One of the biggest shifts in human society happened with the advent of farming.
Before farming, we were organised as nomads, sparsely separated foraging local resources. It was labour intensive, and society was divided into smaller tribes who were relatively equal because of everyone’s ability to forage relatively similar levels. Meat had an expiration date and so could not be stored, so there was no real way for the most productive to accumulate resources.
Farming changed everything.
With farming, fertile land became the most important resource that needed to be controlled and managed. The production of land could be accumulated. Society was organised into larger groups and the structure became more complex. There is evidence of massive destruction of nomadic tribes during this time, as more advanced agrarian groups claimed the most valuable and most fertile spots. They sought to take the other valuable resource – labour, and fertile women, from the nomadic tribes, to help populate their growing agrarian empires. So that it could compete with the other competing agrarian empires.
What happened to the society became better off in the aggregate, compared to nomads, and population expanded, but it was not as equal as it was before. It was concentrated in the hands of the few landowners and controllers of society. Feudalism.
There was probably no benefit to those farming societies who treated the serfs better than others, unless it made them, and society better off, and better able to deal with other tribes. What mattered was not morality, but strength of the group. Serfdom and slavery existed because it enabled the group to get the maximum output and accumulate the largest surpluses. If one agrarian group treated it’s farmers better, than the other, but was weaker as a result, it would be taken over by the more ruthless group.
As these empires grew, the surplus accumulated which allowed for another level of specialisation, and creating a whole new industry out of this surplus. Pottery, bakers, tinkers, and builders. Trade became a way to become more wealthy and accumulate a larger surplus.
Population concentrated and a new merchant class was borne. Through this trade, there was also a trade of goods, there was also a ideas. There was the development of empires, or civilisation that had strong agricultural bases and that could be traded, such as the Roman, Chinese, Egyptian empires. The age of enlightenment in Europe as trade of goods and surplus, and ideas accumulated further.
The next level saw the industrial age.
Factories enabled society to produce far more in the aggregate. Now I don’t know what happened to numbers in society, because my perception from history is that the early stage of this was one where the majority of people, were in the poor working class. The capitalists controlled the factors of production. While few were wealthy at the start, the wealth compounded over time, as the capitalists became more wealthy.
But what happened after that is that the middle class began to grow. Because of economies of scale, labour became one of the most important factors of production. The more people you had, the more you could produce. Bigger empires began to take over smaller ones. It was the first time where labour could go on strike and hold the capitalists to ransom. Societies who treated it’s citizen better, were more powerful, because they could produce more.
It seems that each of these transitions seeing multiple shifts. The first is when the new, better, organisation, or age, is discovered. There is a quiet change of some to adopt this new organisation. For example, some people start quietly farming, going about their own business. Then they discover they have surplus, and can use this as a form of power. Then, this new organisation starts to clash with the existing one. Then this new one matures, ready for the next age.
Now we are entering the digital age. What happens? We can only see based on what is happening now and what has happened in previous ages.
In the digital economy, technology and Artificial intelligence, is the valuable resource. Owners of these become the landowners which largely replaces the previous age’s middle class. Middle class shrinks because it can be increasingly replaced by the technology. People’s value is no longer related to their ability to produce, because quality of production much more about their ability to be consumers. People are given just enough so that they can consume and the economies can work.
Education becomes much more important – to create and educate and build an elite class. Control, influence, and management, of the people becomes more important, so they are happy enough.
However, it is possible in later stages, that people are not needed to consume at all, if power depends on the ability to create a robot army of producers.
There is a requirement then for later stages to have the following
- Hard power for defense and security against others – robotics and AI.
- A system that keeps people happy and harmonious – so they are well enough off
- An ability to train and educate the best elite class so they can take their society to the next level.
The ability to influence people becomes more important, so that they stay happy enough.
I am not sure how important the second one is. It depends on what kind of power people would have to disrupt society, or whether it’s necessary to have a large, well off population, that are well educated, so that some of them may become the elite.
It’s possible that societies might just compete to attract the best, talented people, so that they can create and live in that jurisdiction.
I am also not sure how valuable the elite class would be, depending on how AI develops. That elite class might need to be only very very small, perhaps a few hundred people could manage a whole society with the use of AI. It’s possible that the elite class might start off larger, but then might narrow as it matures.
Human ingenuity and power is still essential and the majority of our economy and is likely to remain that way for the foreseeable future, although it is shrinking.
My main question is in what way might humans remain essential and what role would they play? It mainly depends on the development of AI and the gaps in it, and our ability to fill those gaps.
The best way we can be prepared is to upskill and train people as much as possible, this definitely helps us in the short term to manage and evolving society in transition, it helps ensure that good people are managing the the systems, and that they are “on our side” (whatever that means), It also helps to ensure those owners and builders of AI systems are going to create optimum-for-society systems rather than distorted and messed up systems. It also increases our chances of being able to have the skills to fill the gaps.
What can we learn from history to prepare us for the digital age?
We are not inherently moral. The way society is organised and structured is what decides how we act.
The new organisation or technology will win, if it’s superior, whatever you do about it. It’s like trying to compete by carrying logs by hand Vs someone using the wheel. We must embrace it.
The opportunity for wealth creation is in the newly created class and newly created structure. Eg., during the agrarian revolution, you would want to own the land, during the trading revolution, you would still want to own the land, but you would also want to be involved in trade to benefit from that, and in the industrial age, you would want to own the factories and be a capitalist.
The division between these stages is not 100% clear and it moves in stages, with each new position filling up gradually from the old.
I have not looked into the specific data and case studies to analyse these transitions in more detail, which I would like to do, to learn more from. I am mainly going from my observations of history as a layman.
The transition is one of profound change and challenges and requires adaption.
