IT#15 Why Servitude Society Conflicts with The Knowledge Economy and What to Do About That

#Economy #Socium #SocialSystem #ITManagement

This article explains a different classification of human social systems – cooperative, imperative and servitude, and show why the dominating today servitude system conflicts with the Knowledge Economy and Knowledge Age. It also suggests what to do about that.

A different classification of social systems

In the article devoted to the knowledge economy we used a most popular today classification of social systems “hunter-gatherers”-slavery-feudalism-capitalism-socialism. This classification is based on economic relationships between people. By meaning it comes to Karl Marx, even though he did not really used words “capitalism” or even “socialism”.

While that system is certainly important, we will use today a very different classification of social systems based on the reasons why people stay in society. This is cooperative-imperative-servitude classification.

1. Cooperative society is when cooperation is the reason why people stay inside. A small band of hunters-gatherers could survive, a single human in the Stone Age times had a very little chance for that. The chance of single human survival existed but it was much lower than with the help of fellow tribesmen. Tribes of hunters-gatherers or even little flocks of chimps are the perfect examples of cooperative societies.
2. Imperative society keeps its members inside by force. Usually there is a highly privileged semi-cooperative top that controls the whole society and keeps the rest from leaving. Classic Ancient slavery societies like Greece city-states and early Rome are the examples. Hordes of Genghis Khan are another.
3. Servitude society keeps its members because they have no other option for survival. They are built mostly of individuals who have zero chance of survival outside of their society. In fact, by breeding and raising those who have zero chance of survival outside. Late Ancient Rome was an example. Most of the modern societies are servitude societies.

Because it’s tightly connected to human social topology properties and neurophysiology, each of these types of society have typical size limits.

1. Cooperative society ideals size is up to 12 people. It can scale up to 150 (Dunbar number) people but not more.
2. Imperative society may contain up to hundreds of thousands of people (normally less), but again no more. The Genghis Khan army had at peak 129,000 soldiers. Ancient Athens had at max about 60,000 citizens (with half a million of slaves and foreigners). A typical Imperial Roman legion had 10 cohorts, 6 centuries per cohort, 80 people per century. Each century was commanded by an officer called centurion. So we get 10*6*80 = 4800 people commanded by 60 officers and two generals. 6 (<12) centurions in cohort were working together cooperatively controlling 480 legionaries. Two generals cooperatively controlled 60 centurions, who in turn controled 4800 legionaries. This seems to be scalable, but see the article “Tom Sawyer Inc.” showing the limit of hierarchical management capacity. Hence, the limit of imperative societies at hundreds of thousands of people.
3. Servitude societies are ultimately scalable. In fact, they have low size limit. Since you are breeding, using and spending individuals who cannot survive without your society, you need a social structure like an army, that will defend your herd. If an imperative society army of 129,000 soldiers attacks your country, you need a comparable army. As we know from medieval history, 10 peasants could support one soldier in Europe (the ratio is very different in other places). So, you would need more than 1.5 million people in your country to defend against Genghis Khan invasion, considering that only ~85% of medieval European population were peasant. You also need internal forces like guards or police to prevent your population from forming imperative communities that will threaten your society. An example of such a community is organized crime.

Again, most modern societies are servitude societies. They may have inclusions of other forms like an army (imperative) or business partnerships (cooperative), but overall they are servitude.

Servitude and Obedience

In many aspects servitude societies are great. They scale. They can produce specialized type of humans to concentrate the effort where it needs it. Wide-scale engineering and science become possible because of that. Literature, music, poetry left protected palace gardens and became widely available. Still, that does not negate the fact:

1. Cooperative society consists of humans.
2. Imperative society consists of wolves.
3. Servitude society consists of sheep.

These are very useful sheep, like you and me, but to protect sheep, you need to oppress wolves. Oppress those who represent a danger to your society. And in the servitude society what people think en masse often represents more danger to the society than anything else. You need to control what people think. And if you think that Western democracies don’t do that, think again. If you can.

Conflict with the Knowledge Economy

If you read this article, then it’s likely that, like me, you don’t like the government controlling what you think. And there is a good reason for that. Thinking is how we earn money for living. Like most people in servitude society cannot survive without that society, we cannot really survive and procreate without thinking. Oops!

And no, we are not rebels who want our society to be destroyed. Quite the opposite. This is our function in our society. This is why society pays us money to live on. For thinking. For using our brains. Which was not normal for humans for most of our very long history.

Ancient Egypt is one of the earliest examples of servitude society. Their priests controlled what people think. They controlled technological progress. That’s until Hyksos with better weapons and technology invaded, torn away Lower Egypt and ruled there for a while.

We have to control what people think, but unless we want new Hyksos to come and rule us, we cannot control what people think. At least people working in the Knowledge Economy. Looks like a problem, no?

But it’s even deeper. Thinking deeply and consistently is not a specific science, it’s an underlying process and capability. You can teach a person chemistry but no physics (although less and less so since these two sciences interact). But if a person can deeply and consistently think, you cannot let him think on the job, and stop doing so reading news.

Exit from the other side

So, what to do? I don’t claim that I have an answer. But let me share a few thoughts.

Here is a fact to consider. Thinking is hard. At the high-speed human brain can consume one-third to half of the energy consumed by your whole body. So, people don’t like to think. People think when they are unhappy or have to do so. Solution: make them happy outside of the job environment. And if they are happy, they won’t think about news. In fact, if they are smart, they won’t watch or read the news in the first place. Social danger taken care of.

And at the job? Remember? A servitude society may have inclusions of other types. Don’t make your team servitude or, God forbid, imperative. Keep your team cooperative. And your people will be able to think, move your projects forward, and invent an iron sword in time to prevent Hyksos invasion. 

Caveat. This does not mean that you won’t have a jerk manager who will make one of your intelligent deep-thinkers highly unhappy. And even a single unhappy deep thinker may create a lot of trouble for the whole World. Karl Marx proved it. Friedrich Nietzsche proved it.

 Life is dangerous. Life's tough. Keep it in mind and live on!

Zurich, Sep 20, 2023