Strong men make good times. Good times make weak men. Weak men make bad times. Bad times make strong men. Repeat
That’s sort of why my ideal society has always been a sort of post-scarcity “automated society” that does away with our current economics and politics entirely; a computerized or “cyberbernized” society that needs no human input to operate. We could break the pendulum if we had a means to create wealth and plenty automatically without human intervention. When disasters and societal collapses happen, there is always a loss of capability, a loss of knowledge and know-how, and, of course, the destruction of much wealth and infrastructure. If it could be avoided, then humanity could maintain a sort of upward, extropian trajectory. The key to avoiding societal collapse is simple; one must engage in full-spectrum entropy-avoidance, at every level of society. Anything that creates waste? Anything that creates excess garbage and pollution? War, strife, destruction of infrastructure? Don’t do it. Don’t waste energy re-creating the same things over and over again.