Societal growth and development, while advantageous to societies in many ways, are not unmixed blessings.  They create new problems and these often lead to changes that many members of society would prefer not to make--changes in beliefs and values, changes in patterns of social organization, changes in institutional arrangements.  Among preliterate societies, for example, technological advance often leads to population growth, and population growth necessitates changes in social organization.  Such societies must choose either to split up into smaller independent groups in order to preserve their traditional kin-based system of governance, or to remain united but adopt a more authoritarian political system that is dominated by a small elite minority (1991, p. 61-62).