I've always had the impression that societal corruption,

Not sure but Google "population growth and crime" or something like that. This was the first result:

https://www.anu.edu.au/fellows/jbraithwaite/_documents/Articles/1975_Population%20Growth%20and%20Crime.pdf

>>3344224
It's not only about crime, it's about any possible unethical act. If anything crime scares me less than unethical predatory capitalism and corrupted politics, for their effects as more vast in their scale.

Basically, I'm sure on wether a honest government and economy can be possible at all once you get a population of tenths of millions of people.

>>3344259
>lives within the paradigm of an oligarchy
>cant imagine an honest government or economy
go figure.
i can solve both with a single change in how representatives for governments are selected.

>>3344214
It's not a problem of sheer scale, it's a problem of concentration and alienation.
You could theoretically have some country with 50 million people living in close-knit villages with little authority at the national level. Or you can have those tiny African kleptocracies where 2 million people are completely at the mercy of the elites in the capital and there is constant tribal to decide which asshole gets to be in charge.
(See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatekeeper_state )

>>3344214
>more people
>more people doing something
who could've predicted this tragedy

>>3344472
And with more people certain forms of vice and crime become possible that simply wouldn't be with less people and population density. Cities with millions of people are like alien worlds compared to countries where large tracks of lands have the same population.

I think OP is in part right, but it's overpopulation combined with the fact that we live in societies where there are no clear moral values anymore(even religion is seen as stupid superstition) ,
and wealth and fame are seen as the only goals to be achieved. This is probably what causes this '' decadence'' but again it's just my opinion

>>3344214
this >>3344440
I also question the mechanics of it. The problem isn't that you have to walk past a bunch of strangers to get to the anime club where all your friends are. The problem is you make no effort to reach out to the strangers, you have your nerdy friends with the same interests, you can basically act as much as a cunt as you want towards everyone else.

Then there is the perennial problem of basing morality on sentimentalism. A society where everyone feels connected to everyone else will fall apart if these emotional connections are broken.

Religion attempts to solve both these problems by making everyone come to church each week and creating an abstract morality, though its execution is flawed and unappealing to the modern mind.

I don't know what the solution is. Maybe educate people about the psychological underpinnings of their emotions, why people feel the need to beat their wives and such. Maybe convince people of the dangers of excess.

>>3344214
It's population density at a sufficiently large scale. Values don't mean shit when you don't know even a tenth of the people living in the same building as you, you simply can't feel accountable because the city is too big to generate a sense of social cohesion. There's no going back to a time when people lived in countryside villages and farms, so proposing that as a solution is quite worthless.

Also, capitalism is inherently unethical so that's pretty redundant.