> 2. The vast majority of people in human history have been systematically excluded from access to both the knowledge and the material resources needed to carry out this project. If you had the knowledge, you could always build a hut like this — but the neighbors, who are organized into an effective violent force with a hierarchy of coercion, would be likely to raid you and take it away, even though most of them are low in the hierarchy and are therefore not allowed to live in a luxury house like this themselves. Most people still live like that. Now we call the people who do most of the raiding "police", and they have bulldozers.
What? No, there is no need to posit systematic exclusion - keep Hanlon's Razor closer to heart. Deliberate destruction of value does happen but it's rare. At any point in history most people have to work hard to get a nice house not because that's objective fact, but because "nice" is defined by what people can afford.
> 3. And yeah, food is expensive when you have to plant it, and historically speaking, groups that have planted food can support denser populations with greater productive capital (mills, houses, tools) and more stratified social orders, all three of which make them militarily stronger, so they gradually pushed the groups that just gather it into the poorest and least fertile territories.
The most valuable resources go to those who make most efficient use of them (military strength has very little to do with it - in the long run it's all about productivity). Isn't that exactly what we want?
Deliberate destruction of value and systematic exclusion are the norm in peasant societies. If you’re a noble, you treat the peasants living on your land as chattel (even when they aren’t explicitly slaves), and assault, rape, steal, or kill with abandon. If the peasants start saving up some surplus (of food or money or whatever), you take it, because to not take it would threaten your power.
As one example, a case I know about because I’ve talked to people who were there: in rural southern Mexico, which was mainly a plantation economy up through the 70s, the casual theft/rape/murder of indigenous peasants by landowners was common even 50 years ago. But the same was/is common in rural peasant societies everywhere in the world, say, all over Europe 200 years ago (more recently in some parts), or the American South up through at least 1900.
What? No, there is no need to posit systematic exclusion - keep Hanlon's Razor closer to heart. Deliberate destruction of value does happen but it's rare. At any point in history most people have to work hard to get a nice house not because that's objective fact, but because "nice" is defined by what people can afford.
> 3. And yeah, food is expensive when you have to plant it, and historically speaking, groups that have planted food can support denser populations with greater productive capital (mills, houses, tools) and more stratified social orders, all three of which make them militarily stronger, so they gradually pushed the groups that just gather it into the poorest and least fertile territories.
The most valuable resources go to those who make most efficient use of them (military strength has very little to do with it - in the long run it's all about productivity). Isn't that exactly what we want?