That’s the scariest part about it.

I’ve been writing a lot lately about the Brahmins in India and the Song dynasty in China, both around the 9th century. The Brahmins were getting their shit pushed in by the Muslims from the northeast, and they thought all they needed to do was keep on building nicer temples and the gods would grant them victory. The Song lost half their empire to the Jin in the north while composing poetry about how much they’d like to win at war, and a common saying of the time was “just as good iron isn’t used for nails, good men don’t go into the military”. In the final days of the western Roman empire, the established powers were fighting in the capital as if nothing was happening just as armies were descending on the city. The Greek Playwright Aristophanes wrote satires speaking of the wars that would ultimately mark the end of Athenian Greece as it was during its peak, and the powers that be watched the plays, laughed, and changed nothing. The kings of Babylon controlled the entirety of the known world of the era. The whims of those kings were so important that they’re immortalized in 3 of the largest religions on earth, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Despite that, the dynasties of Babylon were often defeated and replaced, and ultimately Babylon was extinguished from history, its land taken up by new regimes.

So the people entrenched into positions of power are in fact humans, and they are fallible, and so not only does their power grow over time (at least it has consistently for decades), but increasing power does not mean increasing competence (at least not at anything other than acquiring more power).

Figures of legend such as the Roman statesman Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus or the first US President George Washington are the center of stories that speak of civic virtue such that they come in and help deal with a crisis, and importantly relinquish power afterwards. It’s not easy to have that kind of power and give it up because it’s the right thing to do. They’re legendary figures because it’s uncommon to give up absolute power.

The one thing I’m hopeful for is related to the upcoming population collapse. The baby boomers are the largest generation in history, and they had the millennials, the second largest generation in history. Gen X and the Millennials and the zoomers have historically infinitesimal birth rates, far less than replacement in most of the world. World population projections are showing the world population peaking around 10 billion and then shrinking. In most western countries, that could mean a drop as much of 50% of population. Historically speaking, a growing population increases the size of the pie economically speaking, but having lots of people means the value of each person is less, and so periods of growing population tend to ultimately result in lower quality of life for individuals, which I think we’ve seen in the past couple generations after the boomers. In the next couple generations as the population falls, the value of individuals will rise, and I think that’ll result in power being relinquished by the elites and the establishment and given back to the people, as has happened in previous cycles of the sort. The absolute economy is likely to shrink, but the quality of life for the average person is likely to grow. The incredible power of the individual baby boomers after the population decline of the world wars is one example, but the reduced power or feudalism and the rise of liberalism after the black death is another example.

The past is not the future, and so what will happen hasn’t yet been set in stone. While population decline has in the past led to improvements in the common man’s lot, we’re living in an era where technology allows for unprecedented control over the individual as well. As well, an established elite may take a crisis like population decline as an excuse to take greater control as well. All this means in my view that we need to be working hard to raise up future generations to be people worthy of having individual power and wise enough to reach out for it. “History is written by those who show up”

Anyway, way too much on the topic, but I’ve been thinking ahead a lot lately.