THE KHALDUN TRAP : On the Six-Hundred-Year-Old Model of Group Decay, the Attractor as Its Economic Mechanism, and Why the Cycle Predicts Displacement Rather Than Reform

The standard account of tech-harm falls into two registers: they did it for the money and they didn't mean it. Neither explains the pattern. This paper offers a third: a group that rises by serving a need loses the capacity to serve it,as the solidarity that produced the service is consumed by the prosperity that followed it. The mechanism was described by Ibn Khaldun in 1377 and has been confirmed by everydynasty, empire, and industry that mistook its own success for permanence. The correspondence with Silicon Valley is close on four measures: origin in hardship, service to a real need, generational shift in motive, and the closing of the circuit. The corpus's attractor explains the economics of the shift. Khaldun explains the arc. The prediction follows, and it is not a prediction of reform. The cycle ends with displacement. The alternative is already being built outside the bowl — and Khaldun, writing six centuriesbefore the first transistor, predicted exactly that move.