Even in isolation, a civilization where everyone farms, there’s no specialization and the surplus is only used in emergencies is going to either violate one or more of those rules almost immediately, or fly apart at the seams. It won’t take long for some of these farmers to realize that they’re toiling several times more than they would have to following a horticultural or hunter-gatherer way of life. It’s specialization and the use of surplus to support specialization that makes the arrangement viable. Without that, there’s no reason to keep farming; you can have enough food for yourself and your family with far less effort any number of ways. Participation is extracted through some combination of (1) the promise of becoming part of the elite, and (2) forceful extraction by the elite (i.e., “I’d run off, but then how would I pay my taxes/hunting licenses/whatever?”)

This is one of your arguments that many of the people I’ve pointed towards your work take issue with. The Prisoner’s Dilemma argument works when multiple civilizations in competition are involved, but it doesn’t work for an isolated civilization.

A “civilization” could be somewhat sustainable (at least until the soil is depleted) as long as everyone farms, there’s no specialization, and the surplus is only used in emergencies.

The problem comes when specialized and unproductive classes are created. Creating a formalized economy along with them. The population will always rise to the surplus, but the surplus is also required for the economy. Since this requires the surplus to be able to circulate around the economy, you can’t restrict it to emergency usage anymore. So the population will grow
to the surplus, requiring a new surplus to fuel the economy and thus expansion.

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The growth/conquest dynamic is not limited to complex societies, or agricultural (or conventional-industrial) societies. For example we see the existence of wars of conquest and slavery in tribal cultures around the world (e.g. in Africa and in the Pacific Northwest, both cases before contact with Europeans).

The underlying dynamics, of population growth and desire for material things, are the result of instincts for reproduction and consumption that are hard-wired at the chimpanzee level (baby chimps, like baby humans, will reach out and grasp at objects that are literally shiny (or sparkly) and new).

Complexity and growth are symptoms of these deeper flaws, not first causes.

Not that I think it’s likely, but perhaps it is possible. More likely competing groups within the monoculture will continue to drive complexity.

If a population decreases in size, is it inevitable that the economy also decreases? What about steady state populations? And is this bad for the wellfare? Because I would imagine that there is less need for sustainance, there will be less need for economic growth?

I may digress from strict economic terminology, and am not sure if I miss the point, but I’d like to expand on this a little:

In the big picture, as has been stated elsewhere on this site, actual consumption bears less importance than the ecological footprint. The conversion rate of resources to waste which economic activity entails, as compared to nature’s capability to replenish those resources, determines how much of this activity can take place, and for how long. Population size can be linked to economic activity and ecological footprint, but that relationship does not appear to be proportional, because small populations can have the biggest ecological footprint per individual, while our large amount of poor people today each have a rather small footprint. One way or another, we cannot sustain the total footprint of today’s human population.

Now, concerning welfare in the economic sense, it appears that a certain amount of activity per individual is necessary. If one does not have enough energy, one dies. On the other end of the scale, one runs into diminishing marginal returns on material wealth: At some point, an exquisite meal which a poor person would long for all year, will be taken for granted. While civilisation promises material wealth for everyone, a promise it cannot keep, the value of immaterial ‘goods’ like community, joy, love, respect, you name it, rises.

Those goods take energy to procure, but generally much less so than production of material goods. Yet, the economics profession only counts material goods and translates those to wealth, forming the basis of calculation of economic growth. This results in an apparent disconnect between economic growth or decline and personal well-being.

A smaller population can induce a rise in economic activity. A steady state population nevertheless needs resources and will deplete them if it exists above the replenishment rate of said resources, which is bad for the welfare in the long run. If there is less need for sustenance, there is no need for economic growth regarding vital goods ;-). But as our society is based upon its production of goods beyond the vital amount, there is little connection between need and actual consumption right now.