Game Theory #5: The World Game

If you look at a map of the world from 250 B.C., during the Warring States period of China or the height of the Greek city-states, and tried to predict who would ultimately build the next great empire, you would likely guess wrong. You might look at population density, agricultural resources, technological advancement, or strategic geography. By those metrics, wealthy states like Athens or the state of Chu should have been invincible.

Yet, history consistently demonstrates a counter-intuitive pattern: the strongest, wealthiest nation rarely maintains its dominance. Instead, it is almost always a marginalized, poorer, and seemingly weaker group—like the Qing, the Macedonians, or the Romans—that rises to conquer the established civilization. To understand why this happens, we must look beyond standard economic metrics and apply the lens of game theory to the rise and fall of nations.

Key Takeaways

• The Margin Advantage: Historical empires are rarely conquered by their wealthy peers, but by marginalized "outsider" groups who possess greater adaptability.
• The Three Metrics of Power: A society’s dynamism is measured by its Energy (willingness to work), Openness (humility/resilience), and Cohesion (solidarity).
• The Cycle of Elite Overproduction: As societies grow wealthy, elites become hereditary and bureaucratic, leading to factionalism and internal decay.
• Resource Curse: Abundant resources often lead to complacency, while scarcity forces creativity and strategic innovation.

The Three Metrics of Social Dynamism

To understand the mechanics of history, we must look back to the theories of the 14th-century scholar Ibn Khaldun. He proposed the concept of Asabiyyah, which translates roughly to group solidarity or social cohesion. His observation was that while people in the margins are poorer, their poverty forces them to be unified. In contrast, wealthy civilizations inevitably become individualistic and corrupt.

Building on this, we can identify three distinct metrics that determine whether a society is rising or falling:

1. Cohesion: How willing are people to work together? Do they see themselves as a team or a family? Are they willing to sacrifice individual gain for the collective good?
2. Openness: This refers to humility and resilience. Is the society willing to admit when it is wrong? Is it willing to adapt its strategies, or is it locked in arrogance?
3. Energy: The collective drive to work hard, focus on clear goals, and remain motivated.

When a civilization becomes wealthy, the elite often lose their energy. They prefer exploiting the existing system rather than building anew. Simultaneously, the general population, often burdened by debt or inequality, loses their motivation to build a great nation, focusing instead on mere survival. This creates an environment ripe for disruption by a cohesive, energetic outsider.

The Evolution of the "Game"

Nations do not stay static; they evolve through specific stages. As a society moves through these stages, the "game" they are playing changes, altering the incentives and strategies of the players involved.

The Startup Phase

In the beginning, a group comes together to survive. The game is cooperation. At this stage, religion or ideology plays a functional role in creating energy and creativity. The leaders—often poets, priests, or prophets—articulate a vision that motivates the group to work hard. It feels like a startup: enthusiastic, meritocratic, and focused on contribution.

The Bureaucratic Phase

Over time, success leads to structure. The elite class becomes hereditary. The game shifts from creativity to preservation. Religion and ideology transform into bureaucracy—a set of rules and hierarchies designed to maintain the status quo. The goal of the elite becomes passing privileges to their children rather than innovating for the public good.

Elite Overproduction and Warring States

As the elite class expands, there are eventually too many heirs for too few positions of power. This is known as elite overproduction. Society fractures into factions, often rallying around different charismatic figures. Historically, the "losers" of these internal struggles were exiled, forcing them to colonize new lands. This competition—the "Warring States" period—is ironically often the time of maximum creativity.

"The Warring States period is a time of maximum creativity for a civilization... It leads to the idea of open competition. You need to be open and innovative if you are to triumph."

However, this innovation eventually stabilizes into an equilibrium. Elites from different factions begin to intermarry, forming a unified ruling class that sits above the state. Warfare ceases to be about innovation and becomes a tool for population control.

The Mechanics of Collapse: Secrecy and Factionalism

Once an equilibrium is reached (often an Empire), the game changes again. It is no longer about external conquest or innovation; it is about court politics. The primary objective is to climb the internal hierarchy.

To win at court politics, you must cheat the system without getting caught. This necessitates the formation of secret factions or societies. Successful factions must solve three problems:

• Secrecy: Maintained through strict hierarchy and compartmentalization.
• Trust: Established through shared transgression (breaking the law together ensures mutual destruction if exposed).
• Coordination: Achieved through shared mythology or eschatology (a belief in a higher, often apocalyptic, purpose).

As these factions fight for control of the state, they become insular and corrupt. They stop caring about the health of the empire and focus solely on defeating rival factions. To gain an edge, they often invite foreigners—mercenaries from the "barbaric" borderlands—to fight for them.

The Trojan Horse Effect

This is the fatal error. The border tribes are poor, so they are willing to work as mercenaries. Through this service, they learn the empire's technology, adopt its best practices, and see its internal weakness. Eventually, the mercenaries stop taking orders and take over. This pattern explains the fall of the Sumerians to the Akkadians, the Greeks to the Macedonians, and the Chinese warring states to the Qing.

"The empire becomes corrupt, lazy, arrogant. This gives opportunity for a troubled people, whether it's the Macedonians, whether it's the Qing, whether it's the Romans, to come and conquer all of them."

Modern Implications: The World Game

This theory can be tested in a classroom setting known as "The World Game." Teams are assigned countries and resources. Invariably, the team with the most resources (like the USA) wins. However, the runner-up is rarely a mid-tier power; it is usually the team that started with nothing.

Why? Because poverty forces creativity. The team with no resources has to beg, trade, negotiate, and innovate. They develop high cohesion and openness because they have no other choice. Meanwhile, successful teams become arrogant. They stop reflecting on their mistakes because they are "winning."

This leads to a stark historical observation: Success breeds failure through arrogance, while failure breeds success through humility.

The Future of Nations

If we apply this theory to the modern geopolitical landscape, we arrive at some provocative conclusions. Societies that have recently experienced total devastation or humiliation are often the ones most primed for future dominance, provided they have maintained their cohesion.

For example, post-WWII Germany and Japan were dismantled and humiliated. This forced a cultural reset, fostering societies that were highly energetic, open to learning, and cohesive. Conversely, superpowers that have experienced long periods of dominance risk falling into the trap of the "best student"—arrogant, resistant to feedback, and increasingly factionalized.

"Just because you have the most resources, just because you have the most people, does not mean you'll win the game at the end. What matters is how energetic your people are, how open they are, how resourceful they are."

Conclusion

The rise and fall of empires is not a matter of random chance, nor is it strictly determined by geography or gold reserves. It is a game of social psychology. Empires fall when they become closed systems—when the elite value position over production and when the society loses the ability to honestly self-reflect.

For any group, nation, or organization, the danger zone is not the struggle at the bottom, but the comfort at the top. To survive the game of history, a society must find a way to maintain the energy, openness, and cohesion of a startup, even after it has become an empire.