Category: society

Garbage dump outside a temple in India.

What a Difference Culture Makes

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China and India are very different countries. Only five decades ago, both were equally poor. In the 1970s, India’s GDP per capita was slightly higher than China’s. Both countries were socialist at the time. In population, the two countries are roughly equal. Today, China’s GDP per capita is five times India’s. How to explain this massive divergence? First of all, China’s market-oriented economic reforms started in 1978, while India liberalised in 1991. In the 1980s, China’s economy grew by 10% annually compared to India’s 6%. At the same time, China’s population grew by 1.5% annually compared to India’s 2.3%, so GDP per capita increased by 5% per year more in China, resulting in an 89% increase over those 13 years. And so, China’s earlier start doesn’t explain the massive difference. China’s development has been government-directed, much like Japan’s, while India liberalised in 1991, with the government intervening little, so its development path looks more like that of the United States. There is more individual liberty in India than in China.

Government policies are essential. Compared to India, China is very organised. If you are a distant observer, you might get the impression that India is messy, with garbage on the streets, and that China is orderly and that the streets are clean. As I have never been to those countries, my impressions come from reading and seeing. India is the largest democracy, or perhaps was, as democracy is in decline worldwide, and that is an enormous achievement, given its ethnic and religious diversity. Mahatma Gandhi came from India, and he is one of the greatest humans in recent history. The Indians had to forge a national identity on the British colonial legacy. The Chinese had it easy, as they already had a strong national identity with a 2,000-year history. That is no small advantage, as European countries also had to forge national identities to industrialise because industrialisation requires markets of scale.

In recent years, India’s economic growth rate outpaces China’s, partly due to population growth, so it is still a long way from overtaking China in GDP per capita. The point of the text is not to praise China for beating the West in the rat race to humanity’s destruction, for that is where it all leads to, but to highlight why India lags China so much. As a picture can say more than a thousand words, so can a description of a situation, such as the editorial ‘Why China Works and India Does Not’ by Jayant Bhandari, which appeared on Lewrockwell.com in 2026,1 which tells us much more than statistics ever will. He writes,

When trying to understand the future of a country, one should not be particularly interested in its elites or exceptionally successful people. They are outliers. […] The essence of a society is better understood in its small towns, isolated communities, workshops, farms, churches, diners, and ordinary households—in the behaviour of people whose names will never appear in a newspaper.

Now, here comes his complaint,

Suppose a piece of equipment malfunctions, and you take it to a technician in India. He will probably tell you to return a few days later. When you do, you can be reasonably certain that it will not have been repaired.

You return a few days later, and then perhaps again and again. On your third, fourth, or fifth visit, the technician may finally hand the equipment back, supposedly repaired. Somewhere during your visits, to escape your pestering, he might have claimed that the work took longer because there were more problems than anticipated, even though you can see that your equipment wasn’t even touched given the dust that had accumulated on it. You will not only have visited repeatedly; you may also be asked to pay more.

When you test the equipment, however, you discover either that the original problem has not been fully corrected or that the repair has created entirely new problems. While you are trying to explain yourself, he is constantly distracted, dealing with several other irate customers like you and confusing your problem with theirs. Everyone grows increasingly impatient, louder, and more exasperated.

You point out what is wrong. To an objective observer, the defect is obvious. Yet the technician may flatly refuse to recognise it—or seemingly fail to understand what you are talking about. He might even suggest that you take the equipment home, let things settle down, and see whether the problem somehow sorts itself out. If you discover the problems after you have taken it away, the technician will pass all the blame to you, calling it newly created.

It is not an exception, he argues, but commonplace in India,

So common is this experience in India that one struggles to think of exceptions. Anyone who has spent enough time there will have his own collection of similar stories. Nor is it merely about technicians. Their customers belong to the same society and are the other side of the same coin. The pattern appears in dealings with government offices, private companies, professionals, contractors, and even friends and family. Life becomes a constant stream of firefighting and brain damage: following up, reminding people, correcting what was supposedly corrected, and keeping track of the never-ending accumulation of unfinished work.

Meanwhile in China, things are very different indeed,

For the last five years, I have owned a cellphone from a Chinese manufacturer. I have taken it several times to the company’s service centres in China for repairs.

The experiences have been almost absurdly inexpensive, and every technician I have dealt with has been thoroughly competent and adroit with his hands. On one occasion, the battery was replaced without charge because the company regarded the problem as a possible manufacturing defect—this despite my telling them that the phone had once fallen into a swimming pool. Broken glass was repaired without charge even when the phone was well outside warranty, and screen protectors have routinely been replaced for free.

Whenever I was told to return in an hour or two, the work was done when I returned, usually better than I had expected. During my most recent visit, however, something went wrong. The repair had created several new problems, probably because something had been connected incorrectly during reassembly.

Of course, mistakes happen. Chinese technicians are not infallible. Chinese bureaucrats can be incompetent. Chinese institutions can malfunction. That is not the distinction I am making. The distinction became apparent when I showed the technician what had gone wrong. […]

She looked at the phone and immediately acknowledged the problems. She did not deny even those that were minor or difficult to demonstrate. She did not pretend that I was imagining them or treat me as an irritating customer who needed to be made to disappear. She accepted reality and took ownership. Her supervisor became involved to understand what had gone wrong. He took over the repair, completely disassembled the phone, and rebuilt it.

Why is this so important? The author argues,

Such incidents may look small, but they are not. They reveal the moral habits on which complex societies depend: ownership of error, pride in workmanship, responsiveness to the customer, and the willingness to correct a problem rather than hide it. These are not merely technical skills. They are civilisational emotions in action.

A complex society depends on millions of people whose work continually intersects with that of others and cannot be individually supervised. Tiny compromises may be invisible and impossible to trace back to the person who made them, but they accumulate and compound. So do tiny acts of conscientiousness. Over time, they determine whether a society works.

He mentions a few other examples, like a Chinese private hospital treating him for a small injury without charging him, and a government-run hospital being prompt on the job and charging a low fee, while at Indian private hospitals trying to scam you, and public hospitals offering no service without bribes. It is due to cultural differences. It is not that there are no scammers in China, nor that there are hard-working people in India, but overall, there is a significant difference. He continues,

The difference is not that China has no bad hospitals or incompetent doctors. It is that, in my experience, the ordinary institutional instinct is far more often directed toward solving the problem placed in front of it. In China today, my experience is increasingly that someone takes ownership of the problem. Often, someone approaches you almost as soon as you enter, finds out what you need, identifies who is responsible, directs you to that person, and tries to move you through the system.

In an Indian government office, the first seemingly impossible task is to discover who is responsible. Then you must discover where he is. He is unlikely to be at his desk. When you eventually find him, you must deal with his arrogance, his god complex, and his need to make you genuflect, beg, and prostrate yourself before him. He sends you somewhere else; that person sends you to another, and you go around in circles.

Eventually, you zero in on someone who might be responsible, his ego now inflated by the realisation that he vaguely holds the power. In India, nobody is ever fully responsible, so one must proceed carefully.

Then the dance around the bribe begins. Paying is not enough; you must strategise. You cannot tell the bureaucrat that you distrust him, even though he knows perfectly well that you should. Trust him too much, and he will take you for a fool. Everything must be wrapped in euphemism and pretence.

Pay the wrong person, and you lose the money. Even paying the right person creates no obligation to complete the work. You must work out who actually has power and what combination of money, deference, persistence, and connections might make the machinery move.

Over time, the scale and shamelessness of bribery in India have increased. In the past, euphemisms were still necessary—the gift for his children, for example. Today, bureaucrats speak openly about their collections. The amount collected can itself become a mark of status, even enhancing one’s value in the marriage market.

I cannot remember dealing with an Indian bureaucracy without paying a bribe. Nor is there any recourse: go higher up, and you encounter a more expensive level of the same system. Those unaccustomed to corruption often fail to appreciate its corrosiveness. It does not merely add another cost to government; it destroys the purpose of whatever institution, law, or scheme it infects.

Well, indeed, if your operation is a scam, then it is not what it pretends to be, such as a hospital or a repair service. Yet, China scores low on the Corruption Perceptions Index, even though it does somewhat better than India. There must be widespread corruption in China as well, mostly in government. One explanation I came across is that Chinese corruption is aimed at getting things done. So if you pay, you get something in return, like a building permit. In India, as the author observes, even paying the right person does not create an obligation to complete the work. In any case, if you are in India, you should expect that people will try to scam you. Corruption is not the core issue here. It’s doing your job, being truthful, and keeping agreements, rather than trying to get away with doing nothing, breaking agreements, and shifting the blame when things go wrong.

China and India were equally poor a few decades ago, and to come this far, the Chinese changed their values and work ethic, so the condition in India may well be a transitional phase. It is only that the Chinese government plays a greater role in directing the modernisation process, and puts a greater effort into education and standards. A good society functions on social trust, which requires moral integrity that a mere liberalisation of markets cannot bring. Competition may improve service, so if some businesses do a better job, they will get more customers at the expense of the scammers. Yet competition drives the rat race to our destruction, so if moral integrity can’t do the trick, we are doomed. If we take no pride in contributing something good, society will not flourish. Culture makes an enormous difference. Moral integrity is hard to measure, but it makes societies work. Cultures change, so India is not lost, nor is any other country.

1. Why China Works and India Does Not. Jayant Bhandari (2026). LewRockwell. [link]

The Golden Age

Unnatural State of Paradise

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The wolf and the lamb

Since time immemorial, people have been dreaming of utopias where life is good, people live safely, and there is enough for everyone. The Bible begins with the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve lived happily and had no worries. With the means we have today, a utopian society is possible, yet it somehow doesn’t happen. That is because a permanent paradise with peace and harmony is unnatural. It breeds complacency. Circumstances change, the arrangement is upset, some take advantage, and chaos may ensue. We may have good places for a while, but they will eventually disappear due to the struggle for existence. Humans, like other organisms, compete and cooperate.

Humans, like other organisms, compete and cooperate. We cooperate in groups to compete with other groups. And there is competition within groups. And in the case of humans, that regularly involves murder and warfare. The competition generates a never-ending pressure to beat others, for otherwise we will lose the race. It helps us adapt to changing circumstances, but as humans increasingly create those circumstances, competition has become a destructive force. Competition makes Paradise a pipe dream for hippies high on LSD and Christians. Isaiah once prophesied, perhaps after taking in a load of mushrooms (Isaiah 11:6-9),

The wolf will live with the lamb.
The leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together.
And a little child will lead them.
The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
The infant will play near the cobra’s den.
And the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.
They will neither harm nor destroy
on all of my holy mountain.
For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.

As the enlightened observers of the happenings in the wild might already have figured out, nature does not punish the evil, but it punishes the weak. The wolf will not let the lamb in peace, nor will the cow and the bear share a meal. It is not in their nature to do so. Living in a paradise would require a miracle of the most unnatural kind, something that can only happen in fairy tales, like the sheep joining forces to exterminate the wolves and round up the goats to fence them in. It is not like sheep to do so.

In Eden, humans only ate plants, or so the scriptures tell. There was no bloodshed, no murder, not even of animals. Compared to humans, wolves are harmless creatures. Once Paradise was lost, Cain smashed Abel’s head. That would not be the first thing wolves would do. It explains why, despite our efforts to achieve a utopian society, it still eludes us. We have the means to provide everyone with an acceptable standard of living and live in peace, but we fail to make it a reality because it goes against our nature.

Struggle for existence

The struggle for life in nature is chaotic and brutal. Cells cooperate in organisms to compete with other cells that have also organised themselves in organisms. Organising relates to the words ‘organ’ and ‘organism’, as organisms have organised themselves into organs that specialise in particular tasks. Organisms, as you might know, are plants and animals, and humans are animals. The best-adapted survive. That can put a premium on organising, as it provides participants with more resources or enables them to beat the competition by specialising. Bees have queens, worker bees, and drones. The cooperation schemes of cells and organisms are orders. Orders thus emerge from competition. Simple lifeforms like amoebas and flies have advantages of their own, such as self-reliance, which allows them to survive without complex orders. A few droppings and corpses are all flies need. Orders may collapse due to changing circumstances, such as climate change in an ecosystem or a foreign invasion in a society.

There is some balance in nature, but it is always in flux like a market with supply and demand. If foxes prey on rabbits, the fastest rabbits and the smartest foxes survive. When there is a surplus of rabbits, foxes can catch more of them and raise more young. As a result, foxes multiply and eat more rabbits, and the rabbit surplus turns into a deficit, and foxes go hungry. It is a brutal process in which rabbits get eaten, and foxes starve. The fast-growing bamboo, however, exceeds the slowly procreating panda bear’s munching capabilities. That allowed the animal to develop its cool, relaxed nature. So, if food is abundant and you breed barely, you can live in a paradise. Look at those pandas! That’s the way you do it! That’s how you live in Paradise!

Humans have disturbed the balance in nature more than any other species ever did. Nature as it once was before humans came is long gone. Humans brought rabbits to Australia, and they bred like rabbits. There were no foxes there, so the rabbit population exploded, upsetting the ecosystem. Humans then introduced a disease that killed the rabbits. The disease eventually spread through Europe, thinning out the fox’s favourite food source and upsetting the ecosystem there as well. Foxes, being smart animals, adapted and sought other meals. The rabbit’s demise sealed the fate of other animals, such as the grouse in Nijverdal, which was not as speedy as the rabbit and went extinct. It would have been possible to preserve the grouse by shooting foxes. That would create a paradise for the grouse, an unnatural order without predators, so a park rather than nature. Indeed, a paradise is unnatural, more like a garden rather than pristine nature.

Invasive species

Human activities have led to the spread of non-native species across ecosystems worldwide, such as rabbits in Australia and a rabbit-killing disease in Europe. You may have heard of Pablo Escobar’s ‘cocaine hippos,’ which, without natural predators or African droughts to slow them down, multiplied rapidly in South America, causing stress on the local ecosystem. Foreign species can disrupt the balance of nature. Many die off, but some thrive and become pests. The American red crayfish is an invasive species in the Netherlands that wreaks havoc among native fish and plant species. They didn’t come over the ocean by themselves. Humans brought them in. Invasive species can become a new food source for other species. Crayfish are a good source of protein.

Humans are the most disruptive species and have ruined most of nature to create living space for themselves. It is a matter of competitive advantage. Humans took over because they could. No one stopped them. Their genes, rather than a command in the Bible, drove them to exploit their environments and multiply. Fairy tales about the preciousness of nature were to no avail. The spread of humans resembles the spread of a pest. When Europeans gained a competitive advantage over others because they had more advanced organisation methods and technology, allowing them to conquer other areas, their genes multiplied and spread across the world.

After having created a paradise for themselves, Westerners grew complacent, and foreigners came to their lands. While Westerners were busy maximising their utility by indulging themselves in excessive consumption and value-adding jobs in the bullshit economy, the immigrants’ genes took advantage of the situation. Westerners require spacious housing, fulfilling jobs, spouses who add something meaningful to their lives and may forego having children to lead a good life. Immigrants settle for small spaces and simple lives, may have arranged marriages or not marry at all and have more children. In this way, descendants of immigrants replace the native population.

Relative advantages and disadvantages disturb the balance, which is always precarious and shifting. You can compare both situations to the development of a pest. It promotes unease among the disadvantaged group, making them feel overrun, which may lead to tensions and violence. The competition between genes generates these feelings. Your country and traditions are precious to you because your genes wish to survive and spread. The same is true for racism. There are also cultural problems and a competition between cultures. Behavioural differences between cultural groups can cause harm and lead to strife. Yet, nature doesn’t care who survives nor their cultures.

It is why peace and stability can only be maintained in an unnatural state that regulates competition in a social contract. It requires everyone to accept the order and share a common set of values, norms, and rules. To prevent disturbance of the balance, the situation must be stable, as if time has stopped. We must also stop overexploiting the planet. Otherwise, the balance will shift unfavourably. And there are always people taking advantage of others’ weaknesses. And so, there can’t be a paradise in the real world. Massive force is not enough. Nuking a place to kill the weeds doesn’t help. The weeds will return before anything else. Having a paradise requires full control over all that transpires. As Isaiah wrote, ‘For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord.’

Chimpanzees versus bonobos


Chimpanzees and bonobos are our closest relatives. Chimpanzees live in patriarchal groups led by a dominant alpha male. In chimpanzee bands, males hold higher ranks than females. Male chimpanzees are larger and more aggressive. They form dominance hierarchies where they vie for the alpha position. Human bands may have a big man, who settles conflicts and distributes favours. His position remains up for grabs. A rival can challenge his position. To remain in power, he must keep his followers happy by doling out stuff. That is human politics. High-ranking chimpanzee males form coalitions to consolidate power, maintain order, and intimidate rivals or lower-ranking females. Chimpanzees can be violent, and sometimes commit genocide on rival groups.

Bonobos live in matriarchal groups where females hold the highest ranks and lead through collective power, cooperation, and alliances. Rather than ruling through force, female bonobos secure their dominance by banding together to intimidate or attack males who step out of line. Male bonobos fight, and females might castrate unruly males, effectively amounting to a breeding programme that keeps the males docile. Hence, there is also violence among bonobos, but less than among chimpanzees. The female-led organisation in bonobo groups works in the following ways:

  • Female bonobos form lifelong bonds with one another. When a male tries to assert dominance or steal food, females unite to put him in his place.
  • Males remain with their mothers for life. High-ranking mothers support their sons, allowing them to rise in the hierarchy and mate.
  • As females have the power, they get first access to desirable food sources.
  • Rather than intimidation and violence, bonobo politics involves sex to reduce stress, ease tensions, and form social bonds.

In human societies, male dominance is the norm, so in that sense, we are like the chimpanzees. We mostly live in patriarchal arrangements. Humans are a highly programmable species, and cultures are our programming, allowing for female leadership. Our nature might resist it, but not enough to prevent it, because bonobos are genetically as close to us as chimpanzees. Yet you can witness from misogynist comments that women in leadership positions get that it may be cultural and go against our inner nature. Monogamous relationships may not work for many, but they can promote group success by reducing male infighting over mating opportunities, which can lead to violence. And as a side benefit, it prevents the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

Garden of Eden

In the original tale of the Garden of Eden, the Goddess created man as a companion for the woman by making her give birth to him. The rib story is obviously fake, making it a lasting monument of mass indoctrination demonstrating the degree to which we are willing to believe fairy tales. The Garden of Eden was a matriarchal society. The man left his parents to live with his wife. Men existed to please their wives. They weren’t even fathers, so children were the women’s seed. That is how Eve gave birth to Adam as a ‘virgin’. To obfuscate that fact, which was a core belief of the first true Christians, the Virgin Mary giving birth to Jesus came to replace it. The Fall made woman the servant of the man, the story goes, because of her desire for him, for which he was created.

The Garden of Eden is not a natural state of affairs, but a cultural construct, as human organisation defaults to patriarchy. Bands of hunter-gatherers could avoid conflict by moving on, allowing for greater freedom in gender roles, such as matriarchy. Men were not as important, as they didn’t have to risk their lives to defend the women and children. With the advent of agriculture and permanent settlements, defence became of the utmost importance. Men fought and murdered to plunder or to protect property. In the Bible, Abel was the first casualty. Men are more violent than women. About 95% of the prison population consists of men. Most men don’t abuse women, and women can be abusive also. Still, men do nearly all the raping and culture can go a long way in civilising them.

Men are the way they are because the struggle for survival made them that way. In uncivilised conditions, that is an advantage. Yet, in more civilised environments, it becomes problematic. And when women don’t need a man to provide for them or to protect them, they become pickier. Single women, on average, are happier than single men. As a result, female-centred societies cause distress with men, as male-oriented societies do for women. Humans can’t create a paradise on their own and need God because they are more like chimpanzees than bonobos. As Paradise is not a natural state, but a cultural one, we need to engineer it. And that is not enough. Someone needs to fully control the process, as the balance is always precarious and shifting with winners and losers.

Latest revision: 3 September 2026

Featured image: The Golden Age. Lucas Cranach the Elder (ca. 1530). Wikimedia Commons.

Doomsday Machine

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Forces of nature

How did we get where we are today? Nature’s driving forces are competition and cooperation. This perspective provides a great deal of insight into what happened. Plants and animals cooperate and compete for resources. Cooperation and competition are everywhere. Cooperation increases the available resources. Plants generate the oxygen animals need, while animals produce the carbon dioxide plants need. Still, the available resources are limited. There is only room for one tree on that spot. And so, there is a competition called the struggle for life, where the fittest survive.

Plants and animals are opportunistic, taking advantage of opportunities whenever possible, with the help of both competition and cooperation. Plants and animals have a blueprint, their genes. These genes have the urge to make copies of themselves. It is why we exist and the basis of our will to live and our sexual desires. And so, the biological purpose of plants and animals, including humans, is to spread their genes. That is indeed a most peculiar purpose. The copying of genes is prone to errors. And so changes occur, resulting in variation within species. It is why people vary in appearance and character.

Some changes make individual plants and animals better adapted to their environment, thereby increasing their chances of survival and reproduction, resulting in a rising number of individuals with these features. Environments allow for several species to coexist, most notably when they don’t compete for the same resources. It is why ants and monkeys can live in the same area. The balance in nature is always precarious, as changes in circumstances can favour different species. And so, introducing foreign species in places where they have no natural predators can lead to pests.

Like other social animals, humans operate in groups. Social animals benefit from group cooperation, which enhances their chances of survival. Within the group, competition can arise, resulting in rankings and struggles among members. Cooperating in groups also helps us to compete with other groups, usually in warfare. And groups can form coalitions to compete with coalitions of different groups. Stories enable humans to work together in groups of any size, which then further increases the competition between these groups.

Meet our closest relatives

Chimpanzees are our closest kin. Studying these apes provides us with insights into our nature. Chimpanzees live in small troops of a few dozen individuals. They form friendships, work with reliable group members, and avoid those who are unreliable. Chimpanzees have rules, may cheat on them, and can feel guilty when they do. Within the group, the members have ranks. When there is food available, the highest-status animals eat first. Ranks and rules regulate competition within the troop, reducing conflicts and enabling its members to collaborate more effectively.

Like human leaders, chimpanzee alpha males acquire their status by building coalitions and gaining support. Others show their submission to the alpha male. Like a government, the alpha male strives to maintain social harmony within his group. He takes sought-after pieces of food like a government collects taxes. Within a chimpanzee band, there are subgroups and coalitions. There are close friendships and more distant relationships. They unite as a single fighting force in the event of an external threat.

Coalition members in a chimpanzee band build and maintain close ties through intimate daily contact such as hugging and kissing, and doing each other favours. For the band to function effectively, its members must be aware of what others will do in critical situations. For that, they need to know each other through personal experiences. Unlike humans, chimpanzees have no language to share social information. That limits the size of the group in which chimpanzees can live and work together to about thirty individuals.

Chimpanzees also commit violence in groups. Like humans, they are among the species that commit genocide on their congeners. Humans and chimpanzees are not alone in this. Chickens are known to fight racial wars when they face a lack of food. Groups of chickens may start to kill those with different colours from themselves. And so, racism could be a natural behaviour caused by competition between genes.

The human advantage

Humans have become the dominant species on Earth. We can collaborate flexibly in large numbers. We have mastered fire, which enhances our power and allows us to eat foods we couldn’t otherwise. It allowed us to become the top predator. We use tools and clothing, allowing us to do things other animals can’t and live in inhospitable environments. Compared to other animals, humans employ a rich language. That enables us to express countless meanings and describe situations in precise terms.

We pass on social information, such as who is fit for a particular job. We get information about others in our group without needing personal experience. If someone cheats, you don’t need to learn it the hard way like chimpanzees must, but someone can tell you. That allows us to cooperate more effectively. Most human communication is social information or gossip. We need the group to survive, so we must understand what is happening within our group and the decisions our group needs to make.

Human politics is about cooperating and competing. We must agree on what we should do as a group and on how we divide the spoils of our cooperation. Within the group, we may compete to cooperate. Leadership contests benefit the group when the outcome is better leadership. That isn’t always the case, and infighting can weaken the group. We also cooperate to compete. We organise ourselves in groups to compete with other groups, such as defeating them in warfare.

Early humans lived in bands of up to 150 individuals. The number of individuals with whom we can closely collaborate is one of our natural limitations. We overcame the limit of our natural group size by cooperating based on shared imaginings, such as religions, laws, money, and nation-states. That competitive advantage over other species allowed us to take over this planet and become the ‘killer bug’ that has completely upended nature and has terminated more species than any other species.

Unlike other animals and plants, which adapt to their environment, we have altered our environment to suit us. We have created societies and civilisations and have become immensely powerful collectives to compete with other collectives. However, our civilisations also shield us from the forces of nature, turning us into weak individuals. We have become integrated into the system, and many of us won’t survive a collapse of civilisation. It is crucial to understand that competition drives this process.

We imagine corporations, laws, money, and nation-states. We believe a law exists, and that is why the law works. It is also why religion works. These shared imaginations allow us to cooperate on any scale for any purpose. We are programmable, with our brains serving as the hardware and our imaginations serving as the software. And we can change the software overnight. During the French Revolution, the French stopped believing in the divine right of kings overnight and began to envision the sovereignty of the people.

Organising to compete

The forces of competition and population density drove humans to organise. There is a competition between groups of humans. Just as there is a competition between species in nature, there is also a competition between human groups. Groups that succeeded in adapting to new circumstances survived those that did not. We are rule-following animals. Once we start to cooperate on a larger scale, we need political institutions that embody the rules of a community or society.

Humans design political institutions while genetic mutations emerge by chance. Still, competition determines which designs survive and become copied. In general, under the pressure of competition, which mainly was warfare, human organisation advanced from bands to tribes to feudalism to states. The experts deem this explanation simplistic and flawed. Still, overall, that trend towards more advanced organisation occurred.

Hunter-gatherers lived in family groups of a few dozen individuals. They had few violent conflicts, probably because they had no property, and population density was low. Hunter-gatherers could move on if a stronger band invaded their territory. Small groups were egalitarian. They often had no permanent leader or hierarchy and decided on their leaders based on group consensus.

The Agricultural Revolution changed that. Farming allows more people to survive. Farmers invest heavily in their cattle and crops, so agricultural societies need property rights and defence forces. Agriculture promoted the transition from bands to tribes. Population density increased, leading to more frequent violent conflicts among people. Tribes are much larger than bands and can muster more men for war, so tribes replaced bands.

Tribes were usually egalitarian, but a separate warrior caste often emerged. The most basic form of political organisation was the lord and his armed vassals, known as feudalism. The lord and his vassals exchange favours. The loyalty of the vassals is crucial, and politics is about these loyalties and betrayals. Tribalism centres around kinship, but also includes feudalist, personal relationships of mutual reciprocity and personal ties.

States yield more power than tribes because they force people to cooperate, while tribes work with voluntary arrangements. As population density increased and people lived closer to each other, the need to regulate conflicts also grew, so some states also provided justice services. Leaders, with their family and friends, led these states. They worked with personal, feudal relationships, thus making deals and returning favours. And so, the transition from tribes to feudalism to states is not a straightforward process.

The first modern, rationally organised states with professional bureaucracies based on merit rather than personal relationships and favours appeared in China. The reason was a centuries-long cut-throat competition of warfare on an unprecedented scale, with states having armies of up to 500,000 men, in the period now known as the Warring States Era. Fielding these armies required professional tax collection, with records of people and their possessions, as well as the provisioning of soldiers in the field.

Once the state of Qin emerged victorious by 200 BC, China became unified, and the competition between the states ended, and China’s modernisation ground to a halt. Even so, China adhered to modern bureaucratic principles and remained the most modern state for 2,000 years, enabling its rulers to govern a vast empire. States remained the most competitive organisational form until Europeans invented capitalism and corporations, which would cause a radical new dynamic of permanent change driven by competition.

Capitalism and corporations

China had a strong centralised state that prevented the merchants from becoming the dominant force in society. In the Middle Ages, Europe had no strong states, so capitalism could gradually emerge in Europe. The rise of merchants and later corporations brought a new economic dynamic and wealth. Corporations are legal entities serving a specific purpose. Invented in Roman times, they included the state, municipalities, political groups, and guilds of artisans or traders.

From the Middle Ages onward, Europeans introduced commercial corporations with shares and stock markets such as the Dutch East Indies Company (VOC). The advent of corporations triggered a new phase in the competitive cycle, further increasing efficiency by specialising in specific tasks. The Europeans combined their entrepreneurship with inquisitiveness, so eventually the profit motive began to drive innovations as well.

The new dynamic intensified competition and innovation, causing permanent economic growth and disruptive change, a process that economists call creative destruction. Capitalism increases available resources via cooperation or the division of labour, but competition is the driving force. As long as that remains so, competition rather than our desires determines what our future will look like.

Currently, China may have the most competitive socio-economic model, potentially outcompeting those of the West. But it will not end well for them either. Artificial intelligence may soon outcompete humans. It may become a ‘killer bug’ that ends humanity. We can’t keep up with artificial intelligence. The future doesn’t need us. We aren’t sufficiently efficient and innovative. Competition is our first and foremost problem. It is our doomsday machine. Competition, insofar as we allow it, should be at the service of cooperation rather than the opposite. If we don’t do that, we are doomed.

Featured image: Tower of Babel by The Tower of Babel (1569). Public Domain.

Amish family, Lyndenville, New York. Public domain.

Last Day

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Imagine there is a lake in a distant forest. On its surface grows a plant. Its leaves darken the water, so all life below it dies. The plant was at first tiny, and it has been there for 1,000 days. But it doubles in size every day. So, here is a question. If the plant blankets half the lake, how many days are left to save the life there? The correct answer is one day. Behold the power of exponential growth. If the plant depends on life in the lake, it will also die.

Behold the power of exponential growth. The plant doubles in size each day. And so, it covers the entire lake tomorrow. It doesn’t matter how long it has been there already. It stops growing once there is no more room. As soon as the lake is fully covered, life in the lake ends. And if the plant depends on that life, it will also die.

The lake represents the Earth, the plant humanity, and the leaves are people like you and me. The graph above shows the human population numbers over the last 12,000 years. These numbers had been very low for a long time. In 1804, there were one billion people. Since then, the human population has gone berserk. There were two billion humans in 1927, three billion in 1960, four billion in 1974, five billion in 1987, six billion in 1999, seven billion in 2011, and eight billion in 2022.

The experts expect the number to decline in the future. Only, how will that decline occur? That is anyone’s guess. The signs are ominous. Currently, humans use nearly twice as many resources as the Earth can deliver.1 We can do that for a short while, but it will end badly. The lifestyles of the rich are unsustainable, but so are the number of children many people have. Rich people with many children are the worst. Continuing their current lifestyles will lead to an apocalyptic event, and it will happen sooner rather than later.

We live on the proverbial last day before a dramatic trend change in resource consumption. How it will play out is up to us.


In 1972, a group of scientists known as the Club of Rome ran a computer programme predicting an apocalypse when natural resources would run out shortly after 2000 AD.2 Their computer printed out a scary diagram detailing how, demonstrating we should be very, very afraid. So far, the reckless have had numerous opportunities to point out how foolish the cautious have been, and the ultimate laughing stock is the man with the sign saying, ‘The end is near.’

Share of teh world population living in poverty
Share of the world population living in poverty. CC-BY. Max Roser. OurWorldInData.org.

According to the World Bank, extreme poverty dropped from 76% of the world’s population in 1820 to 9% in 2018. Their definition of extreme poverty is dubious, but it is beyond doubt that the percentage of destitute people has declined. The Club of Rome lacked sufficient and precise data, and unanticipated developments affected the outcome. New technologies enable the extraction of more resources and the more efficient use of existing ones. Some oil reserves have become accessible with new or improved extraction methods. And if you use the oil to produce a solar panel, you get several times as much energy during the solar panel’s lifespan as from burning the oil itself.

Essential resources, such as oil and freshwater, are becoming increasingly scarce or may soon be in short supply.3 With current consumption levels, proven oil reserves may last until the 2060s. Total oil reserves are more than twice as large, but pumping the remaining oil could be costly,4 while climate change could prevent us from burning it. PFAS, microplastics, and other pollutants are everywhere and accumulating in our bodies. Brain samples collected in early 2024 measured, on average, about 0.5% plastic.5

Life has never been better for most people. Are we on the verge of the apocalypse? The problem is growth in a limited area. When there is growth, the increases add to the existing total. The plant can’t grow beyond the pond’s size, so once it reaches its limits, for every leaf that grows, another must die. The Earth is stressed. We disrupt the balance in nature, but we can’t predict what will happen and when. We can’t overuse the Earth for long. The day before growth ends could be our best.

Scientists have identified nine processes that regulate the Earth’s stability and resilience. These are climate, biosphere, land use, freshwater, nutrients, ozone, aerosols, and ocean acidity. These processes have boundaries that are unsafe to cross. By exceeding these boundaries, we risk triggering irreversible environmental changes that could lead to catastrophic consequences for both human civilisation and natural ecosystems, these scientists argue. As of 2024, we have breached six of these nine planetary boundaries.

Humankind has gone batshit crazy. We delude ourselves into thinking that economic growth will solve our problems. We are like cancer cells telling each other that our aggressive growth strategy has paid off handsomely so far, so that more cancer will make things better. That is, of course, until the host dies.

Barring an apocalyptic event, such as the planet reaching a tipping point due to climate change, World War III, or a technology like artificial intelligence or genetic engineering going wrong and out of control, doom will likely be piecemeal, occur over decades, and not affect everyone equally. Many might survive and enhance themselves using technology, turning themselves into post-humans. If we compare humanity’s lifespan with 1,000 days, we live on the proverbial last day.

We can step out. The Old Order Amish, also known as Pennsylvania Dutch, live modestly and choose which technologies they use. More and better stuff doesn’t make us happier once we have enough, feel secure, and live in a supportive community. Surveys suggest the Old Order Amish are happier than the average citizen. They show us that we can live simply and don’t need new technologies and products. We don’t have to go that extreme. We can choose the technologies we use and make different choices. And our lifestyles need not be that austere as long as we don’t stress the Earth.

Latest revision: 2 July 2025

Featured image: Amish family, Lyndenville, New York. Public domain.

1. overshoot.footprintnetwork.org
2. The Limits to Growth. Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, William W. Behrens III (1972). Potomac Associates – Universe Books.
3. Theworldcounts.com. Depletion of Natural Resources.
4. Plummeting ‘Energy Return on Investment’ of Oil and the Impact on Global Energy Landscape. Siddharth Misra (2023). Journal of Petroleum Technology.
5. Microplastics are infiltrating brain tissue, studies show: ‘There’s nowhere left untouched’. The Guardian (2024).

Confucius. Gouache on paper (ca 1770)

Fairness Matters

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Working and sharing in groups

The greatest welfare recipient in the United States is Jeff Bezos, worth $279 billion, who pays wages so low that his workers rely on food stamps and Medicaid. He sailed his $500 million yacht to his $55 million wedding to give his wife a $5 million ring while his tax rate was less than 1%. He thinks that people are vilifying the rich. Other corporations like Walmart do the same. It is one of the reasons why our civilisation is failing. How could this have happened? It is because capitalism is our religion, and money worshipers think it is fair, and that the real injustice is the existence of food stamps and Medicaid. A communist has a very different view of fairness. Is there no objective measure of fairness? Sadly, the answer is no, but by investigating the issue, we can get a better understanding.

Humans are social animals cooperating in groups. We divide the workload and share the fruits of our efforts. How we do that is a matter of economics. The group might be a band of hunter-gatherers, a corporation or a society. We agree, either by negotiation, custom or force, on who does what and who gets what. Otherwise, we can’t work together. In a society, this agreement is called the social contract. It helps if we think the arrangement is fair. Violations of fairness provoke strong negative feelings. What is fair isn’t always straightforward. Some people contribute more to the effort than others, either because of willingness or ability. And some people have more needs than others.

Monkeys also have a sense of fairness. During a study, researchers found that if one ape received less valuable rewards for the same work than its partner, such as less tasty foods, it could become angry and reject the reward. You can become frustrated if your colleague gets a higher reward for the same job. Children have a sense of fairness early on. Giving one person more than another without reason can surprise toddlers. Children also wish to see you help those they like and harm those they dislike. They already prefer people similar to them (the in-group) to children who are different (the out-group).1

We believe that those who contribute more to a group’s success deserve more. If a venture’s success hinges on a single person’s efforts, we may reward this person more. It is an excuse for high pay for CEOs of large corporations. In a competitive environment, a CEO can make the difference between failure and success, while a factory worker can’t. When we cooperate, we are more willing to share, but in competition, we are more willing to accept inequality. In sports, the winner gets everything. Yet, if a team wins, the members share the prize, even if the team’s success depended on a few talented players.1

Moral fundamentals

The golden rule says you should treat others the way you want to be treated. Yet, the treatment people desire varies, depending on character traits or culture. For example, some people desire attention while others wish to be left alone. That may be an individual preference or a cultural trait. Apart from individual preferences and culture, there are general rules. Contributing to the group and not harming others in the group are the most basic ones. Yet, we may differ on the practical implications.

A most crucial issue is the groups we identify with. We cooperate and compete in groups, and what we consider good is good for the groups we identify with. The group can be a family, gang, organisation, tribe, nation, or humanity. And we can identify with multiple groups, so that you can run into conflicts of interest. Something can be good for business but bad for the community. We also differ on what is beneficial and harmful. Groups may face questions such as whether it is a good idea to go to war with another gang.

An interesting question is whether moral rules are innate or learned. If our sense of fairness is innate, moral rules apply to everyone. If it is learned behaviour, fairness is a matter of taste. If someone is helpful, we react positively. If someone acts harmfully, we react negatively. Infants already do that.1 And so, some of our moral conduct appears innate, and relates to being helpful or doing harm. Being helpful and not causing harm are the most basic moral rules, despite our disagreements in practical situations.

Ideas regarding fairness can be learned or cultural. Researchers tested children from several cultures to see how they would react to unequal rewards between them and another child when they were in control and could either accept or reject the deal. They always rejected deals that were unfavourable to them. In some cultures, older children rejected options that would have unfairly benefited them. Refusing a bad deal seems a natural instinct, but forgoing an unfair good deal is learned behaviour.1

Another, very fundamental, rule is might makes right. The powerful make the rules. What we believe is right and wrong greatly depends on power structures. The West conquered the world because of its cultural values, which included an entrepreneurial spirit driven by greed and inquisitiveness. The medieval Christian values were quite different. Its success leads many to believe that the liberal world order of capitalism and liberal democracy is good, even though we now face its failure. And so, only might can fix this issue.

The mistakes we make

Are we responsible for our choices? What is the influence of choice on fairness? During an experiment in which pairs of students performed a task together, one student received the pay. The one receiving the pay was randomly picked. Those who received the pay could choose how much they would give to the other. Receiving pay was a matter of luck, and most people believed it was unfair and were willing to share the pay.

Adding a choice, for instance, between getting a small reward or participating in a lottery to get the full reward, changes the picture. That made the participants less willing to share. If both participants opted to participate in the lottery, we think it is fair that one of them wins. People often think poverty is a choice, as poor people decide not to get an education or divorce, and, as a result, can’t work full-time.1

They made these choices, but sometimes they lacked better alternatives or believed that they did. Possibly, the small reward was not enough to live off, and participating in the lottery gave a chance of getting enough. The alternative to a divorce can be living with an abusive spouse. But then again, you could have paid attention before marrying. Perhaps a good education was too expensive, or you were unqualified, but you still have options and may even have a significant influence on your life.

If we don’t face the consequences of our choices, choices stop mattering. The unfairness of that becomes clear if two individuals with similar opportunities make different choices. If one decides to spend his money while the other saves for retirement, we think it is unfair to tax the latter to pay for the former’s retirement. In this case, it might be better not to have options and implement a mandatory retirement savings scheme.

In nature, there is no excuse for failure. Those who fail bear the consequences. It has a disciplining effect. Shielding people from the consequences of their failures is problematic. Their failure may be due to bad luck, like having a poor upbringing. And that is unfair. A society could help these people. Yet, the disciplining effect of bearing the consequences of your actions is essential to keep societies from collapsing.

Progressives focus on equality and seek to promote equal outcomes for everyone, but disparities in health, education, and wealth persist. Wealth inequality is partly due to the accumulation of capital and partly to individual circumstances and life choices. Conservatives think that working hard and making the right choices should make you better off.1 Some societies invest in equal opportunities, for instance, by investing in the education of underprivileged children.

Luck is everywhere

Luck is never fair, but it is everywhere. Some live long, some die early, some have love, some remain alone, some are healthy, and some suffer from severe illnesses. It isn’t always possible to fix that. Your place of birth, the upbringing you received, your education, and the opportunities you had in life affect your success in society. Successful people often think that their brilliance and hard work are the reasons for their success. Efforts and talents matter, but your success is also a matter of luck.

If we could eliminate luck, that would be fairer. Yet, not rewarding success, even when it comes from luck, results in undesirable outcomes as it promotes failure. If a group’s success depends on the risk-takers, the hard workers, or the talented, an extra reward can inspire them to do their utmost. Low-skilled labourers receive low wages because they are interchangeable. A minimum wage can help to reduce inequality.

The economy works with the forces of nature, which are cooperation and competition. We cooperate in groups, such as corporations, to compete or cooperate with other groups, which can also be corporations. These corporations operate in markets, so they sell their products at market prices and pay market wages. In a village economy, villagers can distribute the fruits of their endeavours in ways they see fit. Yet when markets exist, people may seek better deals outside the village, thereby undermining the community.

The shadow of the past

The past casts a shadow over the present. We live with the consequences of past developments. Your country of birth, as well as the family you grow up in, affects your life opportunities. The emergence and spread of capitalism have transformed the world. It brought a dramatic increase in wealth, but it came with exploitation. Today, there is a massive wealth inequality driven by economic relationships that some classify as exploitative and others as voluntary agreements.

Organisation and trade contribute to surplus value, but those in control take that surplus. Trade practices could turn into outright theft. An example is what the British East India Company did. It collected taxes in India and used a portion of them to purchase Indian goods for British use. Instead of paying for them, merchants obtained these goods for free by buying them from peasants and weavers with money they had taken as taxes. Through this scheme and other scams, the British stole from India.2

Had that theft not occurred, the Indian peasants and weavers would have been better off. Yet, they didn’t have a capitalist mindset like the greedy English merchants, and they wouldn’t have invested their money into new production methods and facilities to increase India’s capital. The wealthy British traders invested part of the proceeds of their thievery in the London Stock Exchange in ventures such as steam-powered factories. That capitalist spirit eventually raised living standards around the globe, including India.

History advantages some people and disadvantages others. In India, the caste system determines what jobs you can do. Some women in India have to clean toilets for $1,50 per month because of the caste in which they were born.2 The Indian caste system is a relic from the past. Those who inherit estates may think they deserve them because their grandparents wisely invested the money taken from poor Indian farmers, while those who have no such parents inherit nothing. Inheritance looks a lot like the caste system.

It may seem strange that we think that the caste system is unjust, while we think that inheriting large estates is okay. Yet, rules exist to make a society functional. If you can hand over your assets to your children, it can stimulate you to save or build a business, which can be beneficial to the economy. The caste system brings no such benefits. Yet, in a time where we face a capital excess combined with billionaires running politics, the inheritance of large estates has become a serious problem that needs addressing.

Latest revision: 5 May 2026

Featured image: Confucius (possibly the inventor of the Golden Rule)

1. The Price of Fairness (film). Alex Gabbay (2017).
2. Independence Day: How the British pulled off a $45 trillion heist in India. The India Times (2023).