The underlying causes of the problem are both mathematical and human. While the mathematical causes are reasonably well understood by experts, I think the book Sapiens covers the human factors quite well.

A tidbit from the book is that humans works well in a tribe size of ~150 and anything larger requires a cohesive belief system that ties tribes together. According to the author, examples of such belief systems are religions and corporations. The author goes much deeper and no part of the book was boring. I highly recommend reading the book, it's a much more distilled version of the comment section.