Luke Kemp, a researcher at the University of Cambridge, has recently published Goliath’s Curse, a book describing the corrupting nature of power and how it spawns less than desirable leaders. Inequality and monopolies lead to the emergence of ‘Goliath’ polities, and the collapse of these vast entities throughout history is usually a cause for celebration rather than mourning. This lust for power can be driven by perceived humiliation; with Donald Trump being a notable example and the justification for the subsequent inequalities can become deeply entrenched within society. Eventually, the greed that breeds Goliaths eventually destroys them too.
Luke Kemp
Luke Kemp is a Research Affiliate & Former Research Associate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at Cambridge University. Luke looks to the past (civilization collapses) and future (climate change and emerging technologies) to suggest what policies should be pursued in the present. The book Goliath’s Curse has evolved from Kemp’s study of the past and considers how we can learn from it today.
Why do we get ‘bad leaders’?
During a recent YouTube interview, Kemp outlined some of the reasons why we often get leaders in our world who we would prefer not to have. Kemp reiterated the old saying that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. He also talked about what is known as the ‘dark triad’ and how many rulers have been prone to the phenomenon.
The dark triad is described as being a “cluster of three negative personality traits – Machiavellianism and subclinical (nonpathological) narcissism and psychopathy – that share certain features, including emotional coldness, duplicity, and aggressiveness.”
These are also features which tend to mean that many leaders have had less than average empathy for others and, crucially, a desire for status, which has driven them on to acquire power and keep it in ruthless ways.
Having said that, democracy is still the default position of society, although Kemp warns us with the caveat that people tend to want a strong male leader when they feel threatened.
So what does Kemp teach us in Goliath’s Curse about how leadership can develop, and what are our lessons for today?
Goliath’s curse: how do goliaths emerge?
Goliaths are large societies, often aggressive to other societies, and run on an autocratic basis, and Kemp argues that they have been present throughout our history since at least the Bronze Age, beginning around 3,300 BC. They have been able to develop due to what Kemp calls “Goliath fuel”, which include “lootable resources, monopolizable weapons, and caged land”.
When looking at hierarchical societies, Kemp claims that history can be seen as a story of organised crime: “They were criminal rackets, but as they gathered more lootable resources and were unified by external threats, they started to provide services to their citizens. It is, after all, in the interests of even the most self-centred despot to ensure that the people they are stealing from have a measure of welfare”. Kemp goes on to say how bureaucracies developed in these operations and that “it was a move over thousands of years from intimidation to administration.”
Eventually, the Bronze Age Goliaths collapsed and Kemp identifies two key potential death spirals which drove this disintegration: drought and rising inequality, which led to rebellions and uprisings. This in turn led to a decline in trade and therefore resource scarcity.
Kemp notes that, whilst the interdependence of Bronze Age cities was beneficial during good times, they became detrimental when problems arose.
Meanwhile, as the Bronze Age Goliaths, with all their greed and inequality, fell, more egalitarian societies in places like Greece were more resilient, with technological advances such as ironworking and development of the alphabet taking place in the periphery. Kemp argues that the Bronze Age Collapse was not a civilisational collapse, but more a collapse of a few large imperial polities that succumbed to structural weaknesses and corruption.
Empires of the past and the present are said to be based on unequal exchanges, with a core dominating a periphery, and in this regard all states are empires. One can argue that Britain today is an empire with the core around London and the southeast dominating areas further north and west.
It is also noteworthy that climate change is viewed by Kemp as an indirect cause of the collapse of past civilisations. Worryingly, he also notes that responses to environmental disasters tend to be worse when co-opted by elites.
However, the driving force behind many civilisational collapses is them becoming top heavy and extractive, while in many cases, egalitarian city-states followed empire collapse.
Kemp states that: “Inequality, status, competition, numerous shocks, and the very structure of elite networks proved the downfall of these systems”. He also notes that elite infighting tends to tear societies apart. Consequently, inequality rises and elite competition intensifies, while the rest of society is immiserated and poorer.
The motivations and justifications for power
It is also interesting to note that Kemp states that humiliation can drive some members of the elites to take more and more power, such as Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson after they were humiliated by Barack Obama at the 2011 presidential press dinner and by Jon Stewart on CNN, respectively. In this way, public loss of status can be a great motivator for members of the elite.
Kemp makes the point that corruption and inequality increase over time, especially as the justifications for elite behaviour can be very firmly entrenched in society. Ideas can be hard to kill. Once the dominant elite has established itself as a legitimate hierarchy, it becomes harder to remove.
Meanwhile, and very pertinently for today, perceived external threats bring out authoritarian tendencies in people, as they express the need for a ‘strong man’ to defend them.
Elite greed destroys goliaths
The BBC series Civilisations: Rise and Fall notes that the Roman Empire fell partially due to wealthy elites not paying their taxes, and Kemp points out that, at the peak of the Roman Empire, 1.3% owned one third of the wealth.
Kemp states: “Elites with increasing influence find more ways to siphon money and influence away from the state […] Many have lamented that past societies seem to have suffered paralysis when asked to address obvious problems. Oligarchy is why.”
Elites can also make environmental problems worse as societies’ responses to environmental disasters are often worse when they are co-opted by elites.
Food for thought
This is a superbly researched and important book for us today. Kemp clearly demonstrates the ways that past societies, especially those ruled by dictators, have grown and what has made them fall. And much of what he says finds disturbing echoes in the world we live in today.
The reasons suggested as to why we don’t tend to get the leaders we would perhaps like, including the personal motivation of feeling humiliated in some way, are compelling and surely ring a lot of bells with readers today. We can also see very clearly today how certain nations, that might be termed Goliaths, are looking for resource grabs, to obtain what Kemp would describe as their ‘Goliath fuel’.
It should also be a warning to us that in the past, increasing inequalities have seen the downfall of numerous civilisations, including the mighty Roman Empire, while it is also noteworthy that historical elites have been able to condition people into accepting injustices as normal and right.
And as the climate crisis deepens, we could perhaps also heed Kemp’s words that elites often make responses to environmental problems worse, not better.
Last words
Kemp then looks at our current crises and uses the lessons of the past to try and make sense of where humanity, described as now being a global Goliath, might be heading.
On climate change, he says this: “Whether the world can handle 3oC of warming above pre-industrial temperatures depends on how the future looks. A world characterized by strong international cooperation, high trust in public institutions, and few other problems, may be able to handle that level of global heating. A world that is riven with conflict, distrust, autocracy, rampant inequality, and out-of-control technology might well collapse.”
On the subject of economic growth, Kemp states that “rather than focusing on raw numbers of GDP, we should focus on what we are growing. Renewable energy, vaccine capacity, affordable housing, and leisure time are all things we should all be striving to increase and innovate in. Not bullets, bombs, cigarettes, SUVs, private aeroplanes, fossil-fuel infrastructure, or algorithms to keep teenagers glued to their screens.”
Kemp also makes a plea for people to listen to each other, especially regarding the rise of right-wing populism. He also warns us not to rely on AI to solve our problems and that only by greater equality of power will we be able to get through our present crises.
Kemp then finishes in a more optimistic mood by detailing how we might still tackle the crises of climate change, the growth of AI, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and the control of technology and information.
This book is a rallying cry for a fairer world, one where we learn from humanity’s mistakes in the past and develop a truly sustainable civilisation.
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