Kemp on early elites and arms races

Refs: Kemp and the rise of the state as collective action failure Kemp on conflict and in-group cooperation The state

Summary

In Goliath's Curse (2025), Kemp argues that early states did not need most of their rulers to be bad. A few aggressive or self-aggrandizing rulers were enough, because their behavior changed the incentives for everyone nearby:

• A bellicose city-state forces its neighbors to put resources into defense (walls, weapons) and away from food and infrastructure. Neighbors that don't are conquered.
• A ruler who centralizes power and builds a cult of personality gives others a template and a justification. Rulers who don't have a weaker claim to lead.

The structure is a collective action failure: each actor's best response to the worst actors is to imitate them, even if every actor would prefer a world without the arms race. The 'race to the bottom' is Kemp's own phrase. He extends it to status races (feasts, monuments) and calls these dynamics 'Goliath traps': destructive competitions that dominance hierarchies are prone to fall into, which benefit a few in the short term and not the majority in the long term.

Excerpt

Of course, not all early elites were megalomaniacs, psychopaths, or power-drunk. Many could have been well-meaning and well-behaved leaders. Yet even a few rogue rulers would have created a system in which aggression, cheating, and self-aggrandizing were more acceptable (at least among certain classes). And once a few bad precedents were set, it became easier for others to respond and establish similar dynamics. One bellicose city-state could have easily triggered others to devote more resources to walls and spears, and less to growing food and building roads. Those who did not were conquered. It created a new evolutionary pressure, and arms races were born. One egotistical ruler who centralized power and built up a cult of personality provided both a blueprint and justification for others to do the same. Those who didn’t had less of a claim to being leader. It became a race to the bottom.

Arms races, races to the bottom, and status races using conspicuous consumption (such as feasts and great monuments) all became competitive traps. Those who chose not to play (pacifists, those who had little desire to rule, or animists who refused to exploit the environment for better weaponry) were either outcompeted or had to change their mind. Think of these as ‘Goliath traps’: destructive competitive dynamics that dominance hierarchies are prone to fall into. They might be good for a few individuals in the short term but are not in the long-term interest of the majority.

— Luke Kemp, Goliath's Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse (2025) (page number not recorded)

So what

The argument is about selection rather than intent. Cooperative or restrained rulers are not removed by persuasion but by competition, so the equilibrium is set by the most aggressive participants. This is the same structure as the other arms-race problems in the wiki, and it implies that fixing it needs mechanisms that bind all parties at once rather than reliance on good actors.