IMG source - Pinterest.com (slightly edited)
I wax excessively prosaic on decentralization for very good reasons. As a child I was exposed to quite egalitarian conditions at sea and deep in the forests of my island home, yet also to highly stratified society subsumed to institutions. My experience of these extremes led to strongly abhorring status and institutional power, which demonstrated intolerable abuse.
The recent murder of George Floyd well illustrates my childhood experiences, as the murderer was George's co-worker at a private club, but empowered by the institution of the state as an armed thug, in which role he executed George Floyd. It is almost impossible the two were not acquainted through their mutual employment, and the reason for the murder likely to have derived therefrom, but the ability to murder was only due to the institution of the state and the abuse it necessitates to centralize power.
As an inmate at a public school, I was once attacked by dozens of jocks, whom I had offended by my lack of deference, AND the school administration staff, who also incited my father to beat me, because he did defer to their authority.
Privately, none of them (except my father) dared so abuse me. Some made some attempts, but after their chastisement in private, failed to pursue abuse directly even in institutional settings. Nonetheless, institutions availed them of indirect means of abuse, which did not relent, as I could not attack the institution with a baseball bat. Schools have no brains to bash out.
I am struck by the instability of such institutional political power, and note that the Bronze Age ended for that very reason. It is this dynamic that has informed my recent researches into the evolution of society and what I feel is confirmation of my anecdotal experience.
Eurasia has been continuously peopled for as long as there has been people, and the ebb and flow of particular societies revelatory of the influence of social stratification on social stability and individual benefit therefrom.
The Bronze Age was marked by highly stratified societies, war, and social instability, despite the massive advances in technology that seemed to result from that stratification. Copper and tin are necessary to make bronze, and as a rule those ores aren't both available in any one region, requiring specialized craftsmen and trade to produce.
This both allowed and capitalized on institutional power, in turn enabling and dependent on abuse. Prior to the empowerment of institutions, neolithic societies were far more egalitarian and stable.
"Throughout the 2,750 years of its existence, the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture was fairly stable and static; however, there were changes that took place. This article addresses some of these changes that have to do with the economic aspects. These include the basic economic conditions of the culture, the development of trade, interaction with other cultures and the apparent use of barter tokens, an early form of money."
"Members of the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture shared common features with other Neolithic societies, including:
"An almost nonexistent social stratification
"Lack of a political elite
"Rudimentary economy, most likely a subsistence or gift economy
"Pastoralists and subsistence farmers
"Earlier societies of hunter-gatherer tribes had no social stratification, and later societies of the Bronze Age had noticeable social stratification, which saw the creation of occupational specialization, the state and social classes of individuals who were of the elite ruling or religious classes, full-time warriors and wealthy merchants, contrasted with those individuals on the other end of the economic spectrum who were poor, enslaved and hungry. In between these two economic models (the hunter-gatherer tribes and Bronze Age civilisations) we find the later Neolithic and Eneolithic societies such as the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture, where the first indications of social stratification began to be found. However, it would be a mistake to overemphasise the impact of social stratification in the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture, since it was still (even in its later phases) very much an egalitarian society. And of course, social stratification was just one of the many aspects of what is regarded as a fully established civilised society, which began to appear in the Bronze Age."
Europe: Cradle of Civilization
Another driver of power was the domestication of the horse, which enabled cavalry, and overwhelming force to be applied in war against infantry. However the most potent driver of institutional power IMHO was plague.
While the Trypillian society built the largest cities on Earth we know of at the time, up to ~50k population, those cities were abandoned and burned every 60 - 80 years, likely because of plague. Yersinia pestis has been a curse on humanity for far longer than most of us realize, reaching deep into prehistory.
Urbanization creates high concentrations of food for fleas, rats and otherwise. Eventually, Y. pestis gains a foothold, and plague begins to spread. Burning the cities to the ground cured the plague. Were these cities dependent on highly specialized crafts, such as metallurgy, politics, or war, the socities would have likely collapsed.
However, all the people had each the necessary skills to restore society, and sometimes rebuilding cities replaced the actual prior buildings in place and form. Some of these urban centers were rebuilt more than a dozen times.
South and East of Trypillian society, the steppes and Anatolia were undergoing waves of competition, and war advanced the technology of warfare and abuse with horse and bronze. The specialization necessary for such tech advance was insuperable in egalitarian society, and absent such advance they were doomed to be murdered.
In such fierce competition, they were left with a choice between submission to overlords or death by conquest. Thus were born the Yamnaya, the patriarchy, and modern institutions.
With control of plebs by overlords, the concentration of resources was undertaken, and eventually resulted in waves of conquest that overwhelmed neolithic societies like the Trypillian that had been stable for thousands of years.
One of the most valuable resources were the plebs, because from them were drawn all the other resources necessary to growth of the power of overlords. Like all other resources, the plebs were centralized - and became ripe for plague.
As conquest proceeded, so spread the plague.
Only after improved sanitation was built into urban sites was plague largely reduced, and even today it arises, still lurking on the outskirts of civilization where the poor aren't availed the same sanitary facilities, yet are subject to the same economic forces that drive their husbandry.
It was after the elimination of egalitarian, decentralized society that plague most affected society, as the cities could no longer be burned without restoring equality of status to the people. Plebs forced to live in hovels with nothing better to provide warmth than composting dung died by the tens of millions during the middle ages when plague struck.
Overlords, while not immune, were far better insulated (pun intended) from plague vectors, and despite the economic losses during pandemics, maintained their relative status during outbreaks.
It is difficult to imagine what could impel people to voluntarily remain members of a society that so abused them, but instructive to consider that they found it preferable to being burned at the stake or starving to death.
Interesting that today a similar pandemic is being invoked by the overlords of institutions when distributed means of production are developing and enabling society to restore the stability of egalitarianism.
We are blessed that the plague they tout is a hoax (the most recent CFR published by the CDC is .004, lower than that they claim for the flu by orders of magnitude). Only those incapable of surmounting the psychological abuse we have all been subjected to can be controlled by this means, and we who grasp the duplicity are being prepared for a global cull.[I note that since the end of the Ice Age, human brains have shrunk ~20%. I suspect the reason for this is that need of overlords for plebs. Bigger brained people were too smart for their own good. Neanderthals had larger brains than even our Cro Magnon ancestors. They died first.]
It is a feature of the universe that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The imposition of highly stratified institutional power thousands of years ago remains in effect, the reaction to it's imposition delayed by every means conceivable, yet inevitable.
The social structure of human civilization is most profitable when wealth and power are distributed, as it was for hundreds of millenia prior to the Bronze Age and the centralization necessary to produce the weapons of war. Today those weapons are long obsolete, eclipsed by more advanced tech that enables individuals to withstand the attacks of whole armies, yet centralized means of production have kept individuals disarmed because the means of production have been monopolized by overlords.
The cutting edge of tech advance across all industries today is decentralization, and the distribution of means of production to individuals, whom will then possess the ability to manufacture WMDs that make armies, and war, obsolete.
Even the ultimate weapon brandished today by overlords desperate to maintain their power, plague, must defer to individuals empowered to cure any ill with CRISPR and AI that are being presently developed and distributed.
The fact is that only bombing the world back into the Stone Age can keep overlords the power institutions drain from our veins. Physics mandates that decentralization is more efficient and profitable as tech advances, just as bronze mandated institutionalization and specialization. The terrible hell that has been served to people by their pitiless overlords awaits those of them that do not repent, and seek to advance just society.
If you are able to grasp means of production today, do not hesitate to do so. The nature of institutions, inhuman and inhumane, has driven them to be the possessions of the least human and humane of us, psychopaths as pleased by fear and pain as normal people are by happiness and good company. In the coming global pogrom those psychotics prepare in an attempt to retain their relative power, the lack of resources will be, as it always has been, one of the primary weapons used to destroy all who do not defer to overlords.
The restoration of human society to freedom and equality has come around full circle to where technology drove it from, because the universe is real, rational, and factual. Discard what is false, unreasonable, and fake, and become the master of your fate. The delayed reaction to enslaving the world is unstoppable, and woe to those that are in the way.
Nothing is ever precise in society, and feedback will produce corrections from over-reaction only eventually. I sure don't want to experience the over-reaction to being starved, raped, and murdered for thousands of years that is about to begin. I bet you don't either.
Best get on the right side of history, and set people free. Either become the master of your fate, or suffer the fate your masters impose.
