I don't think the analogies of animals in the wild or groups of hunter-gatherer is correct to the modern companies. A better analogy is the teams who built pyramids or armies who empowered Alexander or the medieval peasant settlements who regulated societies.
It's not about acting on your own or achieving something for yourself. It's about building something which is only possible with collective effort of hundreds or thousands of humans. The size of such organization needs hierarchy, management and process.
Think of what processes and management was used for pyramid building. And what would have happened if the workers worked without a boss and process.
I concur the analogy misses this reason for teaming up in large groups completely.
All our current advances are the direct result of working in large, communicating groups, which crucially need a way to transfer knowledge across generations. The YouTube channel “How to make everything” comes to mind, where the resources, processes, machinery… required make it tricky for something as mundane as a hairdryer to be built from scratch by a single person.
However, I also agree, to some extent, with the point the author is trying to make, even though the arguments and analogies are shaky.
I don’t believe the author is arguing the pyramids would ever have gotten built if everyone did whatever the hell they want. But I also don’t believe the pyramid builders were terribly happy.
In a world where we have solved (or have made significant progress to solving) big categories of problems, it might be worthwhile to consider what our “pyramids” are. Are you working on something life-altering? Some marvel which will stand for hundreds of years? Most people probably aren’t. I know I’m not.
So I find it easy to emphasize with the feeling that it’s more “healthy” to just make whatever the hell you want (be it as a programmer, or just as a human being). After all, a lot of innovation has been a direct result of people fucking around on their own. I’d enjoy a planet where potential Einsteins would not have to work two jobs to survive, in lieu of which they would have time to think, experiment, write, …
Maybe it comes down to:
- Individual freedom is ideal to invent things (someone had to be Alexander)
- Some pooling of humans is necessary to actually build said things
Well that’s simply a question of whether we are at a point yet where we can implement UBI and provide for everyone’s needs and wants without requiring anyone to work.
I’m a big fan of the idea of UBI, but I somewhat doubt we’ll ever get there. But I’m neither convinced we need to get there in the first place, or need robots to achieve it.
Post-scarcity is a different beast than UBI. Still, both might be good “pyramids”.
I’m not an economist nor well-read on the subject, so I’ll have to be hand-wavy on the specifics. But one alternative at least is to “live with less” as is sometimes said. To change consumption and our way of life so radically we just need less of everything (labour, material, …).
That collective effort resulted in something very impressive, but there are lots of achievements in the present day which are, organizationally, at least as impressive, and which do not seem to require hierarchy (though they include various hierarchies). The chain of processes and activities that result in a modern supermarket and all its products, for example, has no overarching boss, and some of the steps along the way are handled by self-employed people (truck owner-operators, for example).
But the modern supermarket also has many large hierarchical organizations contributing well, from the supermarket chains to industrial farms to giant processed food brands. For better or worse.
> Think of what processes and management was used for pyramid building
For what, a glorified tomb?
I fail to find anything in history that advanced the sciences or the arts through "collective effort of hundreds or thousands of humans". It's only for war or to consolidate power in the hands of the ruling class, never for the benefit of society at large.
We covered that below in the thread. The Apollo Program wouldn't exist if it wasn´t for the Cold War. The Manhattan Project also surely classifies as "effort that only get to be done because of War".
The Apollo program wouldn't have happened without Sputnik and against the backdrop of the Cold War. Getting to the moon is cool and all but the subtle hint to the Soviets is "we have ICBMs".
The US had ICBMs in the 1950s. The Saturn V was not an ICBM. Staging was not necessary for ICBMs. None of the lunar landing module and equipment was usable for military purposes. NASA was run by civilians, not the military.
Tyson: "Things you’ve never done before that are expensive and dangerous and have uncertain returns on investment are simply not done by corporate entities."
A few seconds of googling turned up:
"Robert Peary’s North Pole Expedition (1909): Backed heavily by the National Geographic Society and The New York Times, alongside wealthy private investors like J.P. Morgan"
Many other exploratory expeditions were funded by both private interests and governments, such as the first transatlantic cable.
Tyson: "when we learned the Soviet Union was not going to the moon, that we just ended it all."
I lived through those times. There were several followup moon landings, but the audience grew bored with it, and so Congress cut the funding.
Tyson is an authority on science, but for anything else he isn't more authoritative than you or I.
BTW, I've read multiple books on the Apollo program. The idea it was run or funded by the military is false. Yes, the astronauts were Air Force test pilots. You know why they were selected? Because test pilots have the perfect skill set to be astronauts. And it paid off handsomely as Armstrong saved two missions from disaster.
Also, Armstrong gave up his military commission before he was an astronaut. NASA wanted to make it clear the moon landing was not a military operation by having a civilian commander of Apollo 11.
NASA is a prestige organization. If there isn’t a peer rival there is little to gain from funding that prestige. Whether that is for the betterment of society is up for debate.
The moon landing is definitely a fruit of war efforts.
Wikipedia is the opposite of a top-down process.
Aqueducts and railroads: responded on a sibling comment.
LOTR films: I don't even know how it relates to the point, but it's funny that you bring a cultural landmark that it's an adaptation of the works of a single individual.
> I fail to find anything in history that advanced the sciences or the arts through "collective effort of hundreds or thousands of humans".
> It's only for war or to consolidate power in the hands of the ruling class, never for the benefit of society at large.
I'm breaking it up into two statements because sufficient evidence has been provided to contradict the former, and some of your rebuttals did not align with the latter. Let's break those down:
> The moon landing is defintely a fruit of a war effort.
But is it only for war? Or did it "advance the sciences" + "for the benefit of society at large"?
> Wikipedia is the opposite of a top-down effort.
Your original statement didn't say it had to be a top-down effort. It's certainly "collective effort" + "not only for war" + "for the benefit of society at large".
> Aqueducts and railroads: responded on a sibling comment.
Scale and precision also matter and don't negate the fact that these are "something in history" + "collective effort" + "not only for war" + "for the benefit of society at large".
> LOTR films: I don't even know how it relates to the point, but it's funny that you cultural landmark that only worked because it's an adaptation of the works of a single individual.
I only picked LOTR films because they are notorious for being large scale and you never said it didn't have to be an adaptation. I could have picked The Simpsons, Star Wars, Breaking Bad, you name it.
No, but without it wouldn't come to existence. You can call it "moving the goal posts" if you want, my point is these efforts are not primarily motivated for the good of society and whatever advances we have are accidental, secondary effects.
> Your original statement didn't say it had to be a top-down effort.
I am responding to someone giving the example of the pyramids as something that could only be achieved due to "hierarchy, management and process", do I have to say it?
All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the bosses ever done for us?
What about them? These technologies already existed, the only thing that changed is that economies of scale enabled by the centralized power. Smaller tribes and villages could have gone by implementing more localized solutions.
Local conflicts do not get solved by higher levels, they get tapered over. WIth all the power and resources amassed by the Federal Government, one would think this could've been solved already, right?
It's not about acting on your own or achieving something for yourself. It's about building something which is only possible with collective effort of hundreds or thousands of humans. The size of such organization needs hierarchy, management and process.
Think of what processes and management was used for pyramid building. And what would have happened if the workers worked without a boss and process.