[eightysixfour]

Debt: The First 5000 Years and The Dawn of Everything are both better than Bullshit Jobs IMO. I'd start with "The Dawn of Everything." While I think Graeber makes the same "jump to conclusions based on your worldview" mistakes he criticizes others for, he present new (to me) evidence about the history of human organizations that I have found to be very interesting and, at least, opened me up to some new avenues of thought politically.

[crawfordcomeaux]

What are some of these political changes?

[eightysixfour]

Again, not finished with the book, but the central thesis of the book that large scaled human endeavors (and society as a whole following the agricultural revolution) does not require hierarchical organization. I do not believe I have made it to the meat of that thesis yet but, up to this point, I have not been convinced by his evidence that there were long-lasting, large-scale human organizations (think city scale and higher) that operated without some hierarchy.

That said, there are some things that stand out that I am spending a lot of time contemplating as a result of the book so far:

* I now agree with him that there were likely societies operating at a reasonable level of scale (larger than the Band/Tribe stereotype) that were significantly more egalitarian than current societies or any others in the Greco-Roman/Western civilization lineage.

* There was likely significantly more experimentation around social structures in early human history than I had thought of or imagined.

* There were societies which operated with different types of governance based on the time of year and activities associated with that time of year. This is interesting to me since I believe there is no "best" political system, but I had not considered how to take advantage of multiple types without trying to recombine them in some way. I particularly want to think about this more in the context of corporate organizations, since they already do this in some ways without being as explicit about it. For example, I have worked with an organization that operated like a collective of empowered product teams for large portions of the year but operated more like a standard hierarchy during annual planning season or when there was inter-organizational conflict. At the time I perceived it as a faux front for a top-down organization, but now I'm not sure that's fair.

* This one is probably more philosophically obvious, but, there is an opportunity for me, personally, to rethink the version of "freedom" I value. In doing so I think I will reconcile some conflicts I have between my social and economic views. The book didn't give me a new definition for freedom that I want to use, but it presented at least one alternative definition that I think is valid and interesting.

[crawfordcomeaux]

I haven't finished reading your reply. I got to this point:

"I do not believe I have made it to the meat of that thesis yet but, up to this point, I have not been convinced by his evidence that there were long-lasting, large-scale human organizations (think city scale and higher) that operated without some hierarchy."

There exists a natural hierarchy between the category of needs for humans to survive and the category of needs for humans to thrive. Nature provides enough.

[eightysixfour]

I honestly don't know what you're trying to say or how it relates to what you quoted from me. What I am saying is that I don't think you can have a large scale population of humans sharing resources cohesively without some sort of sociopolitical heirarchy forming. Graeber argues this is not true and that, as a result, inequality is unnecessary.

[crawfordcomeaux]

I'm trying to say there exist natural hierarchies. If we explicitly acknowledge and account for them in the cultures and the governance models we choose to carry forward, it may be enough hierarchy. There'll also, for a time, be people who choose to realign with nature in such a way and those who'll prefer to not. One of those will be better at meeting needs and a natural inequality will emerge between those factions. I'm thinking inequality might be unavoidable if a culture is going to shift from being largely disconnected from nature to well-aligned with it.