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[dragdeler]

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[bloop_bleep]

No no no. No formal government or enforcement. Decisions are made informally as a group. No notion of inequality from birth. No imposition of power, only healthy respect for and guidance from reputable, seasoned group members. People work together to accomplish things, because, well, that's required anyway. How much closer to anarchy can you get?

[Reelya]

Tribal government only arose after agriculture.

bloop_bleep is correct that for 95% of human history there was no hierarchy or government, because that predates the development of agriculture.

But as soon as intensive farming comes into the mix things change completely. So the argument that "tribes" were still hierarchical is wrong because that fundamentally misunderstands where the schism is here. The Zulu or Hawaiian tribal structures for example were heavily based on agriculture, these were not the hunter-gatherer tribes that we're talking about by any means.

[Egan_BW]

Technically that wasn't history, yet. :p

[scriver]

Tribal government only arose after agriculture.

I'm guessing there's a very particular definition behind that cursive

bloop_bleep is correct that for 95% of human history there was no hierarchy or government, because that predates the development of agriculture.

How would anyone even know to make this conclusion?

[kaijyuu]

ITT: people look at the culture they grew up in and assume it's universal

Also the strange logic of asserting that humans are selfish AND it's better that some individuals have more power than others.

[Reelya]

Tribal government only arose after agriculture.

I'm guessing there's a very particular definition behind that cursive

Yes, because pre-agricultural societies everywhere, and they do exist, don't have anything that we could call a government. We call both hunter-gatherers and agricultural communities "tribes" in common parlance, throwing all "primitive" peoples into one pot and then we just assume we know the traits that apply. For example you assume that a "tribe" has a chief, a shaman, heir to the chiefdom, that kind of thing. But hunter-gatherer tribes don't have any of these things. Emphasizing the word government was because that's where you get those things, not from the general concept that the word "tribe" is used to cover.

bloop_bleep is correct that for 95% of human history there was no hierarchy or government, because that predates the development of agriculture.

How would anyone even know to make this conclusion?

Quite basically, since we can observe remaining hunter-gatherer societies and they all have strong commonalities. When all your possessions are what you carry around with you, power structures don't make any sense. There's nothing to control, no way to really control people. If someone is an asshole or tries to "take power" then if you're only carrying what you own you just split off and wander somewhere else.

[scriver]

How are you going to do that? You make the other person carry more stuff for you and less for himself

[NullForceOmega]

And throughout more than 95% of human history there weren't multi-million member nations, and there weren't 7.7 billion people on the planet, with all the logistical nightmares that come with keeping them alive.  Why the hell are you comparing the current situation, where vast numbers of people, far more than any individual can actually conceptualize or empathize with have to be made to cooperate in order to accomplish anything to hunter gatherer societies?  Sounds like some really serious false equivalence there.

[bloop_bleep]

It was a counterpoint to the statement that humans are "selfish bastards." No, we're really not. In our most natural state we are the near opposite of that.

[NullForceOmega]

I'll agree to that point to an extent, we are however instinctualy coded to seek and acquire resources, and in some people it goes too far.  And that isn't anything new, a deep hatred of theft (and by extension, greed) is built into us on a primal level, because it endangers the group when an individual hordes for their own advantage.

That said, we don't exist in that environment, and we probably won't again until our species is about to become extinct.  We deal with the now, with all the changes in psyche and social conditioning that comes with it, so I still think the point is false equivalence.

[Egan_BW]

If we can just automate all the industry and stuff, we could retire as a species to a more luxurious version of our natural state. Perfect transhumanist / anprim hybrid state.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

The very point of the critique is that we are organizing in a way that encourages us to be lead by sociopaths and kill each other, even though nobody wants that. We are organized this way intentionally, not by happenstance.

And as such, we should take lessons from the humanity present in hunter-gatherer organization, in seeking to not be organized like we are.

[NullForceOmega]

Then by all means, define a better layout for organization.  To be clear, I am not advocating that we should have people who are mentally unsound in positions of power, or that our current system is in any way 'correct' (or even good) but it is the logical outcome of the growth of the system.  We can observe this as it happens repeatedly in recorded history.

While the last century of that growth has clearly been manipulated (from inside, by its own selection pressures), all of it is very much an organic outgrowth of the basic need for organization.  Further, we are able, through our own records, to observe that there is a clear pattern, and that pattern happens no matter how we seek to organize.

Historically the only recourse to corrupt power structures is to pull them down and start over, then, in right around two hundred years, do it again.

I can envision no method of organization that does not have the same weaknesses in its structure that every preceding one has.  So it is very likely that it is not possible for a human mind to adequately conceptualize the system we would require to avoid the problems you are concerned with without utilizing the same method of iteration that we have been using for around ten thousand years now.  Because one thing we definitely are not, is capable of the level of long-term planning that would allow us to overcome the weaknesses of our systems.

Edit: Now, that probably comes off as a bit more confrontational than it is intended, sorry about that.  What I'm trying to say is that there do not appear to be an reasonable alternatives available to any of humanity at this point in time, ad I would actually be interested in seeing if anyone has some workable ideas, because I have nothing, and as far as I can tell, there aren't any functional options in any discussions anywhere.

[Egan_BW]

It seems like we've had kings, and classes, and spymasters and armies and wars pretty much constantly since Agriculture. Not to be pessimistic, but it seems fairly likely that all that will keep happening due to the interplay between human nature and our present state (huge communities, stationary settlements, long range transportation, and constant fast technological development) until we run into a change as large as agriculture again.

Or maybe it just takes iteration over a long period of time. I mean, we've gotten various forms of democracy over time, which seems to serve the population better than systems which came before. I just want to point out that the problems we face are pretty recent compared to the existence of humans, but are still really about as old as history.