Political scientist Margaret Levi famously argued (https://politicalscience.stanford.edu/publications/rule-and-revenue) that the history of governance is deeply intertwined with the history of revenue collection. For generations, scholars have assumed that larger populations inevitably required more centralized authority and that centralized authority generated greater inequality. Neither autocracy nor inequality is an unavoidable outcome of scale or political complexity. Instead, autocracy and inequality seem to reinforce each other through a series of feedback loops. Across human history, societies have repeatedly developed mechanisms that constrained rulers, broadened participation, and moderated disparities in wealth.