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AspergianMutantt
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08 Apr 2014, 11:56 am

Imagen a future world, where there was no money.. It can be done.
But for those who can not imagine this, let me give you some visions for contemplations sake.

We have industrious drives that are created by our ambitious,

Less workers to pay means more money saved, so automations and mass production become essential for mass marketing.

15,000 years ago we only had a few million people on this planet and were growing exponentially now into the billions to where within the next 100 years were going to start to out grow our planets ability to sustain us unless we adapt to not only our conditions but that of forcing the world to adapt to ours as well.

What 7000 years ago took a man to till for a family of 5, now we can produce for about 500 families with the same stretch of land., and the farmer can do it all with less animals of burden then he did long go. and in less then 100th of the time for planting and harvesting, with machines. and the pace is quickening.

Through genetic restructuring, I am sure we soon will be able to create harvests of fruits and other food sources at even double if not triple that pace. imagine apple trees producing fruit twice a year instead of one, or perhaps year round regardless of the seasons. insects and fungus's that no longer attack our produce but instead not only help it produce but also preserves it. and machines to tend to and harvest them all. Many may not like genetically altered foods, but when their families start to starve I am sure necessity will change their minds.

Yes I may be making some exaggerations, but the examples are true to the concept.

A system of money can not be maintained, there is not enough work, only the rich would be making out like the bandit while the poor suffer because of lack of work.

There is an answer, but I want to hear first your own thoughts on the matters and how they should be resolved, so I will know how to address them later with my own views for you to contemplate and consider.


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Dantac
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08 Apr 2014, 1:21 pm

Trade is a fundamental requirement for any social structure. Even within a family.

Remember that before we had 'money' people bartered goods. Thus, things had value of some sort which dictated that, person A thought that a pig had enough value to trade it for the labor person B did for person A in repairing his roof.

The problem you refer to as there being not enough work is not the result of money. Its the result of overpopulation.

Ideally the population of the planet needs to be dropped down to 4 billion max. But enforcing this requirement is impossible. You'd need a stabilized world under one government.

... or ship the excess population to a new world. Terraform Venus/Mars or get the darned warp drive working already :)



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09 Apr 2014, 10:19 am

But we're not overpopulated...

The transition to an abundance economy isn't actually all that hard to implement, it's just going to be difficult because of the existing interests who are going to lose out as a result. Automated farming, digital fabrication... these are all things which are maturing at the moment, and we just need to set up the distribution systems. But since they are very amenable to the small scale, that's not a problem.

Automated farming co-operatives that share out the abundant food produce. FabLabs that can build anything from furniture to TVs, cups to laser cutters, clothes to microhouses. Mesh networks connected together to create Internet 2.0. Cryptocurrencies that allow people to trade without state imposed barriers. Free educational materials available to everyone, and plenty of free classes on if they need help.



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09 Apr 2014, 11:53 am

I think you want to read Iain Banks Culture novels.

A paradisical idea, but a long way off, if not impossible.

I do think that successful exploitation of asteroids is coming in the very near future and will cause a significant disruption in existing economies and patterns of wealth. If we manage to survive our political and religious tribalism, the species has a fair shot at moving to an abundance of energy and resources in the relatively near future.

Then we will face the questions of equitable distribution of wealth. So big trouble ahead, probably.



Bodyles
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10 Apr 2014, 1:00 am

We face the questions of equitable distribution of wealth & resources right now.
There's enough for everyone, yet most of it is hoarded & wasted by a relative few.

Our societies continue to function as de facto plutocratic oligarchies based on strict social heirarchies resulting from & perpetuating the grossly uneven distribution of resources (wealth), as they have for the past 5000+ years.
The only way we'll survive as a species is to evolve socially away from heirarchical social structures & distribution of resources into more egalitarian, merit/need based structures & distribution of resources.
Unfortunately it seems like only a traumatic catalyzing event of global proportions which causes a significant bottleneck in breeding populations would have the evolutionary force necessary to cause such a leap in our species' social evolution to occur.
Too bad for the billions that would have to die, but imho it's probably the only hope for our species as a whole.

A fight's coming, as the masses realize more & more what the plutocrats have been doing to them thanks to the globalization and freeing of information due to the advent of the Internet & the information age.
The plutocrats are aware of this & seek to sow dissension amongst the masses & amass as much of the world's resorces as possible for themselves in order to forestall it.
It's a long ways off of course.
Maybe even a century or more though I don't believe it'll be quite that long.
Maybe (though highly unlikely) the plutocrats will in the meantime wise up, give up their power, and quietly fade away, but as things stand it really seems like it's on its way.

There's no real problem with the concept of currency as a universal stand-in for the trade of goods and services.
What is a problem is the exploitation of this concept as a way to concentrate resources & power far in excess of the needs or even practical use of any idividual, family, or clan to such an extreme extent that this concentration necessarily causes deprivation & powerlessness & the unnecessary suffering those things cause for many others.



Adamantium
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10 Apr 2014, 10:17 am

Bodyles wrote:
We face the questions of equitable distribution of wealth & resources right now.
There's enough for everyone, yet most of it is hoarded & wasted by a relative few.

Our societies continue to function as de facto plutocratic oligarchies based on strict social heirarchies resulting from & perpetuating the grossly uneven distribution of resources (wealth), as they have for the past 5000+ years.
The only way we'll survive as a species is to evolve socially away from heirarchical social structures & distribution of resources into more egalitarian, merit/need based structures & distribution of resources.
Unfortunately it seems like only a traumatic catalyzing event of global proportions which causes a significant bottleneck in breeding populations would have the evolutionary force necessary to cause such a leap in our species' social evolution to occur.
Too bad for the billions that would have to die, but imho it's probably the only hope for our species as a whole.

A fight's coming, as the masses realize more & more what the plutocrats have been doing to them thanks to the globalization and freeing of information due to the advent of the Internet & the information age.
The plutocrats are aware of this & seek to sow dissension amongst the masses & amass as much of the world's resorces as possible for themselves in order to forestall it.
It's a long ways off of course.
Maybe even a century or more though I don't believe it'll be quite that long.
Maybe (though highly unlikely) the plutocrats will in the meantime wise up, give up their power, and quietly fade away, but as things stand it really seems like it's on its way.

There's no real problem with the concept of currency as a universal stand-in for the trade of goods and services.
What is a problem is the exploitation of this concept as a way to concentrate resources & power far in excess of the needs or even practical use of any idividual, family, or clan to such an extreme extent that this concentration necessarily causes deprivation & powerlessness & the unnecessary suffering those things cause for many others.


I think you oversimplify economic history and current reality in the name of revolutionary principle.

Scarcity has been a frequent reality. Distribution costs. There are real famines and rare earths are actually rare.

We can see a potential future that upsets all these familiar realities--the underpinnings of our current political dramas, revolutionary movements and systems of plutocratic oppression.

I hope you are right about what "the masses" see, but an awful lot of them seem to see shiny new preachers and similar flim-flam artists and con men promising glorious Jihad, Crusade, shiny trinkets and comely virgin servants in paradise, etc. (or at least, football games and reality TV) and not think much about the equitable distribution of wealth.



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10 Apr 2014, 11:06 am

Magneto wrote:
But we're not overpopulated...


~10 billion is not overpopulated?



AspergianMutantt
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10 Apr 2014, 11:15 am

Dantac wrote:
Magneto wrote:
But we're not overpopulated...


~10 billion is not overpopulated?


I think last count was around 7 billion.

Overpopulation depends upon food and resources needs and that of their consumptions.

If we used most every spare acre of land and treated it with near hydroponic accuracy, if we started farming our oceans more (not just harvesting, but actual farming), and if we genetically get our foods to produce at least 3 times as much or often, if we can have access to near endless fresh water, then this planet can easily sustain about 30 billion, and thats if we only farm the coastal regions of our oceans, if we took on the whole thing we prob could go as high as 70-90 billion people.

Even in the united states, or even that of Canada and other places, we still have massive tracks of land we have not even began to use.

Necessity dedicates change, otherwise, we starve. people may not like the idea of genetically altered foods but it WILL become a necessity and then people will adapt.


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10 Apr 2014, 12:18 pm

Current farming practices optimise for money, which at the moment means trading off increased energy use for decreased labour, rather than optimising for yield - there's no point hiring the equivalent of a full time worker to boost yields if the economic value of the increase is less than they cost in wages, even when they represent only a few person-hours of labour each week for each person fed by that yield. But there is no reason why we can't feed several families off a hectare of land, especially with modern technology. It doesn't even have to be the best land, or the best climate. Using greenhouses we can get multiple seasons in a year, probably even gaining better yields whilst allowing a fallow season to improve fertility.

As for energy, it falls from the sky daily. Solar panels are getting cheaper, and more efficient, so even without fusion reactors, we'll have plenty of energy available - and without needing to rely on centralised grids. Your house doesn't need to keep its wait down; cheap Nickel-Iron batteries should do fine as a storage system.

We really, really aren't in danger of overusing resources, unless we're really stupid. Much like someone who inherits several million dollars, but still manages to squander it all...



AspergianMutantt
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10 Apr 2014, 12:38 pm

Magneto wrote:
Current farming practices optimise for money, which at the moment means trading off increased energy use for decreased labour, rather than optimising for yield - there's no point hiring the equivalent of a full time worker to boost yields if the economic value of the increase is less than they cost in wages, even when they represent only a few person-hours of labour each week for each person fed by that yield. But there is no reason why we can't feed several families off a hectare of land, especially with modern technology. It doesn't even have to be the best land, or the best climate. Using greenhouses we can get multiple seasons in a year, probably even gaining better yields whilst allowing a fallow season to improve fertility.

As for energy, it falls from the sky daily. Solar panels are getting cheaper, and more efficient, so even without fusion reactors, we'll have plenty of energy available - and without needing to rely on centralised grids. Your house doesn't need to keep its wait down; cheap Nickel-Iron batteries should do fine as a storage system.

We really, really aren't in danger of overusing resources, unless we're really stupid. Much like someone who inherits several million dollars, but still manages to squander it all...


In many ways thats ^^^ vary true.

I tried to broach the subject of farming Egypt but no one was much interested because I think they thought it wasn't vary realistic. One of the more well known Egyptian jewels is made of glass, created by the heat of an above ground meteor explosion above the desert, the location of where that happened was found, and they also found tons more of that glass. it was fairly clear enough to see through. Imagine, if we smoothed out a large section of desert then melted the first couple feet of top sand then dug out underneath it, it would become a huge greenhouse, and if piped in fresh water it would pick up to tropical humid conditions enough to grow most any vegetation year round. and for top soil, that sand is full of it, unlike other places where it all vanished because of erosion back into the sea or had gotten farmed off, its there just it has to be sifted out. all over the world is such potential, just its all being held back because of "money and costs", while there is truly no reason for those people to be starving.


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10 Apr 2014, 7:28 pm

Adamantium wrote:
Bodyles wrote:
We face the questions of equitable distribution of wealth & resources right now.
There's enough for everyone, yet most of it is hoarded & wasted by a relative few.

Our societies continue to function as de facto plutocratic oligarchies based on strict social heirarchies resulting from & perpetuating the grossly uneven distribution of resources (wealth), as they have for the past 5000+ years.
The only way we'll survive as a species is to evolve socially away from heirarchical social structures & distribution of resources into more egalitarian, merit/need based structures & distribution of resources.
Unfortunately it seems like only a traumatic catalyzing event of global proportions which causes a significant bottleneck in breeding populations would have the evolutionary force necessary to cause such a leap in our species' social evolution to occur.
Too bad for the billions that would have to die, but imho it's probably the only hope for our species as a whole.

A fight's coming, as the masses realize more & more what the plutocrats have been doing to them thanks to the globalization and freeing of information due to the advent of the Internet & the information age.
The plutocrats are aware of this & seek to sow dissension amongst the masses & amass as much of the world's resorces as possible for themselves in order to forestall it.
It's a long ways off of course.
Maybe even a century or more though I don't believe it'll be quite that long.
Maybe (though highly unlikely) the plutocrats will in the meantime wise up, give up their power, and quietly fade away, but as things stand it really seems like it's on its way.

There's no real problem with the concept of currency as a universal stand-in for the trade of goods and services.
What is a problem is the exploitation of this concept as a way to concentrate resources & power far in excess of the needs or even practical use of any idividual, family, or clan to such an extreme extent that this concentration necessarily causes deprivation & powerlessness & the unnecessary suffering those things cause for many others.


I think you oversimplify economic history and current reality in the name of revolutionary principle.

Scarcity has been a frequent reality. Distribution costs. There are real famines and rare earths are actually rare.

We can see a potential future that upsets all these familiar realities--the underpinnings of our current political dramas, revolutionary movements and systems of plutocratic oppression.

I hope you are right about what "the masses" see, but an awful lot of them seem to see shiny new preachers and similar flim-flam artists and con men promising glorious Jihad, Crusade, shiny trinkets and comely virgin servants in paradise, etc. (or at least, football games and reality TV) and not think much about the equitable distribution of wealth.


Wtf are you talking about?

'Revolutionary Principle'?!?!?! !? :?
No idea where you got that or what the hell you're referring to or even what that phrase means in any context.

I was talking about EVOLUTION, which starts with an E, not an 'R'.

Our history as a species since we started living in cities has largely been one dominated by plutocratic oligarchies of various sorts which essentially concentrate power & resources in the hands of a few.
Who those few have been and how they achieved their wealth and power is relatively immaterial to the fact that we have, by and large as a species, not evolved beyond the heirarchical social structures we, en masse, have lived under for the past 5000+ years.
Those structures have become more sophisticated, and even in the past few centuries more inclusive & egalitarian than ever before.
Still, the underlying social factors which perpetuate & reinforce these heirarchical structures remain largely unchanged, and the structures themselves serve, as they always have, to concentrate power & resources in the hands of a few.

You dismissed this entirely by accusing me of oversimplifying things, but in fact I'm not.
I've extensively studied our history and the patterns repeat themselves on small & large scales, the world over, over & over & over with little variation for much of that history.
I've also studied evolution and more importantly systems & complexity theories which describe the underlying mechanisms behind changes in systems, and I've studied these things in relation to our history & social evolution.

Based on all of this, I've come to a few conclusions:

1. There seems to be, probabilistically speaking, a seriously traumatic global event or series of events on the horizon for our species. The probabilities seem to indicate that whatever it is will likely kill off a large percentage of our species. There's a slim chance that we'll come through more or less intact, or that the whole thing will be avoided somehow, but right now those scenarios seem fairly unlikely.

2. There's a direct historical correlation between large increases in available information combined with gross inequality & massive popular social upheaval. The facts that many people are still, as you point out, being distracted by the plutocrats quite effectively, that said plutocrats are aware of the correlation, and that the current modern systems have a lot of functional inertia to them mean that it will very likely take quite a bit of time for it all to come to a head as it has so many times in our past in similar circumstances. Again, I pointed out that it may take a century or more, although I do believe that it will be somewhat less than that, at least for things to really start heading down that path irrevocably. It seems likely that this will trigger a relatively cataclysmic set of events that will eventualy result in either a dispersal or coalescense for our species.

3. Massive increases in interconnectedness & information in complex systems tend to inevitably lead to choas within such systems followed by an abrupt jump to a significantly more complex or less complex system. Since choas is usually a required catalyst, it seems like the events caused by the most likely scenario in #2 would be sufficient to the cause. If we're lucky & smart, and maybe if people sow some ideas leading up to it, as I'm hoping, then it will be a leap upwards in complexity, which I believe will take the form of significant evolution of our social structures for the first time in a very long time. Of course, there's always a chance it will go the other way, and we'll disperse and devolve into tribalism ala Mad Max. It's impossible to tell for sure until it actually happens.

Frankly, given that our chances for success in such a scenario aren't particularly different from our chances of failure and that there's small but significant possiblity of extinction as well, I'm not really sure I want to be right about any of this stuff. :roll:
Still, those are the conclusions I've reached based upon what I know and am able to reasonably extrapolate.
To be clear, I'm not advocating anything, I'm just describing what I think is likely, not because I want it to happen, but because it's the path I see laid out ahead of us whether I want to or not.

I'd much prefer that we simply resolved our social issues gradually, maturing slowly over time as a species.
It just seems like that path is extremely unlikely, and that we'll have to learn our lessons the hard way, as we always have, in spasms of violence & suffering & death. :bounce:



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10 Apr 2014, 8:39 pm

Bodyles wrote:
Revolutionary Principle'?!?!?! !? :?
No idea where you got that or what the hell you're referring to or even what that phrase means in any context.

Some of the terms you use have a long pedigree in Marxist ideology. I thought perhaps this history had informed your thinking.

Quote:
Our history as a species since we started living in cities has largely been one dominated by plutocratic oligarchies of various sorts which essentially concentrate power & resources in the hands of a few.
I think this is an oversimplification. Civilization resulted from agriculture and animal husbandry creating surplus food which in turn enabled specialized work and imbalances of wealth. Sometimes the rulers were plutocrats, sometimes religious elites, sometimes military elites. Sometimes they concentrated power and sometimes they frittered it away, destroying the work of generations who came before. There is a lot of unproductive chaos and dissolution of structure in history.

Quote:
You dismissed this entirely by accusing me of oversimplifying things, but in fact I'm not.
I've extensively studied our history and the patterns repeat themselves on small & large scales, the world over, over & over & over with little variation for much of that history.
Interesting. I would tend to think that this sense of repetition is based on simplification, but perhaps I am wrong. I would not see the samurai culture of Japan as similar in anything but the broadest way with the feudal monarchies of europe--both sets of warrior elites built castles and oppressed farmers and proto-bourgeois, but in most respects their cultures made them quite different.

Quote:
I've also studied evolution and more importantly systems & complexity theories which describe the underlying mechanisms behind changes in systems, and I've studied these things in relation to our history & social evolution.

Fascinating. I tend to think of history as the records concerning actions undertaken by individuals who are acting according to their wills, rather than as components in abstract systems. Where might I learn something about these complexity theories and their relationship to history? I think of social evolution as something created by individuals, working hard, rather than as the working out of larger patterns.

Quote:
1. There seems to be, probabilistically speaking, a seriously traumatic global event or series of events on the horizon for our species. The probabilities seem to indicate that whatever it is will likely kill off a large percentage of our species. There's a slim chance that we'll come through more or less intact, or that the whole thing will be avoided somehow, but right now those scenarios seem fairly unlikely.
I find this utterly implausible. Can you name a single probable "seriously traumatic global event" and assign a probability to it? What probabilities indicate that a large percentage of our species will be killed off? This sounds like Islamic or Christian millennialism in pseudo-mathematical drag. There is all sorts of room for dark projection in things like the report from the intergovernmental panel on climate change--but I don't see anyone assigning specific probabilities to catastrophic events causing drops in human population.

Quote:
It seems likely that this will trigger a relatively cataclysmic set of events that will eventualy result in either a dispersal or coalescense for our species.
Sorry, you've lost me there. I don't believe in the coming catastrophe thing and I have no idea what you can mean by coalescence or dispersal of our species. It sounds like humanity is being thought of as some sort aqueous solution waiting for a catalyst--but it isn't it's a lot of individual people making choices.

Quote:
Massive increases in interconnectedness & information in complex systems tend to inevitably lead to choas within such systems followed by an abrupt jump to a significantly more complex or less complex system.
I don't think that statement is supported by history. It's hard to imagine a greater increase in interconnectedness and information than has been achieved by digital computing systems and networks, but the net result seems to be exponentiating levels of information, not chaos. I don't think this idea about complex systems is correct and I don't think the "probable global catastrophes" thing is correct either, so they don't lead to the evolution to the next level/Mad Max possibilities that you discuss. Interesting to hear, though. Can you provide any sources for any of these projections, estimations of probability, or inevitable descents into chaos?



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13 Apr 2014, 8:05 pm

Adamantium wrote:
Bodyles wrote:
Revolutionary Principle'?!?!?! !? :?
No idea where you got that or what the hell you're referring to or even what that phrase means in any context.

Some of the terms you use have a long pedigree in Marxist ideology. I thought perhaps this history had informed your thinking.

Quote:
Our history as a species since we started living in cities has largely been one dominated by plutocratic oligarchies of various sorts which essentially concentrate power & resources in the hands of a few.
I think this is an oversimplification. Civilization resulted from agriculture and animal husbandry creating surplus food which in turn enabled specialized work and imbalances of wealth. Sometimes the rulers were plutocrats, sometimes religious elites, sometimes military elites. Sometimes they concentrated power and sometimes they frittered it away, destroying the work of generations who came before. There is a lot of unproductive chaos and dissolution of structure in history.

Quote:
You dismissed this entirely by accusing me of oversimplifying things, but in fact I'm not.
I've extensively studied our history and the patterns repeat themselves on small & large scales, the world over, over & over & over with little variation for much of that history.
Interesting. I would tend to think that this sense of repetition is based on simplification, but perhaps I am wrong. I would not see the samurai culture of Japan as similar in anything but the broadest way with the feudal monarchies of europe--both sets of warrior elites built castles and oppressed farmers and proto-bourgeois, but in most respects their cultures made them quite different.

Quote:
I've also studied evolution and more importantly systems & complexity theories which describe the underlying mechanisms behind changes in systems, and I've studied these things in relation to our history & social evolution.

Fascinating. I tend to think of history as the records concerning actions undertaken by individuals who are acting according to their wills, rather than as components in abstract systems. Where might I learn something about these complexity theories and their relationship to history? I think of social evolution as something created by individuals, working hard, rather than as the working out of larger patterns.

Quote:
1. There seems to be, probabilistically speaking, a seriously traumatic global event or series of events on the horizon for our species. The probabilities seem to indicate that whatever it is will likely kill off a large percentage of our species. There's a slim chance that we'll come through more or less intact, or that the whole thing will be avoided somehow, but right now those scenarios seem fairly unlikely.
I find this utterly implausible. Can you name a single probable "seriously traumatic global event" and assign a probability to it? What probabilities indicate that a large percentage of our species will be killed off? This sounds like Islamic or Christian millennialism in pseudo-mathematical drag. There is all sorts of room for dark projection in things like the report from the intergovernmental panel on climate change--but I don't see anyone assigning specific probabilities to catastrophic events causing drops in human population.

Quote:
It seems likely that this will trigger a relatively cataclysmic set of events that will eventualy result in either a dispersal or coalescense for our species.
Sorry, you've lost me there. I don't believe in the coming catastrophe thing and I have no idea what you can mean by coalescence or dispersal of our species. It sounds like humanity is being thought of as some sort aqueous solution waiting for a catalyst--but it isn't it's a lot of individual people making choices.

Quote:
Massive increases in interconnectedness & information in complex systems tend to inevitably lead to choas within such systems followed by an abrupt jump to a significantly more complex or less complex system.
I don't think that statement is supported by history. It's hard to imagine a greater increase in interconnectedness and information than has been achieved by digital computing systems and networks, but the net result seems to be exponentiating levels of information, not chaos. I don't think this idea about complex systems is correct and I don't think the "probable global catastrophes" thing is correct either, so they don't lead to the evolution to the next level/Mad Max possibilities that you discuss. Interesting to hear, though. Can you provide any sources for any of these projections, estimations of probability, or inevitable descents into chaos?


My statements about complex systems refer to such systems in general.
Complexity Theory is an outgrowth, both mathematically and generally, of Chaos Theory.
The mathematics of Complexity Theory describe the behavior of complex systems over the long term, including synergistic & emergent effects in which the whole of a complex system gains properties none of its parts posses individually.
Moreover, every time interconnectedness amongst peoples and/or general knowledge have greatly increased in human history choas, war, and eventually substantially more or substantially less complex societies have been the result, often, though not always coinciding with leaps forward or backwards technologically for those societies.
History bears out Complexity Theory quite well, actually, with the greatest leaps forward & backwards happening at the 'edge of choas' where choas & order seek homeostasis at a new level of complexity.
I once wrote quite a long paper detailing this phenomenon throughout history & the relationship between chaos, order, complexity, and so-called 'Golden Ages'.
Outside of that, I'm not aware of anyone who's studied the interactions of the two subjects as extensively, there certainly weren't any when I was in school, but it's been a while, so there might be someone who's done so by now.

You see the Samurai society as significantly different from fuedal Europe because the culture was significantly different.
Structurally as societies, however, were both codified, multi-layered heirarchies with internal conflicts fueled by the struggle for dominance, like every major human society for the past 5000+ years.
Apes live in heirarchies & engage in dominance struggles to structure their societies.
Our heirarchies are more sophisticated, sure, and our dominance struggles often (though not always certainly) less physically violent & direct but by and large they're no less brutal & cruel because it is the nature of heirarchies that many must be made lesser for a few to be exalted.

Our social evolution thus far has been to merely create significantly more & more sophisticated heirarchies & methods of social interaction.
Essentially, the ancient heirarchical dominance game has gotten way more complicated & complex, but in the end, it's still the same old dominance struggle that defines and structures our societies, governments, institutions, businesses, cultures, and even to some large extent our sciences as it does that of all the other apes.

What I'm trying to explain, and doing a piss-poor job of it, apparently, is that it seems like our species is getting fairly near, but is not quite at just yet, a bunch of mathematical tipping points, and that we've actually passed certain others which make some things a lot more likely.
For instance, the massive, very recent, and extremely fast increases in both interconnectedness & the availablity of knowledge in our species means that our species as a whole is in for a lot of chaos in general in the coming decades.
We should expect to see increasing cycles of revolution & populist revolts, many of which will likely fail and be replaced by extreme authoritarians until they're brought down & it begins again.
This will happen less violently and more internally, especially at first, in the more stable countries, and we're unlikely to see any major powers fall any time soon because of this, though it's remotely within the realm of the possible that one might fall within the next few decades.
Probably eventually we'll start to see the formation of abortive, experimental, stateless, artificial societies & the inevitable backlash against them as well.
Things will heat up & cool down in cycles over the decades, as they always do, and change will contnue unabated, but the pressure will keep rising as the plutocrats/oligarchs fight to both hold on to their power & keep a lid on things while the masses, who with the advent of a memory & subconscious thanks to the internet are ever so slowly awakening from the fever dream of history, stir & grow restless & even angry in fits and spurts.

When will it all finally start to boil over, in my opinion?
No idea, but I don't think it will be until around the end of this century at the earliest.

Who will win, the populists or the oligarchs/plutocrats?
Neither.
In the end, I'm betting they'll fight each other to the death, both sides ultimately incorrect because they both seek to exalt some above others at the expense of others, the oligarchs/plutocrats themselves and the other 'elites', the populists whatever group happens to be most 'popular' in the movement.

What set of technologies, accidents, climate events, wars, biohazarads, etc., will occur/happen/be used/be unleashed and how long will that stuff take to kill off a large enough portion of us to force an evolutionary bottleneck?
No idea, honestly, though my best guess is that it'd take place over the course of about 2-3 decades sometime around the early to mid 22nd century (give or take) and that it will be a combination of factors that finally causes the mass die-offs towards the end of it.

I'm not an eschatologist, and I'm not interested in numerology, end of days prophecies, or anything hokey like that.

This is all based on my own studies, analysis, extrapolations, conjectures, and a visceral understanding of odds, numbers, systems, cycles, and patterns.
It take into account in population growth, resource depleation, climate change, technological advancement, cultural shifts, population shifts, economics & wealth transfers, global socio-political trend analysis, historical analysis, growing interconnectedness & access to knowledge, amongst other factors, and is, in general, actually an extremely optimistic (maybe even a bit too halcyon) version of this analysis as it allows for things like new technologies, better transportation, localization of food sourcing, genetic engineering of superfoods, and even wars to counterbalance things like population growth, resource depletion, and general scarcity to prevent us from ever reaching the Precipice of Malthus (that's where we, as a species, overpopulate, outstrip our resources, and suffer a massive die-off as a result).

In the end, it's just an educated guess based on the best information I currently have available, my own admittedly incomplete knowledge of all the factors involved, and given the unprecedented nature of the current & future era, quite a bit of utter ignorance as to what the future will likely hold, because history is at best an unreliable guide at this point, and at worst could prove extremely misleading.

I think it's true enough though, assuming current trends continue changing as they seem to have been, assuming I'm right about what those trends are and the effects they'll have, assuming no one pulls some dues ex machina technology out of a hat that completely alters major factors my analysis depends on (ex. nanotech manages to makes money obsolete by giving everyone the means to get anything they want, etc.), assuming that my historical & current analyses are even somewhere close to the mark to begin with (certainly debatable), and assuming that I haven't missed some large factor which would skew my analyses significantly.

So yeah, I think a big fight's coming eventually, led up to by a long, cyclical series of fights & lesser but still significant large political movements.
I think it will be a prelude to, catalyst for, cause of, or begin a series of events which will eventually kill off a large portion of our population (best guess, around 90%, give or take).
I don't think it's coming any time soon, and in fact it's distinctly possible that no one alive today will be alive by the time it starts, let alone by the time it ends.

I certainly could be wrong, espcially given the fairly long term nature of the prediction which always causes a steep fall-off in the accuracy of traditional odds making (meaning I can give a median, but the margin of error on that median is somewhere around 30% plus & minus, making the odds of it being in the ballpark somewhere between aprox. 25% and aprox. 85%, not a very useful estimation of accuracy, I'm afraid, and only slightly (5%) weighted in favor of it being more likely than not), and I don't expect you, or anyone really, to see patterns, trends, cycles, odds, factors various and sundry, and complex systems the way I do.

Of course, if factors change significantly as time goes on, I'll have to revise my analysis, but it's stayed fairly consistent for more than a decade.
Although there has been some contractions & expansions of the time frame during that time in response to certain changes & factors I discovered I was missing or which weren't readily apparent at the time, the general trends haven't changed enough as of yet to affect the likely eventual outcome.
Frankly it's that more than anything that makes me think that the odds of me being correct are higher than I can currently account for mathematically.

If I'm right, the survivors will either work together to use the high technologies achieved previously to build a new society more socially evolved (i.e. not based on dominance & heirarchy), more interconnected, and in time more complex than the ones which came before which will hopefully eventually become sustainable over the long term, unlike our current ones, or they'll revert to tribalism, physically & culturally disperse, and likely even technologically, with bits of knowledge becoming compartmentallized & isolated from each other physically, and our species' development set back several hundred years at least.

Like I said, either coalescence or dispersal.
At this point I can't even speculate as to which is more likely, though personally I'm rooting for the former.

You think it's oversimplification to point out that all of our societies throughout recorded history have been structured as dominance based codified heirarchies (which are all de facto oligarchies)?
I think it's blind of you to blatantly ignore & dismiss this fact of our existence.
You seem to think that the culture of an oligarchy/heirarchy makes it so significantly different from other oligarchies/heirarchies that the fact that the basic stucture is the same becomes meaningless & real social evolution to a new, more evolved social structure has actually taken place despite the fact that the structure is still heirarchical, still oligarchical, and still based on dominance.
I never said we haven't evolved culturally.
What I said was that we haven't evolved socially, as in the base social structures of our societies, which are and have been codified dominance based heirarchies (oligarchies) ever since we started living in cities & making laws.
That hasn't changed, however it's manifested, and whatever veneer of egalitarianism, meritocracy, or democracy it's worn, it's just the same old dog with a new collar.
Point to major society that wasn't or isn't structured as a dominance based codified heirarchy, and define what it is/was structured as instead, if you think I'm wrong about this point.

In any case, it's been fun.
I'll gladly discuss this with you irt, but I'm done typing essays about this just to debate you.