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meanwrightI know I haven't finished the other one, but I want to address some additional ideas:
(1) The Double Coincidence of Exchange.
The need for brokers is much greater in pre-money societies than I was thinking. I hadn't seen the connection before, but the very fact that exchange only happens in I have something you want an you have something I want, unless we can find someone who wants what you have and has what I want, etc., means that the role of a broker in barter economies becomes greater. Someone who can keep track of all of the different things many people are looking for and can help negotiate the differences would be a strong candidate for someone forming something we'd think of as a proto-government.
Did I talk about the priest in the POW camp? I'm pretty sure I meant to. It's been awhile since I scribbled that essay out into the notebook. I don't know if William Holden's character in Stalag 17 was based on him, but it could have been.
(2) Rejecting Governement/Elites
I have probably already mentioned it, but there is a recent paper where a dude has shown that farmers can reject the imposition of elites if they are able to change crops away from cereals to tubers or roots. Why? Cereal crops have few harvests and must be stored, so predation by government is possible. However, roots can be harvested much more often, so large scale storage is not necessary.
I places where equivalent crops of roots and cereals can be grown, he shows, cereals are preferred up to the point were a predatory elite is formed. Afterward, the root crops replace the grains, starving out the elite.
(3) The Crank Factor and Just So Stories
Watching some Crank history on Netflix with Y. (because she wanted to!). She keeps yelling at the narrator, who is a total crank who seems to believe that giant aliens wearing short skirts built both the know and unknown pyramids among us during the last ice age. Not because of his theory, but because he keeps ragging on the archaeologists who seem to think there's no real evidence of it. But she has started also complaining about the speculative way he seems put factoids together in an intricate puzzle.
I'm sensitive to the fact that I'm doing something like that here (although, I hope, I've been open about it).
The problem is, theories of elite formation that I've been given by anthropologists have always seemed ot be Just So Stories to me. How the Government Got Its Spots, and all that. I still remember Dr. Mendez' "They were just greedy. They just took power and said, 'I am special, worship me.'"
Maybe so, but I still don't see how that results in a stable elite.
The hiring of one group of bandits to protect you from another group of bandits, a la The Seven Samurai, I am partial to. But I don't see how this moves to the rather more important daily governing power of elites.
There's always a magic step.
(1) The Double Coincidence of Exchange.
The need for brokers is much greater in pre-money societies than I was thinking. I hadn't seen the connection before, but the very fact that exchange only happens in I have something you want an you have something I want, unless we can find someone who wants what you have and has what I want, etc., means that the role of a broker in barter economies becomes greater. Someone who can keep track of all of the different things many people are looking for and can help negotiate the differences would be a strong candidate for someone forming something we'd think of as a proto-government.
Did I talk about the priest in the POW camp? I'm pretty sure I meant to. It's been awhile since I scribbled that essay out into the notebook. I don't know if William Holden's character in Stalag 17 was based on him, but it could have been.
(2) Rejecting Governement/Elites
I have probably already mentioned it, but there is a recent paper where a dude has shown that farmers can reject the imposition of elites if they are able to change crops away from cereals to tubers or roots. Why? Cereal crops have few harvests and must be stored, so predation by government is possible. However, roots can be harvested much more often, so large scale storage is not necessary.
I places where equivalent crops of roots and cereals can be grown, he shows, cereals are preferred up to the point were a predatory elite is formed. Afterward, the root crops replace the grains, starving out the elite.
(3) The Crank Factor and Just So Stories
Watching some Crank history on Netflix with Y. (because she wanted to!). She keeps yelling at the narrator, who is a total crank who seems to believe that giant aliens wearing short skirts built both the know and unknown pyramids among us during the last ice age. Not because of his theory, but because he keeps ragging on the archaeologists who seem to think there's no real evidence of it. But she has started also complaining about the speculative way he seems put factoids together in an intricate puzzle.
I'm sensitive to the fact that I'm doing something like that here (although, I hope, I've been open about it).
The problem is, theories of elite formation that I've been given by anthropologists have always seemed ot be Just So Stories to me. How the Government Got Its Spots, and all that. I still remember Dr. Mendez' "They were just greedy. They just took power and said, 'I am special, worship me.'"
Maybe so, but I still don't see how that results in a stable elite.
The hiring of one group of bandits to protect you from another group of bandits, a la The Seven Samurai, I am partial to. But I don't see how this moves to the rather more important daily governing power of elites.
There's always a magic step.
