|
Catal Huyuk, Mohenjo-
Daro, Harappa, Tripolye-Curcuteni, Norte-Chico, Hopewell, Ain Ghazal. Populations from hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands of people, over the course of millennia, in effectively completely egalitarian, likely communal societies. And those are just the ones we’ve found. Indus River Valley civilization may have been as many as 5 million people, no rulers, no social hierarchy, uniform housing, no monumental/elite structures or housing, no evidence of centralized power or government, standard weights and measures, collective infrastructure projects, etc etc. It lasted roughly 1400 years. So… no, you don’t actually need a small groups. You actually only really need it to be completely socially unacceptable for some to live in excess while others suffer. In the entirety of human history, the only mechanism by which the human condition as a whole is improved is by applying a portion of the private surplus towards the public good. How much is a question of the moral character of the civilization in question. In the 50’s, in the US, if you made over $200k (~$2.2million in 2025 dollars) you paid over 90% of every dollar earned above $200k in taxes. The top corporate tax rate was 52%. |