all human, and all networked-agent systems in general, adhere to the 80/20 law, as in, to the victor the spoils, and winner takes all. over multiple iterations, those who survive and gather more resources, tend to be have increased luck in surviving further iterations, and climbing the Maslow pyramid.

once some reach the top, and consolidate their power, that geo-social unit stratifies, and everyone gets frozen into their level in the pyramid.  those who can leave, do so.

some at the top, if 'progressive', keep going up and raising their followers. overall everyone benefits, but ...

the engine of change is the lowest level of the pyramid. it provides labor, through which all things are done. it is driven by fear of death by violence, starvation, or now and then - disease. to sweeten the deal, a little bit of happiness in the form of occasional reward, family etc is used

hence, constant destruction of social units elsewhere to provide souls for the bottom layer, is required. In this, modern Maslow hierarchy resembles a galley

until we get matter-compilers and nano-factories and ai driven robots, as Gibson said "the end of economics" , all progress will continue to be a non-zero sum thing

it wasn't until i watched judge dee fighting it out in the gobi desert frontier that i realised the power of a high ground - your arrows can go or fall down and kill, their arrows cannot cannot reach up that high to kill, so just build a tower, and you can sit in and kill enemies all day long as long as you have arrows. i saw this in age-of-empires too (thanks keyurJ)  but never connected.  a tower placed in the middle of a ground or forest has no more of an edge than a colonel blotto fort, ie, their edge is based on relative concentration of power (arrows/soldiers/armor)  , counting on the fact that , at base-rates, the populace wouldn't have so much disposable military power (arrows/lives/armor) to throw at the towers. classic stock-flow buffer implementation .

i love the judge Dee series, but every now and then scenes slow down and move like molasses,  and people look strained, to show emotional content... what i love is the system of the old times, so sophisticated and ... symbolic ... ( symbolic has a special place in the heart for those who know something of lisp) the series lacks the crisp crunchy movement and colorful characters of the movie (phantom flame) and drags now and then, but the landscape, the  buildings, costumes, swords (!), settings, the city/state/country infrastructure, bureaucracy, institutions , are just superb. the fight scenes blend opera and action in the wrong proportions**, and i am not sure accurately

** crouching tiger hidden dragon did this very well, ie, all action scenes were actually operatic/choreographed, and didn't break the emotional narrative with the physical interplay even during fights

the episode involving the judge trying to stop the vigilante and villagers from killing the murderous silver mine owner , so that he may be brought to justice, visiting frontier towns and forts and fighting hordes etc , and killing the charismatic and talented vigilante,  - was very hard to connect with - given we have enough problem with rich folk raping and road-killing and getting away with it in the country itself

an idealogy is a perspective , combined equal parts rationalisation and belief. the beauty of a successful one is, like a virtual machine - there is one set of r&b for each substrate -ie agent ie human , yet the larger perspective is maintained. the system suffers individual failures now and then, but sails through on the majority retaining intact their lenses.