Tuchman put it succinctly, “Chief among the forces affecting political folly is lust for power, named by Tacitus as ‘the most flagrant of all passions.’” As a result of lust for power, Ester Island chiefs and Maya kings acted so as to accelerate deforestation rather than to prevent it: their status depended on their putting up bigger statues and monuments than their rivals. They were trapped in a competitive spiral, such that any chief or king who put up smaller statues or monuments to spare the forests would have been scorned and lost his job. That’s a regular problem with competitions
