RE: Physics Vs. Politics

Prior to the advent of agriculture, surpluses were quite limited in capacity to support specialists in warfare, and every family needed to supply all the tools and resources necessary to their lives themselves, with trade limited by such metrics as limited surpluses.

It was not possible to be an overlord, because overlords could not parasitize the production of their subjects and use that wealth to feed an army of thugs to force compliance.

There is a reason armies use firearms as the primary arm of soldiers today, and that is it is the optimum means of projecting force on subject people to compel their compliance with parasitism. WMDs cannot do this, because they cannot kick your door down at 2am and torture you until you pay up. They can only kill and destroy. The vastly improved technology that has arisen since firearms were invented about 1000 years ago is better at killing and destroying, but not at arming thugs to project force.

When people can manufacture themselves means of providing their own security, as decentralization enables them to do, they can use all manner of WMDs to kill and destroy delicate meatbags that may seek to subjugate them, because they have no need to subjugate their oppressors.

They only have to prevent being oppressed by them. It's not a fair contest. Overlords cannot parasitize what they have killed and destroyed, and cannot oppress what can absolutely kill and destroy tender thugs with facility derived from ~1000 years of technological advance.

It is not necessary to return fire when fired upon. It is far better to simply exclude threats from being able to lay fire on you at all. A few moments thought should suffice to enable you to realize several means of this being easily accomplished - by people that can manufacture the requisite means themselves, rather than being limited to acquiring it from the overlords, as centralization can make possible.