From Nations to Corporations

[Murphy]

Very impressive, @WashYourHands , and inspiring. I've a very underdeveloped archaeology and anthropology myself, but your points help illuminate the wonders of it all.

I'll read that PDF, but do you happen to know of any good lectures/videos on the matter? Or similar matters?

I did later prehistoric Britain and Ireland into post-Roman Britain (2500BC to 800ADi ish), so we had to do foundational early-prehistory modules even as postgrads. You can’t interpret any cultural horizon without understanding what it’s all predicated on. Plus prehistory can be so relentlessly weird, it’s well worth inquiring about in your spare time.

During the Neolithic transition in the Middle East, agriculture derived as an unintended by-product of hunter-gatherers meeting in large numbers at temples like Gobekli Tepe. Problem was food. No domesticated species, which posed significant problems for all this ritual activity. What’s a party without a few nibbles? This was 10,000BC. Some people bought increasing amounts of stored provisions, but before too long cultivation of wild resources advanced locally. Penning wild animals was probably a start. Sowing wild grains etc.

However, none of this takes into account the profession of stone working. That could be large scale megaliths, or it could mean small scale arrow heads, flint and axe head production. They were industries, guilds of a sort and there is some degree of overlap in the use of art, wild animals and rites on the pillars at GT with Palaeolithic cave art from France and Spain, even though their contexts aren’t the same

Göbekli Tepe

Located in the Germuş mountains of south-eastern Anatolia, this property presents monumental round-oval and rectangular megalithic structures erected by hunter-gatherers in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic age between ...

whc.unesco.org

Fast forward. Çatalhöyük develops around 7000BC. Full domestication by now. New diseases. Multi-levelled domiciles you accessed via a roof ladder. Bull worship with bull skulls in foundation flooring. Highly homogeneous architecture. A mix of agriculturalists and foragers, but fully embedded in industrial food production and newly fired ceramics. Lithic specialists, but CH is without doubt a town, maybe the first, built on the foundations of trade and exchange networks

Çatalhöyük Research Project

Excavations of a neolithic anatolian höyük

www.catalhoyuk.com

My point is that these very early corporations could flex enough to manage incorporation and/or exclusion. There are ritualists in these communities but CH shows that the world’s first town was already constructed on millennia old systems of trade, exchange and ‘wealth accumulation’. That’s 4000years before Uruk. I’ll sort a batch of PDF’s etc and dm you a g-drive link this week.

 

[constant escape]

I'd appreciate that. The Teviec and Hoedic PDF, from what I've read so far, seems to have significance only once a base of understanding has been established - and I have yet to establish mine.

 

[vimothy]

There's a writer called Philip Bobbit who associates particular constitutional forms with particular historical epochs. Each epoch has a dominant constitutional form which is particularly adapted to whatever the social, technological, economic, etc, forces are that define it. In the modern period, the dominant form of the state was the nation-state. That period appears to be coming to an end, and with it the dominance of the nation-state. It's being replaced, in Bobbit's view, with what he calls the market-state. Or, to map that taxonomy onto the the OP, you have one form of the state which arose a world where the most important social institution was the nation being replaced by one in which the most important social institution is the market.

 

[version]

 

[version]

Linda Colley · In Disguise of a Merchant: Company-States · LRB 30 July 2020

The East India Company’s relations with the British state had always been ambivalent. Its increasing territorial and...

www.lrb.co.uk

 

[constant escape]

There's a writer called Philip Bobbit who associates particular constitutional forms with particular historical epochs. Each epoch has a dominant constitutional form which is particularly adapted to whatever the social, technological, economic, etc, forces are that define it. In the modern period, the dominant form of the state was the nation-state. That period appears to be coming to an end, and with it the dominance of the nation-state. It's being replaced, in Bobbit's view, with what he calls the market-state. Or, to map that taxonomy onto the the OP, you have one form of the state which arose a world where the most important social institution was the nation being replaced by one in which the most important social institution is the market.

Yeah that's pretty much precisely what I was getting at. Haven't heard of Bobbit before - does he elaborate more on the "market-state" at all? What would the borders be between these states, just their body of employees? Would the nation-state remain as a lower-order fixture or layer?

 

[sus]

It's really just an extrapolation of what already exists as the job market and the reality is that conditions vary very little from employer to employer. A little more holiday here than there, but never enough. Always on a 5 day week 8 hour day model. The tendency to homogenisation here is huge because employers want what they can get.

Intriguingly, the tech world is an exception. Unclear why: mean IQ? more cashflow? boom times?

Still, the ability to take multi-year sabbaticals, unlimited PTO, remote flexibility, etc is fairly remarkable. Obviously you still have to hit work targets, but my more talented programmer friends probably work 4-5 hours a day and take 2ish months off a year—and they're pulling 100k+ for it.

 

[sus]

FANG'ers make more in the quarter-mil range, but probably have to work fullish 10-5s (if senior) or bust buns on 10-7s/8s (if junior). The sabbaticals are apparently more generous here tho: the big companies know how tough it is to vet a replacement, so they'd rather you come back in two years.

 

[sus]

Wonder where seasteading fits in with all this.

 

[sus]

There's a reason Hirschman's Exit, Voice, Loyalty is the bible of the Valley.

 

[version]

What are FANG'ers and bust buns? Are we being trolled again?

 

[Mr. Tea]

I think "to bust buns" is Colonial for "to work jolly hard indeed", but I'm also lost on the FANG stuff.

 

[sus]

Facebook
Amazon
Netflix
Google
(Uber)

bustin' buns is what you do when your ass is smokin from how much that Protestant work ethic's on fire

 

[sus]

"Colonial" holy shit ded

never been called that before

 

[sus]

I got friggun BOUNCED somebuddy send me back to the colonies, I give it all up

 

[vimothy]

in the uk if you want to earn that kind of cash you work for a hedge fund or you contract, and contracting is dying out. before I even got involved too. sad times.

 

[sus]

i'll marry anyone for $15k who wants citizenship... but will delete this post soon soas to not leave incriminating evidence behind

 

[vimothy]

Yeah that's pretty much precisely what I was getting at. Haven't heard of Bobbit before - does he elaborate more on the "market-state" at all? What would the borders be between these states, just their body of employees? Would the nation-state remain as a lower-order fixture or layer?

you should read his book, terror and consent, he goes into it in great detail

 

[vimothy]

states still exist in this conception of the world, its just the constitution of those states that changes. borders still exist but they dont necessarily demarcate national boundaries. they might demarcate trading zones instead. the nation state gradually obsolesces and becomes a historical anachronism like the imperial state. the state itself retains its importance, but its character changes

 

[hmg]

states still exist in this conception of the world, its just the constitution of those states that changes. borders still exist but they dont necessarily demarcate national boundaries. they might demarcate trading zones instead. the nation state gradually obsolesces and becomes a historical anachronism like the imperial state. the state itself retains its importance, but its character changes

Where to countries in the visograd grouping fit into this?
And what about civilisation-states - Russia, China, India (+Turkey, Japan?). Very well defined boundaries, millennia of history in most cases. In no way obsolete.