Societies lurch from tyranny to revolution and then back again. Because preferential attachment leading to winner takes all is something akin to a natural law.

Societies lurch from tyranny to revolution and then back again. Because preferential attachment leading to winner takes all is something akin to a natural law. Tyranny. Because no open ended complex adaptive system can sustain a stable equilibrium. Revolution. Democracy and other notions try to find a middle path, to avoid the two extremes. Sometimes it works, a little bit, for a little while. Just because no stable middle path is possible doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Over the ages, we've gotten a bit better at it. h/t Robert Wright's book Nonzero.