What's the craziest thing we just take as granted? - eviltoast
  • JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    i’m pretty sure a shared tradition and morality handled most of what we might call ‘law.’ as for taxes, that’s something that works with lucre. the vast majority of human history did not seem to function with lucre.

    as for a threshold of 1000 individuals, i would tend to think most societies splintered in to smaller ones the larger they grew, as is natural.

    a lot of that is speculative of course, but generally seems supported by the history and clues we do have. meanwhile, what i know for sure is that this mega-society is headed for a massive collapse, and is certainly not self-sustaining, nor at equilibrium with nature. cheers.

    • arirr@social.fossware.space
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Even with all the scaling issue that having larger societies come with, I don’t see how modern technology would be doable without it. Try running a chip fabrication plant using a highly distributed workforce.

      • JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Well, we’re way, way over the overpopulation limit, with too much environmental destruction in our wake, so I guess it’s all pretty academic at this point.

        Also, I certainly don’t find that a high-tech, capitalistic civilisation is required to maintain a society with high happiness & quality of life. We already know due to multiple encounters with existing primitive peoples around the world that people can be perfectly happy, content and occupied with far more primitive tech, without money.

        That said, primitive societies can also be quite violent, stressful affairs, too.