It's not certain how we lived before, but a story you could tell is that we all needed to work together in order to provide ourselves with the supplies and labor for day-to-day living. At some point, some efficiency was discovered or created that relieved some of the immediate need for labor. Efficiency became distributed and iterated across the group's needs. Those who were responsible for these efficiencies became those in charge, and those who could not provide such efficiencies probably still worked to some extent, but simply could not provide to the extent of those in charge. This may be thought of as the birth of social class.
Many many years rolled on in this fictionalized retelling of the history of the human race in which we invented monarchies, slavery, academia, religion. Lots of things. What caught my eye in writing this was noticing that a lesser-told history regarding the invention of the hospital was to get beggars, those unemployed and idle, off the street and to employ them in more morally correct activity1.
There are a lot of tangential "this might be possible" thoughts that arise from this perspective, including the possibility that a good work ethic as a moral is more of a muscle against the othering, ostracism and confinement inherent in the mechanics of society or civilization. To work means you belong.

Footnotes

  1. Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization. It is good to note that Foucault argues that getting those unemployed off the street was more of a moral imperative, as it was viewed they were vagrants by choice, and that the work they were given was seen as behaviorally corrective. It does not seem these people were paid for their work in these institutions, and the existence of their labor and more cheaply-priced goods negatively affected the local economies wherein people ran legitimate businesses.
I've often wondered why we stopped taking a share of our increased prosperity in the form of more leisure time.
During the industrial era, as productivity skyrocketed, the length of the work week declined dramatically. That makes perfect sense. Then, the work week stuck on 40 hours and hasn't budged since, despite continued gains in prosperity.
Incidentally, and perhaps not coincidentally, income taxes were becoming a bigger component of government revenue at this time.
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What do you think caused the change? that is, that efficiency that others could not provide, and those who could do it climbed to a position of power in front of the others?
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I'm not entirely sure I understand your question. Do you mean what do I think caused the creation or discovery of efficiency and the subsequent social reward of such creation/discovery?
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Mmk 20 Jun
yes
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So much to mention here...
Go back to ~ medieval times, which were quite different from the mainstream story, and you had kings ruling via dukes & knights, taxing peasants and so on, but still needing some basic, common understanding of the grand goals to get things done. Wars had to be funded with real metals, resources and not least foot soldiers from the general population.
Yeah, life could be nasty, brutish and short, but also there was a lot leisure other than during the harvest & deep winter. Besides war and taxes, most could live their lives left alone, certainly compared to now!
Fast forward to the origin of corporations: projects that were a common good like bridges were sponsored mainly by the wealthy, but soon share certificates made it possible for a lot of people to get in on the action.
Still there was far less central control than later, that emerged later, when the state and now larger corporations and conglomerates used technology to grab power.
What did people regard as "society" through these periods? Certainly that was often quite local, and also much less "diverse" than now. Yeah there was the Austro-Hungarian empire, but that did not carry much of a punch long term...
Does "society" really exist outside of globalist lingo? When corporations and states funnel almost all resources towards their top people and organizations, are we really building anything any longer, maybe rather tearing apart all that is natural, distributed, sane and in harmony with both the outer world and the wishes of real, genuine people?
Can anyone "capitalize on labor" when its really slave labor? In the West today you'll have a very hard time making a living without taxes, regulations and all sorts of insanity... Especially online work is sooo often building your own jail, one way or another!
A free, distributed, new economy on Bitcoin can of course become a very different thing...
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