Luxury Corrodes the Bonds That Built Power
Ibn Khaldun identified a recurring pattern across dynasties: the very success that establishes a ruling group sows the seeds of its dissolution, because sedentary comfort erodes the solidarity that made conquest possible.
"Once a tribe founds a dynasty and its members assume the various positions of the ruling class, the conditions for the decline in 'asabiyyah are established... the second generation of tribesmen who founded the dynasty experience a change from the desert ethic to an outlook fostered by the sedentary lifestyle, from a state of scarcity to luxury, and from a state in which everybody shared and benefited from whatever successes the community had to one in which one man, the ruler, claims all the glory for himself." Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddimah
The mechanism is not merely psychological but structural. When a tribal group conquers and settles, its members move from shared hardship to individual comfort. The desert demanded mutual dependence; the palace rewards individual ambition. The ruler, having gained legitimate authority, no longer needs the solidarity of his kinsmen and begins excluding them from power, relying instead on clients and mercenaries. The group feeling that built the dynasty becomes an inconvenience to maintain.
This is not a moralistic complaint about decadence but a sociological observation about how incentive structures shift. In the desert, your survival depends on your tribe. In the palace, your advancement depends on the ruler's favor. The bonds of mutual obligation dissolve not because people become wicked but because the environment no longer rewards solidarity. Each generation grows further from the conditions that forged the original cohesion.
The pattern applies beyond medieval North Africa. Any organization, movement, or institution that achieves success through collective effort faces the same risk: the fruits of that effort create conditions hostile to the solidarity that produced them. Startups that become corporations, revolutionary movements that become governments, religious communities that become establishments all face this corrosion.
Takeaway: Success changes the environment that made success possible, so every achievement carries within it the conditions for its own undoing.
See also: Asabiyyah Drives Civilizations | The Inner Collapse Precedes the Outer Collapse | Dynasties Follow a Four-Generation Arc | Hyperbolic Discounting Makes the Future Disappear | Shifting Baselines Make Decline Invisible