Alternate explanation: ratfic tends to come out this way because it prioritizes a certain kind of economic / game-theoretic realism, and in the long term multi-polar equilibria just aren’t that realistic in many settings (including, IMO, our present non-fictional setting...).
I generally think rationalists gesture at this as inevitable more than they actually demonstrate that it is inevitable; i.e., long term multi-polar equilibria has been quite sticky for Westphalian states or for plankton.
Eh, conversely I think that historical examples that are not at the technological and competitive frontier are not very useful for reasoning about the limiting behavior and outcomes of AGI. History, nature, and business are full of examples of both unipolar and multipolar dynamics that were at equilibria for a while… until they were disrupted in some form or another, often forcefully and suddenly.
I generally think rationalists gesture at this as inevitable more than they actually demonstrate that it is inevitable; i.e., long term multi-polar equilibria has been quite sticky for Westphalian states or for plankton.
Eh, conversely I think that historical examples that are not at the technological and competitive frontier are not very useful for reasoning about the limiting behavior and outcomes of AGI. History, nature, and business are full of examples of both unipolar and multipolar dynamics that were at equilibria for a while… until they were disrupted in some form or another, often forcefully and suddenly.