Cursed by inequality: The history and future of societal collapse

Lecture Theatre 4.04, Bush House, Central London

18.15 to 19.30, Monday 20 October 2025

The Fairness Foundation and the Future Threats Lab at King’s College London were pleased to host Dr Luke Kemp for this discussion of his provocative new book, Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse. In this riveting history of humanity, Kemp reveals the pivotal role of inequality in provoking societal collapse, and considers the implications for our own increasingly unequal societies.

For the first 300,000 years of human history, hunter-gathering Homo sapiens lived in fluid, egalitarian civilizations that thwarted any individual or group from ruling permanently. Then, around 12,000 years ago, that began to change. As we congregated in the first cities, began to rely on lootable resources and developed more powerful weapons, small groups began to seize control of valuable commodities. This inequality in resources soon tipped over into inequality in power, and we started to adopt more hierarchical forms of organisation. Goliath-like states and empires – with vast bureaucracies and militaries – carved up and dominated the globe.

Now we live in a single global Goliath. Growth obsessed, extractive institutions like the fossil fuel industry, big tech and military-industrial complexes rule our world and produce new ways of annihilating our species, from climate change to nuclear war. Our systems are now so fast, complex and interconnected that a future collapse will likely be global, swift and irreversible. All of us now face a choice: we must learn to democratically control Goliath, or the next collapse may be our last.

What lessons can we learn from this radical retelling of history for our current, fragile political moment, in the UK and beyond? This thought-provoking (and not entirely pessimistic) conversation looked at the risks posed by inequality in Britain today to our society, democracy, economy and environment, and what we can do about them to avert disaster.

Luke was joined by Dr Danny Sriskandarajah, CEO of the New Economics Foundation, in a conversation hosted by Dr Jeni Mitchell, Director of the KCL Future Threats Lab, and Will Snell, CEO of the Fairness Foundation.

This was the third of an ongoing series of events hosted by the Inequality Knocks Project, a collaboration between the Future Threats Lab, King’s Policy Institute and the Fairness Foundation.

The key points that emerged from the presentation and discussion were as follows:

• Many human societies were egalitarian, but inequality is enabled by extractable resources and coercive institutions.
• Every major societal collapse, ancient and modern, is underpinned by the ways in which rising inequality hollows out social resilience.
• Today, globalisation unites the planet into a single, vulnerable system, meaning that the next collapse could be global and irreversible.
• Elites, whose privileges rest upon extractive systems, block reform, but unprecedented democratic mobilisation and cultural transformation could still ‘slay Goliath’.
• Restoring fairness is not only ethical but existential: humanity must level wealth, power, and access to information, or risk ending history itself.

Below is a synopsis of the discussion at the event.

Speakers

Dr Luke Kemp is a Research Affiliate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) at the University of Cambridge. He has advised and led foresight studies for multiple international organisations, including the WHO and Convention on Biological Diversity. His work has been covered by media outlets such as the BBC, the New York Times, and the New Yorker. Luke holds a PhD and Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies (First Class Honours) with the Australian National University. He is the author of the bestselling book Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse.

Dr Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah has been Chief Executive of NEF since January 2024. His previous roles include CEO of Oxfam GB, Secretary General of CIVICUS, Director of the Royal Commonwealth Society, Interim Director of the Commonwealth Foundation and various posts at the Institute for Public Policy Research. He is a Trustee of the Guy’s & St Thomas’ Foundation, a member of the UN’s High Level Advisory Board on Economic and Social Affairs, and a member of Quadrature Climate Foundation’s Advisory Board. Danny holds a Masters and Doctorate from Oxford University, and an undergraduate degree from the University of Sydney, and is the author of Power to the People (Headline Press, 2024).

Dr Jeni Mitchell is a lecturer in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, specialising in future war studies, space studies and the evolution of rebellion. She is founder and co-director of the Future Threats Lab, a King’s research group that takes a human-centric approach to the most dire threats facing humanity and its habitats. She is also an associate of the Freeman Air and Space Institute and the King’s Wargaming Network. Jeni’s current research focuses on future threat perceptions, futures research methods, and the evolution of the ‘apocalyptic imaginary’. Her most recent publication is ‘War in Ukraine and the Apocalyptic Imaginary’ in Beyond Ukraine: Debating the Future of War (Hurst, 2024). Jeni holds an MA and PhD from the Department of War Studies, King’s College London.

Will Snell is Chief Executive of the Fairness Foundation. After working in the civil service and for a range of non-profits in the international development sector, he set up Tax Justice UK in 2017 and then launched the Fairness Foundation in collaboration with Julian Richer in 2021, becoming its founding Chief Executive. At the Fairness Foundation, Will leads a small team, and works with a broad range of partners and experts, to persuade politicians to treat inequality in the UK as a policy priority, making the moral, political and policy arguments for action to tackle inequality in all its forms. Will was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in October 2023.

Discussion

Presentation: Inequality as a driver of societal collapse in world history

Inequality as the engine of collapse

Luke began with the claim that ‘a spectre is haunting global history’, that of inequality. His presentation traced the rise of inequality from early agricultural settlements to modern global capitalism, positioning economic inequality as the recurring cause behind the fall of civilisations. Using archaeological, genetic, and historical evidence, he identified a cyclical pattern in which periods of equality give way to hierarchy and exploitation, culminating eventually in collapse and, often, the re‑emergence of more level societies.

The anthropological arc

Luke argued that for 300,000 years humans existed predominantly in small, egalitarian bands. These hunter‑gatherer societies were cooperative, fluid, and largely nonviolent, with no permanent hierarchies. Inequality’s rise began after the Holocene, when stable climates enabled the formation of agricultural communities. Agriculture allowed for the accumulation and storage of food, and wheat and rice, in particular, became ‘lootable resources’, because they were visible, storable, and stealable. When a society depends on such resources and settlement restricts mobility, power becomes coercive. A combination of lootable resources, monopolisable weapons and caged land (which collectively act as ‘Goliath Fuel’) allow small groups to dominate others, creating ‘Goliaths’ — the first organised states, built around inequalities of wealth and power. Unequal states only developed independently in four regions — the near East, China, Mesoamerica, and the Andes — corresponding precisely with regions cultivating these lootable crops. Where crops such as taro or banana dominated, as in Papua New Guinea, elites failed to form because the goods could not be stored or taxed. Inequality spread wherever elites could easily extract, monitor, and defend valuable commodities.

Case studies of ancient cycles

Luke outlined consistent patterns in early cities such as Cahokia, in modern day Illinois. Each followed a ‘boom–bust’ rhythm: expansion, deepening inequality, elite monumentalism, revolt, and abandonment. He described how archaeological layers reveal rising warfare alongside wealth concentration, and how collapses were often marked by the deliberate destruction of elite symbols such as palaces and temples, suggesting popular resistance to elite rule. Such cycles, he argued, show that collapse functioned historically as a ‘great leveller’, restoring equality after exploitative hierarchies imploded. Luke referenced genetic evidence of a ‘Y‑chromosome bottleneck’ between 8,000 and 4,000 years ago, implying that only a small fraction of men reproduced, which is a sign of patriarchal elite dominance. The resulting class systems institutionalised inequality, passing down power and property. Over time, kingdoms became structurally extractive protection rackets, in which elites protected commoners from dangers they themselves maintained.

Inequality undermining resilience

Citing Walter Scheidel’s book The Great Leveler, Luke argued that inequality grows steadily until checked by catastrophic events — war, revolution, plague, or collapse. A review of 28 pre‑modern states reached on average 77% of maximum theoretical inequality, meaning that elites captured almost all surplus while the populace barely subsisted. In ancient Egypt and the Mycenaean kingdoms, inequality’s apex coincided with social fracture and external invasion; conversely, more egalitarian societies often survived environmental shocks. He interpreted this as evidence that inequality corrodes resilience unless it is counterbalanced by redistribution.

The 1% view of history

Luke suggested that our collective idea that collapse is uniformly bad is the result of history being written by elites with a vested interest in the status quo, what he referred to as the ‘1% view of history’. Archaeological and textual records often come from palaces, temples, or royal archives, so histories mourn the downfall of elites, rather than being concerned with the wellbeing of ordinary citizens. He quoted the Admonitions of Ipuwer, an Egyptian lament describing social inversion — ‘Servants spoke freely, the nobles lamented, and the poor rejoiced’ — to illustrate that collapse sometimes democratised wealth and opportunity. Many ancient peasants, he said, might have experienced newfound autonomy when states disintegrated.

Inequality’s modern reincarnation

Moving to the modern era, Luke described how industrial capitalism replicates the same dynamics at planetary scale. Inequality that once destabilised cities and empires now threatens the entire global system. Twentieth‑century world wars acted as violent levellers: the destruction of wealth compressed inequality, a trend that was continued by the postwar social settlement that saw the expansion of trades unions and the emergence of welfare states. However, the ‘great compression’ ended in the 1970s, when neoliberal reforms dismantled redistributive structures. Since 1980, the top 1% have expanded their global wealth share from 25% to 40%. Luke suggested that this corresponds with democratic decay, ecological overshoot, and elite capture of politics, reinforcing his model of ‘diminishing returns and extraction’, whereby wealth buys power, and power buys further wealth, until systems hollow out.

Inequality as the root of existential risk

Luke argued that inequality now underpins the planet’s gravest threats: climate change, nuclear war, artificial intelligence, and bio‑engineering. Each emerged, he said, from concentration of control — ‘few hands, global consequences’. Two countries hold 85% of nuclear stockpiles; three firms dominate AI; fewer than 60 companies have been responsible for 80% of greenhouse gas emissions since the Paris Agreement; and the richest 1% own more wealth than the bottom two‑thirds of humanity. The exploitation sustaining advanced technologies — from cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo to AI moderation sweatshops in Kenya — mirrors historical extraction economies. Luke called this the world’s new ‘Global Goliath’: inequality multiplied through digital, ecological, and military systems. Moreover, elites obstruct remediation. Fossil‑fuel firms concealed internal climate research; chemical and tech industries lobbied against regulation; and revolving doors operated between government and the monopolies that they were supposed to be regulating. This, Luke said, proves the continuity of elite denial through history — ‘they see disaster coming but cannot adapt, because their privilege relies on the structures that cause it’.

Discussion: Inequality, democracy, and hope today

Collapse today versus collapse then

Will asked whether future collapses might still benefit ordinary people. Luke replied that while ancient collapses often increased equality, modern ones would be tragic. Global interdependence means that there is no ‘outside’ to escape to; industrial infrastructure ties everyone to the same brittle systems. Modern collapses would, he argued, resemble Denmark’s downfall more than Somalia’s: states that currently sustain wellbeing would see catastrophic losses, not liberation.

The UK’s vulnerability

Asked where the UK stands on a ‘doomsday’ league table, Luke placed it ‘second or third’ among OECD nations, behind the United States, citing stagnant wages, political dysfunction, and extreme wealth concentration. Danny agreed, describing a ‘national myth’ that Britain remains a high‑mobility welfare democracy despite data showing near‑American levels of inequality. He invoked Oxfam’s annual inequality reports: in 2014, 64 people held as much wealth as half the world; by 2024, that number had fallen to six men. Both argued that ignoring such extremes risks social fracture and institutional decay.

Inequality and democratic corrosion

Elite concentration erodes trust. Danny quoted polling showing that only 7% of Britons believe that politicians act in the national interest. Luke cited evidence that peaks in inequality correlate historically with democratic breakdowns, from Rome’s republic to modern populist regimes. Echoing Justice Louis Brandeis, Danny said: ‘We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both’. Luke added that majorities worldwide support climate action and bans on autonomous weapons, yet policy remains captured by financial interests, suggesting that government policy serves the interests of a small minority.

Paths to change

Will asked whether meaningful reform can emerge from enlightened elites, as evidenced by the repeal of the Corn Laws in 19th‑century Britain, or whether pressure must come from below. Luke responded that historical reforms led by elites were partial and temporary — ‘short‑term measures that delayed collapse’. Achieving a lasting rebalance, he said, depends on bottom‑up mobilisation. Ancient Athens’ experiments with direct democracy after internal revolt exemplified durable levelling. Danny agreed, advocating ‘power with’ rather than ‘power over’, through cooperatives, mutuals, and employee‑owned firms. These already constitute 3% of UK GDP and could form the nucleus of a democratic economy.

Rethinking power

Luke elaborated on four categories of power that must be equalised: economic (control of resources), political (control of decisions), military (control of coercive force), and informational (control of ideology or digital systems). When inequality becomes extreme in one domain, he warned, it spills into the others. Therefore, limiting wealth without restraining military or algorithmic dominance fails to preserve democracy. True resilience requires ‘levelling all forms of power’ through regulation, participation, and redistribution.

Debating solutions

Danny highlighted NEF’s proposal for an ‘extreme wealth line’, in line with Luke’s suggestion of a $10 million cap on personal wealth (a proposal outlined by Ingrid Robeyns last year). Just as societies define a poverty line below which no one should fall, he argued, they should establish a wealth ceiling beyond which concentration becomes socially harmful. Citizens’ assemblies could determine the threshold democratically, guiding reforms to policies such as taxes on wealth. Luke endorsed the concept as both practical and symbolic: a way to ‘make the economy honest again’, internalising the social and ecological costs that elites externalise.

Audience Q&A

From despair to agency

Audience members questioned how ordinary people might regain power when elites control resources, decision‑making, the military, and information. Luke admitted political strategy cannot rely on individuals but on collective organisation — ‘the most effective individual action is always political’. He invoked populist energy around figures like Bernie Sanders as evidence that mass mobilisation around fairness narratives could catalyse systemic change.

Measuring inequality

On inequality metrics, Luke clarified that most archaeological and historical datasets rely on wage rather than capital estimates, due to limited records. The top‑1% share or Palma ratio are better measures of wealth inequality than the Gini coefficient, because the Gini can underplay the concentration of wealth at the top.

Citizen and consumer power

Danny argued that citizens already hold latent power — through voting, consumption, and digital choice. He cited falling voter turnout and corporate dependency as signs of disengagement, arguing that reclaiming agency requires both civic participation and consumer ethics. If consumers redirected spending to cooperatives, or shifted from corporate social media to community‑owned networks, they would undercut the ‘techno‑feudal’ dominance of digital giants. He invoked Yanis Varoufakis’s term to describe this new age of extraction where users are the product.

Cultural narratives and moral renewal

Asked how to shift public aspiration away from joining the wealthy toward questioning the system, Luke suggested cultural reframing: reviving ‘counter‑dominant strategies’ seen in prehistoric tribes that mocked or ostracised would‑be tyrants. Humour and ridicule are potent democratic tools; societies must redefine status as community contribution, not accumulation. Danny cited E. F. Schumacher’s warning that modern economies are built on ‘a frenzy of greed and an orgy of envy’. The challenge, he said, is to replace the neoliberal doctrine that greed drives progress with a new story: that cooperation and fairness drive human flourishing. This cultural shift, he stressed, is as essential as policy reform. Luke agreed that ideological change complements material restructuring, because elites often maintain control through ‘stories of subjugation’ — religious or nationalist narratives that legitimise domination. Collapse, he argued, frequently involves both the breakdown of those stories and the rise of new egalitarian myths.

Historical and philosophical perspectives

Asked whether his historical narrative idealised egalitarian pasts and when collapses became unequivocally destructive, Luke dated the shift to the post‑1950 ‘Great Acceleration’, when nuclear weapons and global interconnection made local failure potentially planetary. He conceded that not all collapses were liberating; people in Britain had a very different experience of the collapse of the Roman Empire from their counterparts in other parts of Europe. However, global industrial society removes the margin of safety: ‘there is nowhere left to walk away from collapse’. On materialism, Luke defended a broadly Marxian view that ideas follow material conditions, though cultural myths can also reinforce or occasionally reshape them. The dominant myths of states, he noted, consistently justified hierarchy: pharaohs as gods, emperors as divine intermediaries, all sanctifying rule.

Hope and moral clarity

As the event drew to a close, Danny invoked a story from local London history: Thomas Twining’s 1706 tea shop. Tea, once a luxury for elites, became an everyday staple due to industrialisation and global trade. This, he said, shows human capacity to transform scarcity into abundance — yet that very success now embodies the dangers of unpriced exploitation and ecological harm. The challenge for the 21st century, he concluded, is to democratise globalisation rather than retreat from it, building cooperative systems that distribute its benefits fairly. Luke echoed that sentiment: the next transformation must make the economy ‘more honest’, pricing goods to reflect their social and environmental consequences. Honesty, he said, might be the new equality.

Conclusion

In closing, Jeni Mitchell suggested that Luke’s book and the evening’s discussion illuminate not only the perils of inequality but also pathways to renewal. Humanity’s survival rests on rediscovering cooperative instincts embedded in prehistory, re‑levelling all forms of power, and rewriting the story of civilisation away from domination toward fairness.