> As for why people would choose to live in more egalitarian forms
The question is not why would people choose to live under supposed egalitarianism, but why would that be the default system. It relies on non-betrayal behavior across multiple actors in whom power is vested, which depends on many non-intuitive cultural innovations in thinking about your peers and social responsibility. Feudalism is at least straightforwardly plausible as the point towards which high entropy systems descend. Conversely, it's very hard to see how democratic communalism would just spontaneously emerge and maintain itself without consistent effort and cooperation, both fragile dependencies.
More egaletarian societies usual win wars against more tyrannical societies, provided similar size/ conditions
Two reasons:
1 - More egalitarian societies are more efficiient - they produce more because exploited peasants are not peoductive
2 - Who wans to die to protect their tyrant?
Zero growth can also mean that it is not possible to be more or less efficient. If labor efficiency is not correlated with productivity - then there may not be any economic incentive to well organize labor.
As an example - historically agricultural productivity was not a question of labor organization, or labor efficiency. A farmer could only grow but so much food with the land aloted, available water, and crop/fertilizer technology of the time. This amount was relatively close to subsistence.
The sowing of crops could be made more efficient in terms of person hours. But, without a production surplus, and no additional land to cultivate - there wasn’t much else for the individuals to do with the surplus hours.
Similarly, in a modern society labor productivity can be decoupled with economic output. Google search will be the dominant search engine regardless if it’s engineering team is efficient or inefficient.
This is true of some key areas, such as farming. But industry and at least some service sectors tend to benefit a lot from scaling up. Walmart is incredibly efficient, and Amazon only more so.
People like [Sam Walton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Walton) born in poor farmer family or [Jeff Bezos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos) son of 17 year old high school student mother and 19 years old father would have very low chances to succeed in not egalitarian societies. More talented people get opportunity to use their abilities, more Walmart's will be created.
You are confusing apparent wealth of a plantation with efficiency - all the people that are forced to work there could have been doctors, blacksmiths, etc. and contributing much more to the economy.
Just because they are exploited profitably, does not mean thats their best contribution to the economy. Its just that their more efficiebt aopkication camkot be easilly privatised
You a missing the point, and bringing in a strawman.
The point was, these people COULD do more than move boxes from A to B, could have been more productive, and could contribute more to the economy, if they were provided training.
Why they didn't get training is irrelevant - you can debate all day if Wallmart or Obama is at fault. But you don't get any credit for making humans move boxes A to B like monkeys. If they took a bunch of homeless people and made them into engineers, then yes, that would be noteworthy.
As to your starman - you could find a homeless person and cruely exploit them, by offering them dangerous work or getting them into prostitution. It could make you a lot of money if done at scale, and most people would call you a terrible person.
You did not make them homeless to begin with, but I think most people would not buy that as something that vindicates you.
But suddenly if your name is Amazon then it has a veneer of a respectable business.
> The point was, these people COULD do more than move boxes from A to B, could have been more productive, and could contribute more to the economy, if they were provided training.
Yes, they could, but what does that have to do with Walmart or Amazon?
And, at least for now, boxes need moving.
You persist in your belief that offering someone an "opportunity" that you don't like is exploiting them. It isn't, no matter how bad that opportunity is.
As to people with no good alternatives, that's on you as much as it is Walmart and Amazon.
Democratic communalism can sustain itself perfectly fine at the scale of a small village, or a neighborhood in a small town, or a single condo/HOA in a big city or suburban area. The whole question is what to do beyond that scale.
We have evidence that communalism (or at least something similar to it) has worked at large scales in the past. In fact, it ought to be one of the easiest things to get to work, because you don't have to coerce anyone of anything.
I trust my two-year old to carry his glass to the table because I've given him the opportunity to show me he can be trusted with that.
I don't trust my two-year old to not fall down stairs because I've given him the opportunity to show me he can be trusted with that and he has failed to show it.
That's how it works in an egalitarian society too. You give people a chance to show they can be trusted. If they fail to show that, you stop trusting them.
Based on personal experience I don't see communal societies scaling. When you have a small homogeneous group of individuals trust isn't a issue because people are bound by blood, culture, ethnicity and everyone knows each other intimately but for larger groups instead of a big family you have multiple groups fighting for power and resources. So unless the society have mechanisms to deal with it it's fated to fail. Our present societies have many in place: private property, courts arbitration, elected representatives, etc.
Your contributions to this thread have the tone of a wishful, rosey, cherry-picking trip through history motivated by the desire to arrive at a predestined conclusion: that we all should be living in a Communist utopia today, because it's logically the easiest and most available organizing system for humans. Therefore, we don't live in that world today only because intense energy and effort is directed into maintaining a non-optimal status quo.
At least please provide some specific and tangible reasons why you believe this is so obviously true, instead of repeatedly alluding to these numerous, incontrovertible, imminently applicable examples. Your statements are, I imagine for most readers, directly opposed to what history has shown about human nature and the nature of power.
I'm sorry it comes off as cherry-picked and rosey. My only intention was to supply a perspective that I felt was missing, namely that of the anarchist. Had I felt another perspective been missing, I would have been more than happy to cherry pick the things I didn't need to bring up now.
Yes, I do honestly believe the wealth- and power-preservation interests of the few are one of the reasons we live in such undemocratic forms today.
Yes, I have experienced various forms of organisation in both the big and the small, along the authoritarianism--democracy axis, and the more democratic have consistently been the better, in almost all respects except that they make it hard to amass wealth and transform it into power over others.
If you want, I can refer to many more well-reasoned criticisms of capitalism than I can author. But it sounds like you'd be familiar with those already, so I'm not sure it would help you change your mind.
Let's assume that there's a consistent and coherent definition of socialism which could be applied to all of these civilizations, which there isn't. Rank these historical civilizations by technological progress, quality of life, territory held, and population. You won't find historical proto-socialism at the top end of that list. Why is that?
> You won't find historical proto-socialism at the top end of that list. Why is that?
Interesting thesis, now prove it!
First of all you're conflating two arguments, excessive governments and socialism.
Excessive government in the past was bad because bureaucracy was slow, meaning physically slow.
Proto-socialism or community driven government made it possible for people to form smaller communities inside larger settlements where they could offload some of the burden to others in a mutually supportive way.
People scared today of government intervention think they still live a thousand years ago. Like that country that wait 11 weeks between election and inauguration of a new president because the process was designed around stagecoaches that brought the votes to the capital.
Secondly: your question is frankly showing that you went straight to the comments without even reading what I wrote Socialism is what *bootstrapped* many ancient human communities, the answer is there.
We are talking about spontaneous and "default economic system" after all, not the best at something.
If you really think ranking historical civilizations means anything, well you'll agree that Egyptians were quite THE civilization, does that mean that the best way to run a country is having a semi-god Pharaoh that builds pyramids in the desert?
The US is a glitch in history compares to what ancient Egyptian or Romans or Chinese or Greek or Mongols have achieved, it's quite possible that how the US are run today is a glitch in history as well that do not depend by the way they are run but only by the position they found themselves in after WW2, inertia is a bitch, it took centuries for the roman empire to fall.
They are in fact challenged (and somewhat defeates) by China, which is [drum roll] a socialist country!
It's quite possible that if the US switched to the political system of France or Sweden they would be as rich as today.
Also, to counter your naive argument: the Minoans.
And do ancient Greek qualify?
scholars have extensively argued that Plato and Aristotle led the foundation of socialism in their philosophies (it is now accepts that Marx was influenced by his ancient Greek studies)
The argument challenges a widespread interpretation of the connection between antiquity and socialism in Marx's work-that his socialist vision takes its bearings from the Aristotelian understanding of the relationship between necessity and leisure. In Marx's view, the fundamental legacy of antiquity was the notion of freedom as masterlessness. The roots of this legacy are in the political experience of the democratic polis, not in Aristotle's reflections on the ideal household. The core of Marx's project, then, is not to open a realm of freedom beyond necessity, but rather to create spaces for democratic action within the realm of necessity itself, to ensure that work is free and compatible with leisured activities. [1]
All work and no play, which is much more common in the US that here in Europe, makes Jack a dull boy.
Socialism and proto socialism have and will keep having a much longer history and importance than feudalism will never have and occur much more spontaneously and "by default" than many other systems, especially today that we should be more aware of our limited time on Earth and much less addicted to sacrifice for the benefit of the few (AKA the masters).
The question is not why would people choose to live under supposed egalitarianism, but why would that be the default system. It relies on non-betrayal behavior across multiple actors in whom power is vested, which depends on many non-intuitive cultural innovations in thinking about your peers and social responsibility. Feudalism is at least straightforwardly plausible as the point towards which high entropy systems descend. Conversely, it's very hard to see how democratic communalism would just spontaneously emerge and maintain itself without consistent effort and cooperation, both fragile dependencies.