—“British historian Arnold Toynbee spent his career trying to figure out why even the greatest nations and empires seem to be relatively helpless in escaping cycles of decline once they have taken hold.
I think we have accumulated enough scientific knowledge to understand what drives self-reinforcing dysgenic demographic feedback loops to lock in and become seemingly path dependent until ever lower average Intelligence/conscientiousness and concomitant low trust cause social fracture and economic collapse.
Codified legal prohibitions of anything encouraging or contributing to the furtherance of such dysgenic undertows is evidently both moral (reciprocal) and necessary.”—Scott De Warren
Yep. Book on this topic in fact.
Civilizations develop an aristocracy by genetic advantage that provides a strategic advantage, then the classes expand to take advantage of the aristocratic advantage, then, everyone maximizes rents, the middle class serves consumers, consumers breed, the underclass increases, until all advantage has been consumed by the underclass, and no capital is available for adaptation to opportunity, threat, stress, or shock.