Ape hierarchies, at least within the troops, are mostly about mating not resource distribution. It’s not like the alpha male gets first pick of the fruit and all the other chimps wait until he’s done and then go in hierarchical order, they just disperse and grab what they can.
If you want to go down an essentialist path most pre-agricultural societies were anarchic. There may be a chief but they “ruled” at the discretion of the tribe. The chief, or anyone really, couldn’t hoard resources because
they couldnt monopolize violence and coerce people since there’s no specialization in anything much less violence so violence becomes a numbers game.
There’s only so much you can carry. Pre agricultural tribes were nomadic mostly and when the tribe moves camps you have to carry everything with you. So even if you were able to hoard enough food that won’t rot you won’t be able to carry it to the next camp.
Because of the above, wealth isn’t really a thing. This forces cooperation because without wealth, the individual can’t protect themselves from hardship. Selfish individualism only works if you’re able to build up some wealth to act as a buffer for leaner times. If you don’t have that wealth then you’re reliant on your social connections so you tend to cooperate and redistribute because it’s in your best interest to stay in good standing with the group so they will help you in harsher times.
All this changes with agriculture and the invention of wealth, first in grain then in gold and then stocks etc. Now your dependence on society is directly porportional to how much wealth you have, to the point where really rich people can fuck off to a cabin or island and never work or contribute to society ever again.
Violence specialization also becomes more or less a thing, increasing up until the invention of firearms at which point it becomes more of a numbers game and the hierarchies lessen.
All of this is to say that hierarchy is not natural, but the result of the ability to accumulate wealth combined with violence specialization and monopolization. If we get rid of those two concepts then anarchy may take over, how we do that in the modern world is another question.
I have a theory about us returning to our natural state as our end game, but I haven’t put it down to paper yet. That being said, for now, it’s either all the good things industrialization has brought (along with the bad of course) or we return to the short brutish lives we lived before agriculture.
Anarchy at this point has no real way of being implemented without another state forming the moment we decide we can do better than die short tragic lives.
Ape hierarchies, at least within the troops, are mostly about mating not resource distribution. It’s not like the alpha male gets first pick of the fruit and all the other chimps wait until he’s done and then go in hierarchical order, they just disperse and grab what they can.
If you want to go down an essentialist path most pre-agricultural societies were anarchic. There may be a chief but they “ruled” at the discretion of the tribe. The chief, or anyone really, couldn’t hoard resources because
they couldnt monopolize violence and coerce people since there’s no specialization in anything much less violence so violence becomes a numbers game.
There’s only so much you can carry. Pre agricultural tribes were nomadic mostly and when the tribe moves camps you have to carry everything with you. So even if you were able to hoard enough food that won’t rot you won’t be able to carry it to the next camp.
Because of the above, wealth isn’t really a thing. This forces cooperation because without wealth, the individual can’t protect themselves from hardship. Selfish individualism only works if you’re able to build up some wealth to act as a buffer for leaner times. If you don’t have that wealth then you’re reliant on your social connections so you tend to cooperate and redistribute because it’s in your best interest to stay in good standing with the group so they will help you in harsher times.
All this changes with agriculture and the invention of wealth, first in grain then in gold and then stocks etc. Now your dependence on society is directly porportional to how much wealth you have, to the point where really rich people can fuck off to a cabin or island and never work or contribute to society ever again.
Violence specialization also becomes more or less a thing, increasing up until the invention of firearms at which point it becomes more of a numbers game and the hierarchies lessen.
All of this is to say that hierarchy is not natural, but the result of the ability to accumulate wealth combined with violence specialization and monopolization. If we get rid of those two concepts then anarchy may take over, how we do that in the modern world is another question.
I have a theory about us returning to our natural state as our end game, but I haven’t put it down to paper yet. That being said, for now, it’s either all the good things industrialization has brought (along with the bad of course) or we return to the short brutish lives we lived before agriculture.
Anarchy at this point has no real way of being implemented without another state forming the moment we decide we can do better than die short tragic lives.