What if a society's collapse is a feature of progress, not a failure of it? Popper argues that open societies thrive on questioning and closed ones stagnate by suppressing it. But this introduces the contradiction that openness can't be preserved by any fixed set of rules as rules rigid enough to structure a society inevitably devolves the openness they're meant to protect.

The optimistic read of that problem is that the devolution is itself the corrective. Athens outpaces Sparta through openness, devolves, falls. Rome's republic succeeds it, devolves, falls. Promoting growth is then: promote openness as a principle and accept that when a society devolves, its failure clears the way for selection for increased openness.