Applied to populations with recent hunter-gatherer ancestry...
This is incredibly dumb. Like, succinctly sums up why I don’t take Curtis here seriously. First, agriculture popped up in many places almost simultaneously, so the only large area that has been mostly hunter gatherer until recently is Australia, and the population there came from boat builders. (Interestingly the population of Madagascar was settled by boat, from Polynesia, not from Africa.) Second, remaining hunter gatherer populations are small, and were incredibly ravaged by disease in the very recent past.
The biggest issue though is an average hunter gatherer has to have a huge diversity of skills compared to an average modern. They have to know a lot more about more kinds of plants. Making fire and tools. They aren’t and weren’t dumb compared to moderns.
They were also much more egalitarian, even than modern democracies. Hunter Gatherers often have a “Reverse Dominance Hierarchy” where there is a leader, but they are very much not allowed to make the other society members do what the leader wants, and if the leader tries they get mocked and ignored.
it’s not a coincidence that all functional non-government organizations are organized as monarchies, with an owner or CEO[14]
Monarchy is a really weird way to categorize this, especially given footnote 14. Even more so once you account for most companies having voting by the shareholders at large. Like, the “citizens” of the company are the shareholders; the workers are just cogs or components of the metamachine the shareholders own together. A CEO is a lot more like the leader of a band of hunter gatherers (and the POTUS is similar to both) than they are like a king.
Applied to populations with recent hunter-gatherer ancestry...
This is incredibly dumb. Like, succinctly sums up why I don’t take Curtis here seriously.
I think you’ve quite thoroughly misunderstood the significance of that line.
It’s indicative, not explanatory.
Like, the “citizens” of the company are the shareholders; the workers are just cogs or components of the metamachine the shareholders own together.
This is a really bizarre model, which seems to me to dramatically reduce one’s ability to understand how corporations work and what goes on within them. It’s much, much weirder than thinking of a corporation as a monarchy.
A CEO is a lot more like the leader of a band of hunter gatherers (and the POTUS is similar to both) than they are like a king.
The relationship of a CEO to his subordinates, and the nature and form of his authority over them, are defined in rules and formal structures—which is true of a king but false of a hunter-gatherer band leader. The President, likewise.
The relationship of a CEO to his subordinates, and the nature and form of his authority over them, are defined in rules and formal structures—which is true of a king but false of a hunter-gatherer band leader. The President, likewise.
Eh. This is true in extremis, but the everyday interaction that structures how decisions actually get made, can be very different. The formal structure primarily defines what sorts of interactions the state will enforce for you. But if you have to get the state to enforce interactions within your company, things have gone very far off track. The social praxis in everyday CEO life may genuinely be closer to a pack leader—particularly if they want their company to actually be effective.
This is incredibly dumb. Like, succinctly sums up why I don’t take Curtis here seriously. First, agriculture popped up in many places almost simultaneously, so the only large area that has been mostly hunter gatherer until recently is Australia, and the population there came from boat builders. (Interestingly the population of Madagascar was settled by boat, from Polynesia, not from Africa.) Second, remaining hunter gatherer populations are small, and were incredibly ravaged by disease in the very recent past.
The biggest issue though is an average hunter gatherer has to have a huge diversity of skills compared to an average modern. They have to know a lot more about more kinds of plants. Making fire and tools. They aren’t and weren’t dumb compared to moderns.
They were also much more egalitarian, even than modern democracies. Hunter Gatherers often have a “Reverse Dominance Hierarchy” where there is a leader, but they are very much not allowed to make the other society members do what the leader wants, and if the leader tries they get mocked and ignored.
Monarchy is a really weird way to categorize this, especially given footnote 14. Even more so once you account for most companies having voting by the shareholders at large. Like, the “citizens” of the company are the shareholders; the workers are just cogs or components of the metamachine the shareholders own together. A CEO is a lot more like the leader of a band of hunter gatherers (and the POTUS is similar to both) than they are like a king.
I think you’ve quite thoroughly misunderstood the significance of that line.
It’s indicative, not explanatory.
This is a really bizarre model, which seems to me to dramatically reduce one’s ability to understand how corporations work and what goes on within them. It’s much, much weirder than thinking of a corporation as a monarchy.
The relationship of a CEO to his subordinates, and the nature and form of his authority over them, are defined in rules and formal structures—which is true of a king but false of a hunter-gatherer band leader. The President, likewise.
Eh. This is true in extremis, but the everyday interaction that structures how decisions actually get made, can be very different. The formal structure primarily defines what sorts of interactions the state will enforce for you. But if you have to get the state to enforce interactions within your company, things have gone very far off track. The social praxis in everyday CEO life may genuinely be closer to a pack leader—particularly if they want their company to actually be effective.
That’s no less true of a king.
Granted! I’d say it’s a matter of degrees, and of who exactly you need to convince.
Maybe there’s no point in considering these separate modes of interaction at all.
Most sources say they came to Australia via land bridge. You may be thinking of Polynesians, which are another group.