> But how can you conclude that such a society won't progress in isolation? Don't know. We aren't bees or ants - we're tribal hierarchical apes - so we don't h

> But how can you conclude that such a society won't progress in isolation? Don't know. We aren't bees or ants - we're tribal hierarchical apes - so we don't have a lot of isolated (or even positive) "everyone is equal here" examples to study. The socio-biologist E.O. Wilson, when asked about such altruistic-sounding theories, responded: "Right theory - wrong species".