This is a central theme in Vernor Vinge’s Deepness books. Space travel is slow (100s-1000s of years), so travellers are forced to calculate the likelihood that their destination will have experienced societal collapse by the time they arrive. The idea of a perpetually-sustained civilization is a failed dream. Technology helps societies bet larger and last longer, but also more dependent on the technology to sustain their growth.
But the population size theory says this is increasingly unlikely the larger the population gets. Even Gran Canaria was large enough to avoid the loss of crops for a thousand years, unlike the populations on the smaller islands.
