" To the already considerable perils of the crowded Neolithic complex, the superimposition of the state added an additional layer of fragility and insecurity. Taxes and warfare can serve to illustrate the added fragility. Taxes in kind (grain or livestock) or in labor obviously meant that the farmer was not only producing for the domus but had to supply a fund of rent that elites appropriated for their own subsistence and display, although the same elites might occasionally disburse stored grain in a famine to keep their population intact. "

― James C. Scott , Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States