Institutions usually help the weakest the most.
“Towns and villages turned inward (often to local strong men) to protect themselves from chaos. This isolation forced each small community to rely on its own resources and customs, most went back to the very basic governance system of kinship. People depended precariously on subsistence farming (one frost and many would starve). Written laws fell into oblivion as most people became illiterate. Law became an oral tradition of custom, different from each village to the other.”
https://apropos.substack.com/p/civilization-is-a-public-good