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> All attempts for a perfectly equal economy, that I'm aware of, have ended in disaster. Sometimes horrifically. I guess the tens of thousands of years from wh

> All attempts for a perfectly equal economy, that I'm aware of, have ended in disaster. Sometimes horrifically. I guess the tens of thousands of years from when humans were painting on caves to the first manifestation of a class society 10000 years ago was a horrific disaster.

WaitWaitWha 4y ago
Can you site your reference or foundation for your comment please? Like to see a counter-point to what my understanding is. I was always under the understanding that inequality was horrific 'tens of thousands of years from when humans were painting on caves'. If I was not producing enough for the tribe or group I would be left behind or worse. The strong ones had the most food, women, and best spot in the 'cave' i.e. inequality.
- geraldyo 4y ago
  Here's one example: https://www.denverpost.com/2012/12/17/archaeologists-find-prehistoric-humans-cared-for-sick-and-disabled/ https://www.denverpost.com/2012/12/17/archaeologists-find-pr... https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/science/ancient-bones-that-tell-a-story-of-compassion.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/science/ancient-bones-tha...
- VictorPath 4y ago
  > If I was not producing enough for the tribe or group I would be left behind or worse. The strong ones had the most food, women, and best spot in the 'cave' i.e. inequality. There were no known tribes over ten thousand years ago, there were bands. In your perception, children abandoned their parents to death when they aged, which is not behavior anthropologists observed in modern hunter gatherer bands. Also, anthropologists observer modern hunter gatherer bands eating gathered berries and the hunt in communal meals. You do not have one man with multiple wives/concubines/mistresses in the manner of the class societies following this - although often all the fertile men and women who are not close relations are sleeping with one another. Your picture of pre-class society does not jibe with archeological finds of old societies or anthropological observations of modern ones.
cameronh90 4y ago
I am indeed not aware how those societies worked, and I put that caveat in there because I knew someone would probably say we what about cavemen or something. But I'm not sure you can really compare cavemen to the past 6000 or so years of attempting society at scale. For one there's fairly limited understanding of what those societies were really like. Discussions about how they were attempting to architect their economy are likely to run into walls pretty quickly. Do we have anything to suggest they were perfectly equal? Secondly, I think the constraints are much different when you're talking a few family groups mostly eating and hunting, where everyone knew and personally cared for each other, rather than 8 billion people in a highly developed and interconnected global economy. I suspect a lot of societal features and economy in general is just due to the need to scale out trust. Many things are easier when you have almost perfect knowledge of everything that's going on in your tiny group, but the larger that group gets the more you need to invent abstractions like money. The closest things that exist to those societies now is probably families or partnerships, which can operate on a broadly equal basis - though even they often don't.

WaitWaitWha 4y ago

Can you site your reference or foundation for your comment please? Like to see a counter-point to what my understanding is. I was always under the understanding that inequality was horrific 'tens of thousands of years from when humans were painting on caves'. If I was not producing enough for the tribe or group I would be left behind or worse. The strong ones had the most food, women, and best spot in the 'cave' i.e. inequality.

geraldyo 4y ago
Here's one example: https://www.denverpost.com/2012/12/17/archaeologists-find-prehistoric-humans-cared-for-sick-and-disabled/ https://www.denverpost.com/2012/12/17/archaeologists-find-pr... https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/science/ancient-bones-that-tell-a-story-of-compassion.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/science/ancient-bones-tha...
VictorPath 4y ago
> If I was not producing enough for the tribe or group I would be left behind or worse. The strong ones had the most food, women, and best spot in the 'cave' i.e. inequality. There were no known tribes over ten thousand years ago, there were bands. In your perception, children abandoned their parents to death when they aged, which is not behavior anthropologists observed in modern hunter gatherer bands. Also, anthropologists observer modern hunter gatherer bands eating gathered berries and the hunt in communal meals. You do not have one man with multiple wives/concubines/mistresses in the manner of the class societies following this - although often all the fertile men and women who are not close relations are sleeping with one another. Your picture of pre-class society does not jibe with archeological finds of old societies or anthropological observations of modern ones.

cameronh90 4y ago

I am indeed not aware how those societies worked, and I put that caveat in there because I knew someone would probably say we what about cavemen or something. But I'm not sure you can really compare cavemen to the past 6000 or so years of attempting society at scale. For one there's fairly limited understanding of what those societies were really like. Discussions about how they were attempting to architect their economy are likely to run into walls pretty quickly. Do we have anything to suggest they were perfectly equal? Secondly, I think the constraints are much different when you're talking a few family groups mostly eating and hunting, where everyone knew and personally cared for each other, rather than 8 billion people in a highly developed and interconnected global economy. I suspect a lot of societal features and economy in general is just due to the need to scale out trust. Many things are easier when you have almost perfect knowledge of everything that's going on in your tiny group, but the larger that group gets the more you need to invent abstractions like money. The closest things that exist to those societies now is probably families or partnerships, which can operate on a broadly equal basis - though even they often don't.