerate it, and definitely do not engage in fatalism — I need to say that up front. In the book, you can describe it more as: collapse has a bright past, but a dark future. There are cases where collapse wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. It has costs and benefits, winners and losers, and for the average person, it may have even been a net benefit. If we look, for instance, at the collapse of Somalia in 1991, when the Barre regime falls apart, a decade afterwards most things had improved. Maternal mortality dropped by 30%, infant mortality by 24%, extreme poverty by 20%. Even compared to their more geopolitically stable neighbours, they’re doing better — and that’s in large part because the regime was so predatory that people were better off under often more responsive local arrangements. Similarly, look at Rome. After the collapse of Rome, people become taller, they become healthier, there’s even less damage in their bones. And it’s easy to say this is because so many people died during the collapse that the survivors had more resources — but that doesn’t really check out, because even the people outside the empire, at its peak, were taller and healthier. The trope of the muscle-bound Germanic barbarian was kind of true compared to their Italian counterparts, who actually were much healthier and bigger. A lot of this comes down to the fact that when you have a collapse, people start to move from urban areas towards more agrarian ones. They’re more likely to be less exposed to disease and to have a diet with more protein — a more varied diet as well. And on top of that, often these empires were, again, just criminal rackets. They provided some degree of protection, if you will, but at a very large cost. Often people were better off not being under an empire, not paying those taxes for preventing a threat that often came from the empire itself. As you say, there are still costs. Often collapse is accompanied by a glut of violence to begin with. But it’s worth noting this wasn’t everyone trying to kill each other. It was usually small groups of armed men trying to recreate a Goliath, as we see in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. One very important thing to finish with: I really stress in the book that this is changing today. We now have access to weapons like nuclear weapons and biological weapons. People can no longer easily return to subsistence farming or hunting and gathering. And importantly, we’re reliant on large-scale industrialised supply chains. When Somalia fell apart, it was a good thing for its citizens. But if Denmark fell apart, I don’t think it would be a good thing for its citizens. We often live in states which do provide a lot more public goods, and people are much more reliant upon them. So the idea we should accelerate collapse is very silly, and the idea that we should think collapse is inevitable is equally dumb.

Leszek: You suggested democracies — and a lot of data supports the idea that democracies outperform autocracies and are more inclusive. Does that mean we shouldn’t worry that much about China, for example, because it’s doomed to fail? Or do you think that big data, AI, and technological progress can actually change the equilibrium — and disprove the idea that liberal democracies and capitalism will inevitably prevail, along the lines of Fukuyama’s arguments? Is Denmark going to lose in the long term to some Goliaths like China or others?

Luke: Yeah, potentially. In short, technology does change the game here. It changes the competitive landscape. One reason larger-scale, more democratic states emerged and became dominant post-World War II is because of mass-mobilisation warfare. You started to have warfare that favoured very large armies, and those soldiers often demanded things in return from their states. Exactly the same with ancient Athens and Greece. You had iron weapons that were more easily dispersed across a large population, and having things like the phalanx unit — hoplites — again, a kind of smaller-scale mass-mobilisation warfare, was a winning strategy. And the warriors tended to demand more from their rulers, and often become the rulers themselves. Technology today — whether it’s drone warfare or mass surveillance — is changing the game. We’re entering what I call the Silicon Goliath: a situation in which all the different ingredients that usually create Goliaths — so lootable resources have now become data, for instance; monopolised weapons are no longer things like bronze-handled axes and swords but rather lethal autonomous drones; and even caged land, in the form of mass surveillance states — are all present. I think these all mean we’re entering a period of potentially much more stable, persistent Goliaths. Does that mean China or Russia will win? I don’t think so. Actually, my biggest fear here is not that Europe or others will be outcompeted by Russia or China. Rather, it’s that the fear and the threat of Russia and China makes us become more like them. It’s worth noting that right now we live in an age of fear already, where Russia invading Ukraine has led to increased expansion of warfare and military spending across many European states. The funny thing is, in many ways, this should have almost done the opposite. Prior to Russia invading Ukraine, most wartime scenarios suggested that Russia would sweep through Ukraine in a matter of months and be at the doorsteps of the West very quickly. Instead, they’re having an enormous struggle. Years later, they’ve only taken small parcels of land and are more or less at a standstill. This, if anything, should have shown us that apart from its nuclear arsenal, Russia is nowhere near the threat we thought it was. But again, what we’re dealing with here is more the authoritarian impulse. That threat, that fear, is making us change. And we have more to fear from that than we do, potentially, from the so-called enemies themselves.

Leszek: Last question: we have some people who are engaged in politics or advising politicians listening to us. What you suggest is not really global anarchy — although I think you might have some sympathy for a sort of disorganisation of society. But you offer ideas like high taxation, a nice workforce, equal political decisions. It’s a sort of classic social democratic message: another Denmark, let’s say. But in more and more places, people choose nationalistic, far-right populists, offering an alternative — at least on paper — to the political mainstream. They target immigrants, and they mostly use the politics of fear. Are voters inherently stupid, or do they just judge the situation? Why do you think these logical solutions are not widely implemented, or even if they are offered, they are rejected? What’s wrong with democracy?

Luke: First of all, it’s worth noting the reason I propose things like wealth taxes or what’s called deliberative democracy — random selection of citizens who then make policies rather than politicians — is that they actually have a lot of evidence behind them. But the key idea of Goliath’s Curse is that as you have increasing concentrations of power and increasing wealth inequality, you tend to have more fragile states. They become more prone to corruption, elite competition, and more likely to engage in essentially just bad decisions — oligarchy. Why are people not turning towards these kinds of reforms? I think one large part of it is simply that they’re not being offered. When you actually poll people on the far right about whether they’d like more citizens’ assemblies or juries, they say yes. But they’re not really given that choice right now. Indeed, if you look at a Bernie Sanders supporter and a Donald Trump supporter, they’re actually very similar in their underlying narrative of the world. They think that right now the world is run by corrupt elites, and if there were more representation of the everyday person, it would be a better place. To be frank, I don’t think they’re entirely wrong. The key difference is that Trump supporters blame it on immigrants and trans people, and Sanders supporters blame it on the 1%. I think I know who’s right. The big difference here is that Trump is actually giving them a really clear enemy and playing to the politics of fear very effectively. I think the left has just done a terrible job. Sanders, for instance — if he had won the Democratic nomination, he would have beaten Trump head-to-head, but that wasn’t the choice. Sanders never got a chance because of the Democratic funders. Likewise, right now across the world, you don’t really see a good counterweight to the right. When you do — like Mamdani, when you actually have proper economic populism — it wins. This has more to do with the left’s bad politics, bad messaging, and its inability to appeal to the average person than with the dumbness of the voter. But my key thing here is that we shouldn’t be in this situation in the first place — because we shouldn’t have politics based on who has more control over mass media and can get more votes. Instead, we should have politics like ancient Athens, where the people make the decisions.

Leszek: Let’s hope that we can get out of Goliath’s curse without destroying the whole civilisation.

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Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse with Luke Kemp

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Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse with Luke Kemp

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