What we need is a synthetic theory that encompasses both demographic mechanisms (with the associated economic consequences) and power relations (surplusextraction mechanisms).

Malthus pointed out that when population increases beyond the means of subsistence, food prices increase, real wages decline, and per capita consumption, especially among the poorer strata, drops.

Thus, we can use trends in higher education as an index of intraelite competition (Goldstone 1991:123).

Impoverished elites could also improve their incomes by attaching themselves to the retinues of powerful magnates.

As a result, food prices increase, real wages decline, and per capita consumption, especially among the poorer strata, drops. Economic distress leads to lower reproduction and higher mortality rates, resulting in a slower population growth.

There must also be some vulnerability of the state in the form of internal divisions and economic or political reverses. Otherwise, popular discontent is unvoiced, and popular opposition is simply suppressed.

the increasing extravagance of noble consumption.

States are not simply created and manipulated by dominant classes; they are agents in their own right, and they compete with the elites in appropriating resources from the economy.

But, second, as general population grows closer to the carrying capacity, surplus production gradually declines. The combination of these two trends results in an accelerating fall of average elite incomes.