High-authoritarianism groups pursue dominance and immediate profit at the cost of long-term survival

Evidence

The High world ended in disaster because the High Elites seldom cooperated but instead tried to dominate one another from the start. Most cooperative acts, such as forming alliances, were still in service to competitive goals. … Highs also spent large parts of their resources on armies, and while they tried intensely to develop economic wealth, they proved insensitive to long-range environmental concerns. For example, one region decided to increase vastly its forest industry. A facilitator warned that converting much of its countryside to a single species of tree would make the ecosystem vulnerable. The team responded, “Let’s do it anyway. Lumber is very profitable.” — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 1752

Categorization

• XREF: Corroborates the vault’s claim that authoritarian social dominance orientation prioritizes in-group dominance and anti-environmental extraction over collective welfare.
• SHARE: Interesting for anyone that has run or studied simulation games of global cooperation — the extractive single-species forestry exchange is a vivid teaching anecdote.