I recommend reading The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber for more details on societal structures of the past
Comment on Communism
JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 1 week agoCurious, what small scale examples are you thinking of? Those might be a good model.
Just trying things and seeing what sticks puts millions of lives on the line. Seems risky. But maybe eventually we can predict mass human behavior well enough to develop a control loop that keeps an unstable system stable without succumbing to selfishness/power grabbing? But that seems dangerously close to just hoping AGI will save us all.
niartenyaw@midwest.social 6 days ago
JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
But which ones? Were they religious communities? Hunter gatherers such that centralization was less advantageous?
niartenyaw@midwest.social 6 days ago
Some examples in the book include the Wendat people and Teotihuacan. You can also check out the book’s wiki page en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything.
One of the core conclusions of the book that you may find interesting (quote from the wiki):
Based on their accumulated discussions, the authors conclude by proposing a reframing of the central questions of human history. Instead of the origins of inequality, they suggest that our central dilemma is the question of how modern societies have lost the qualities of flexibility and political creativity that were once more common.
sevan@lemmy.ca 6 days ago
There have been many groups that form communes within a larger system. Sometimes its built around a religion (or cult), sometimes around various ideals, like artist communes. In my opinion, what makes these work is that they’re small (your reputation matters), people join it voluntarily, and people can be kicked out if they don’t uphold the ideals. So, you don’t need a state to enforce the rules aside from a mechanism to remove people who don’t participate fairly. And because they are within a larger entity, they don’t have to deal with things like national security or foreign affairs. I don’t think that model scales to a national level.
JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Yeah I agree. If people don’t have a relationship with everyone, that sort of reputation model would be hard, so it wouldn’t scale well.
MITM0@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Like the Amish people ?
sevan@lemmy.ca 5 days ago
I don’t know a lot about the Amish, but possibly. From what I know, it seems like they embody some of the core principles in terms of contributing to the community and managing a balanced, relatively equal society. I don’t know anything about their religion, so I don’t know if there is a level of control from church leaders that might be more of a centralized control structure. But they might be an example. You can also search for examples of hippie communes or artist collectives.