Citation neeeeeeded. Many of history's "golden ages" have been chiefly defined by a cessation of expansion.
We've already established why this crap continues to be crap. We're not talking about predictions of the future here, we are talking about a comparison of historical systems to our current one with an eye on refinement.However this point I just made doesn't matter at all because you should never ever used repeated historical observations to reason about anything, especially the future.
They do tell us when to stop repeating the same mistakes, like exploiting resources indefinitely. Rapa Nui says hi.For example capitalism could be system in which the most progress has happened for the last 300 years, or the last 3 million years, it makes zero difference since historical numbers mean nothing whatsoever and have no bearing on what causes things to fail or succeed.