Social complexity expands to fill all available space, up to the carrying capacity of the system.

This happens because social complexity emerges from a recursive process.

If I think about what you're thinking, it gives me an edge to make a decision at an additional ply than you are, allowing me to best you.

But if you think about what I'm thinking you're thinking, it gives you an edge.

There's always an edge from thinking one additional ply than your fellow players.

Each player will individually be incentivized to add one more ply of thinking if they have room.

This is a runaway recursive process that absorbs all available space for everyone.

And now the system as a whole depends on this complexity; if you try to remove it, you might find that other emergent effects rely on it and that it's load bearing.

For example, maybe you have an emergent ruinous empathy kind of culture; removing some of the plys of social complexity might move you to the obnoxious aggression quadrant… but with an employee population that has been selected for and honed for ruinous empathy, leading to an explosion.

The incremental step for an organization to gain more output capacity is to add an additional net head.

But instead of that net head going mainly to output, the new capacity goes mostly towards more load-bearing social complexity.

These emergent social phenomena emerge even if everyone is aware of the dynamics and dislikes them.

Political games are ones that no one wants to play and yet everyone is forced to play or be knocked out of the game.

An emergent, inescapable tragedy.