Modern civilization is approaching a familiar precipice. Political polarization, institutional breakdown, elite infighting, technological acceleration, and rising authoritarianism are often treated as separate crises. They are not.
They are expressions of a single underlying dynamic: power unleashed inside rivalrous systems.
Geotribal1 anti-rivalry is the only way out of this trap.
This essay argues that humanity is not failing because we are uniquely corrupt or incapable of cooperation. We are failing because we remain trapped in social conditions that force rivalry, domination, and escalation—conditions that now intersect with artificial intelligence, an exponential amplifier of power itself.
To understand why reform and resistance repeatedly fail—and why AI raises the stakes—we need to synthesize two bodies of work that reveal the deep structure of our predicament:
• Andrew Schmookler’s Parable of the Tribes2, which explains why domination spreads between societies
• Peter Turchin’s theory of elite overproduction3, which explains why societies implode from within
Taken together, they describe a civilization-scale trap.
And they also point—quietly but unmistakably—toward the only viable exit.
The Parable of the Tribes: Why Power Spreads
Schmookler invites us to imagine a simple scenario.
A group of tribes lives within reach of one another. If all choose the way of peace, all may live in peace. But if one tribe becomes ambitious—seeking expansion and conquest—everything changes.
That power-seeking tribe attacks a neighbor. One tribe is destroyed and its land seized. Another is conquered and absorbed, forced to serve the victor. A third, seeing what has happened, flees to some inaccessible or undesirable place, abandoning its homeland.
Others, hoping to preserve their autonomy, choose to defend themselves. But here the deeper irony emerges: successful defense against a power-maximizing aggressor requires becoming more like the aggressor. Power can only be stopped by power. And if domination is amplified through superior organization or technology, those who resist must adopt similar structures in order to survive.
From this dynamic flow four possible outcomes for the threatened tribes:
1. Destruction
2. Subjugation and absorption
3. Withdrawal and flight
4. Imitation of power
In every case, the ways of power spread throughout the system.
This is the Parable of the Tribes.
It is not a story about evil actors.
It is a story about how structure overrides intention.
Good actors lose not because they are naïve, but because the game rewards those willing to dominate. Over time, domination becomes self-selecting. Hierarchy spreads. Moral restraint is punished. And power, once unleashed, reproduces itself.
Why “Fighting Power” Reproduces Power
This insight explains a persistent historical pattern: revolutions that overthrow tyrants often reinstall tyranny in new forms.
Why?
Because revolutions typically fight power on its own terms.
They seize the state, the army, the bureaucracy, the economy—and inherit the very machinery that required coercion to function. In Schmookler’s frame, this is simply outcome #4 again: imitation of power in order to survive.
The moral intentions of the revolutionaries matter less than the structure they step into.
This is why escaping the Parable of the Tribes cannot be achieved by better leaders, purer ideologies, or fiercer resistance.
It requires something far more radical:
Changing the conditions so that domination no longer pays.
Elite Overproduction: Collapse from the Inside
Where Schmookler analyzes competition between societies, Peter Turchin examines what happens within societies over time.
Studying historical cycles across centuries, Turchin identifies a recurring destabilizing force: elite overproduction.
Elite overproduction occurs when a society generates more elite aspirants than there are elite positions—more credentialed, ambitious, status-seeking individuals than the system can absorb.
The consequences are remarkably consistent:
• intensifying intra-elite competition
• factionalism and polarization
• declining trust in institutions
• rising political instability
• increased likelihood of authoritarian consolidation or collapse
Crucially, this is not driven by moral decay or decadence. It is driven by structural misalignment: status becomes scarce while ambition continues to scale.
Turchin’s insight completes Schmookler’s picture:
• Schmookler shows how external rivalry forces domination
• Turchin shows how internal rivalry implodes legitimacy
Together, they describe a civilization trapped in escalating competition from both outside and within.
This Is Not Human Nature
At this point, a common objection arises: Isn’t this just who we are?
Anthropology suggests otherwise.
Most hunter-gatherer societies were:
• egalitarian
• role-fluid
• contribution-based
• open systems capable of fission and movement
They employed strong leveling mechanisms—ridicule of arrogance, gift circulation, humility norms, and, when necessary, ostracism or exile—that prevented status from hardening into hierarchy. Prestige was tied to real contribution and trustworthiness, not abstract dominance or accumulated power.
Elite overproduction requires trapped aspirants in closed systems.
Hunter-gatherers were rarely trapped.
The pathologies described by Schmookler and Turchin are not species traits.
They are system failure modes.
AI: The Exponential Escalation
This brings us to the present moment.
Artificial intelligence is not simply another technology introduced into an already unstable system. It is an exponential amplifier of power itself.
Those who control AI gain disproportionate advantages in:
• coordination
• surveillance
• persuasion
• economic leverage
• military and police capacity
• narrative shaping
Inside rivalrous systems, this creates a dangerous acceleration:
• power concentrates faster
• elite competition intensifies
• the cost of non-participation skyrockets
Within Schmookler’s framework, a critical shift occurs:
Refusing to use AI is no longer neutral.
It becomes equivalent to fleeing.
If regenerative, cooperative actors opt out of AI, they do not preserve moral purity.
They cede the future to those who will deploy AI for domination.
This is the trap of our time.
Why Regulation and Resistance Are Insufficient
The instinctive response is to fight back: regulate AI, restrain corporations, resist authoritarian uses.
But here again, Schmookler’s lesson applies.
Fighting for control of AI inside rivalrous structures reproduces the same dynamics:
• arms races
• regulatory capture
• centralization of authority
• winner-take-all outcomes
Whoever “wins” inherits a supercharged apparatus of domination.
AI does not fix a bad game.
It locks it in.
Geotribalism: Transcending the Game
Geotribalism begins with a different question.
Not: Who should control power?
But: How do we design conditions where power no longer confers advantage?
This is where A.C.A.I.—Abundance, Coordination, Aligned Incentives— becomes essential:
• Abundance removes the incentive to hoard
• Coordination replaces coercion with shared intelligence
• Aligned incentives ensure that prosocial behavior outperforms domination
Anti-rivalry is not a cultural ethic layered onto existing institutions.
It is the result of dissolving the structures that mechanically enforce rivalry.
In such conditions:
• elite overproduction dissolves because contribution pathways expand
• internal rivalry gives way to stewardship
• external domination loses its payoff
AI, crucially, becomes collective sense-making infrastructure rather than an instrument of control.
Where Schmookler Stops—and Why That Matters Now
Critics of The Parable of the Tribes have long noted a crucial limitation. Schmookler powerfully explains how humanity becomes trapped in cycles of domination, but offers no clear path of escape. As one reviewer observed, he explains how we entered our plight, but not how we can escape it.
That gap was understandable in 1984.
It is no longer tenable today.
With planetary awareness, networked intelligence, and AI-mediated coordination now possible, the absence of an exit strategy is no longer merely theoretical. It becomes existential.
The question is no longer whether the trap exists, but whether we are willing to dismantle the conditions that keep reproducing it.
The Only Remaining Path
The choice before us is not whether AI will reshape civilization.
It already is.
The real choice is which evolutionary path we take inside the Parable of the Tribes:
• Flee AI → guarantee domination by others
• Fight for AI control → recreate hierarchy at machine speed
• Submit → live under algorithmic empire
Only one option escapes the trap:
Dissolve rivalrous power by transforming the conditions in which intelligence operates.
This is not a moral appeal.
It is a structural necessity.
If power continues to pay, domination will continue to spread.
If rivalry continues to be enforced, intelligence will be weaponized.
If AI remains embedded in competitive systems, it will accelerate collapse.
The path forward is not to seize power, but to make power obsolete.
Post-MMO as Power Dissolution
A post-MMO world names what that transformation actually requires.
It dismantles the structural drivers identified by both Schmookler and Turchin:
• Money → replaced by resource stewardship and automated provisioning
• Markets → replaced by open-access coordination and commons governance
• Ownership → replaced by custodianship, use-rights, and contribution-based legitimacy
These institutions are not neutral tools.
They are the primary engines of rivalry.
Money converts all needs into competition.
Markets reward purchasing power rather than wisdom or need.
Ownership allows control to persist even when contribution stops.
As long as these abstractions remain intact, power always has somewhere to pool.
When intelligence is shared, power cannot hoard itself.
When coordination is open, domination cannot concentrate.
When status is tied to contribution, elite overproduction collapses.
This is not utopian.
It is structurally necessary in an AI-mediated civilization.
What Becomes Possible
Geotribal anti-rivalry is not idealism.
It is the minimum viable future.
This is not a revolution against the old world.
It is the quiet refusal to keep playing a game that can no longer be won.
And in that refusal—once power stops paying, once rivalry stops being enforced, once intelligence is freed from domination—something genuinely new becomes possible.
Footnotes:
Geotribal / Geotribalism - When I use the term geotribal or geotribalism, I am not referring to a new ideology, identity, or political faction. I’m describing a simple but profound shift in scale.
For most of human history, our deepest sense of belonging and coordination operated at the level of the tribe—small enough for trust, accountability, and shared meaning. Modern civilization broke those bonds and replaced them with abstract systems such as nations, markets, bureaucracies, and currencies.
Geotribal (see diagram) names the next evolutionary step: tribal-scale coherence without tribal exclusion, made possible by planetary awareness, shared intelligence, and post-scarcity coordination.
Geotribalism is not about uniformity.
It is about alignment at the scale of our real interdependence.
The Parable of the Tribes, Second Edition By Andrew Bard Schmookler
Your explanation of these authors' examination of the consequences of the systems we're using is clear and cogent. Thank you.