I always say and think about all this from the perspective of billionaires … all they ever care about is money and the free flow of money everywhere. As long as money is moving and people believe in it, praise it and worship it, everything else can be tolerated and controlled.
The internet and free flowing communication allows for money to flow a lot … without it money would quickly become segmented into tight regions and countries and everything becomes closed … which makes it harder for money to flow, which makes it harder for a billionaire to make more money.
Same with World War or even nuclear war … I don’t think it will ever happen on purpose because once that first bomb goes off, billionaires will cease to be billionaires as the world financial system collapses. The billionaires won’t care how many millions die, they’ll be more upset that their imaginary digitally managed wealth will either decrease a lot or even completely. They know that in a post apocalyptic world, no one will care if you claim to be a billionaire if banks no longer exist. You might say that billionaires will have gold stashes around to fund their own personal army … but that won’t work either because their army will just kill them to take the wealth.
All of it is possible because of human greed … all of it is under threat because of human greed … and all of it is held in balance because of human greed.
Yes there were … we just didn’t call them billionaires … we called them Kings, Queens, Supreme Rulers, Emperors, God Kings
The world looks exactly the same now as it did 2,000 years ago politically because the idea of supreme and infinite wealth never went away. We’ve always had men who believed they could rule or own the entire world … and we still do.