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Not all social systems. A deep exploration of anthropology should give you a few examples of societies that allocate resources via complex patterns of reciproc
by xapata 5y ago
Not all social systems. A deep exploration of anthropology should give you a few examples of societies that allocate resources via complex patterns of reciprocal gifting.
- mc32 5y agoFair enough. I think small isolated societies may to some degree be able to be like that, but not any current large society.
- cercatrova 5y agoI hear this argument a lot from socialists, but I have not seen one example of such a practice working in sufficiently large societies. It seems, historically, that societies of sufficient size have used some form of hierarchical control, and to lack that does not seem rooted in what we have seen already.
- xapata 5y agoPart of the problem is that hierarchical neighboring societies tend to absorb their neighbors. But, I agree that one would likely need some technology to scale up the reciprocity system. Money and the free market is a reciprocity system of you squint at it.
- inglor_cz 5y agoPretty much all the societies of today are the ones that could survive millennia of endless wars and come out of them alive. Current societal systems are selected for military prowess. (This has various exceptions, e.g. isolated places like Iceland. But there isn't any big and pacifist state out there.)