Ask an anthropologist if this is true.

You’re effectively just saying that whatever the status quo is right now, that’s what we naturally gravitate towards.

I think that we would get back to “organized society”, yes. But for different reasons. (Basically: more population density leads to agriculture which leads to food stores which leads to a ruling class that can hoard the food stores which leads to things that can be raided (what’s there to be steal from hunter-gatherers except for slaves?) which leads to competition, and so on.)

Please explain warring tribes and city states.

I definitely agree with this. I love process of creating, forming something. After it is created, it loses all its charm and becomes something to get rid of.

Not really, societies aren't natural because they are human constructs.

I would completely reverse this... a society divided into classes is a precondition for agricultural society (for practical, not social reasons).

In the period of early civilization, convincing people to work 16 hours in the fields or in the mines is very difficult if they have any other viable option, including migrant hunter/gathering. Therefore, it is necessary to create a class of people that have no other viable options, either by slavery or other forms of inequality. The social structures surrounding inequality evolved as a method of maintaining this practical class stratification.

In reality, there have been many societies with 20-hour workweeks (many hunter-gatherer societies) and many of them were wildly successful, as measured by the health and self-reported happiness of their members. But someone did in fact stop them.

If you try to set up a hunter-gatherer society with 20-hour workweeks in, say, Iowa, I guarantee you that someone will be stopping you in short order. There's plenty of grass seeds to gather and a certain amount of game to hunt, but you will inevitably come into land-use conflict with the other people nearby. Even if you are one of the tiny minority of people so rich as to be able to buy up a large chunk of central Iowa as a reserve for this purpose, you're likely to be prosecuted for permitting noxious weeds on your property, sued for allowing Roundup Ready soy to cross-pollinate onto your property, quite likely arrested for marrying your daughter off at 12, and perhaps committed to a mental institution.

(And then there's the difficulty of changing the culture of a group of people. Most utopian communities fail, because inventing a culture is difficult. People start with an existing culture and judge everything according to it. We don't even know what beliefs you'd need to adopt to live successfully as a hunter-gatherer, to say nothing of the knowledge.)

Wherever you go, you have to contend with the existing norms, laws, and resource allocations. You need a certain amount of natural resources to survive. The areas most richly endowed with natural resources are also richly endowed with groups of people who value their exclusive access to those resources and are willing to fight, or request others to fight, to preserve that exclusive access.

So, you know, it only takes a few hectares of most islands in Micronesia to support a human life, and collecting the coconuts, breadfruit, papaya, and so on is really pretty easy; you don't even need 20 hours a week. As a result, there are already people living off those hectares. If you try to "go build one" there, they will fight you, and the US government will ultimately back them up.

Wait are you arguing for or against social cooperation? I would definitely disagree that social organization cause more harm than good. I would say that it is humanity single most important strength. Imagine a place with complete anarchy and disorganization.

> property

Do you think that there was never any property? I am not sure which era you are referring to but when things are infinitely abundant relative to the population there is no need or concern for making them property. No one cares who owns which land when there is endless land. If you decided to take your fellow caveman's spear tho, you would probably get a knock on the head. Have you seen children's natural reactions and jealousy when another child takes their toys? Material is fundamental to survival, and gets more pronounced when things is scarce.

And who would 1. Pave your roads 2. Keep you safe 3. Care for you when you’re old 4. Keep the electric grid running 5. Etc

Modern society works because there’s a bunch of people who do things they don’t like.

The alternative is that we all go back to being hunter gatherers.

Did anyone in particular construct this society, or was it just given?

You can't judge society at large by the same ethical standard that you judge an individual

I stopped reading past this.

Yes, and it did

Like, the history of Western civilization? Feudalism, for a start.

That's certainly not a new from of arrogance, people without the WIS to match their INT have been trying to construct utopias for quite a while.

That's the key one for real property (well, settled agricultural society probably more than urbanization per se, but if you have one you probably have the other.)

> E.g. a roving gang with a warlord at its helm has a political state and social stratification, and they would still have access to pencils.

But probably not have a system of real (as opposed to personal) property. Which is my point.

Why not both? We certainly have all kinds of societies on earth today. What makes you think we won't have areas that are highly progressive but also areas that are extremely sadistic in the treatment of their people?

To make predictions about society dont you need an understanding of... I dunno. Sociology, Psychology, Politics, Finance, or maybe History?

I dont remember societal forecasting in my STEM classes.

Not meant as a roast, just a mild reminder that the dominant force on earth is people.

Only if you ignore every society that that ever existed without a strict economic hierarchy, sure.

How will a society without growth be flourishing?

A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that economic growth requires an increase in natural resource use, pollution and waste, when a lot of economic growth in recent decades has come from increased efficiency and services that have not led to more natural resource extraction.

The idea of humanity without a desire for progress and growth is romanticized by environmentalists and parts of an "intellectual elite", when in reality it will lead to a complete collapse of society and standards of living.

Really? I always thought of The Diamond Age as being about class conflict and social hierarchy in a partially post-scarcity world.