All societies that become greatly unequal eventually fail to adapt technologically and become unsustainable. [...] When inequality rises, you pour more and more resources into your armies and into new technology for them--not into truly productive and co-operative purposes. Slaves and scribes are left to do the hard work. Eventually the empire falls--because high and rising inequality and a consequent lack of innovation and adaptation is how it so often ends.

We can see this end coming. It is not too late to learn and change. And technology can help us do this if we better understand it--and ourselves.