THE EMERGENCE OF COMPETING GOVERNANCE STRUCTURES?

From time to time, I've mulled over the emergence of governance structures.  "Plagues or conquest or perhaps the application of knowledge that served as a military force multiplier (phalanxes or firearms) combined to provide an opportunity for the family farm to emerge as a trade-tested betterment."

Now there's peer-reviewed research thinking systematically about just that.  "Economists have now put forward a competing hypothesis, and it suggests a surplus of food on its own was not enough to drive the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to the hierarchical states that eventually led to civilization as we know it."

I've been exposed to enough UCLA price theory to bridle at that "surplus" argument, preferring to see division of labor emerging organically.  Whether the forager hires the fighting skills of a bigger forager, or the bigger forager offers to do the fighting is immaterial, I bet those bands that rewarded the better fighters found an evolutionary advantage compared to bands less organized.  If you see my cynical view that the protection racket is the worst affront to the state monopoly on violence, you're right.  It's historical, you can't have both the duly constituted authority and a competing authority selling the protection.

Then things start to get interesting.

Only when humans began farming food that could be stored, divvied up, traded, and taxed, did social structures begin to take shape.

That's probably why cereal grains like wheat, barley, and rice – rather than taro, yams, or potatoes – are at the root of virtually all classical civilizations. If the land was capable of cultivating grains, evidence shows it was much more likely to host complex societal structures.

"The relative ease of confiscating stored cereals, their high energy density, and their durability enhances their appropriability, thereby facilitating the emergence of tax-levying elites," the authors of the hypothesis write.

"Roots and tubers, in contrast, are typically perennial and do not have to be reaped in a particular period, but once harvested are rather perishable."

In parts of South America, for instance, perennial root crops like cassava can be harvested all year round. Unfortunately, however, cassava rots easily and is difficult to transport.

I should break down and buy a J-Stor subscription, at least for one year, to dig into that article.  The authors propose that the value of protecting durable nutritious foods made the taxation possible.

Farming was obviously a necessary step to improve food production, but researchers suspect only those crops that could be easily confiscated led to the rise of an elite class.

If a powerful echelon of society began collecting tax in the form of grain from farmers without extra food on their hands, then farming communities would not be able to support as large of a population. As a result, their numbers would likely shrink, thereby creating a surplus of food to bestow to more elite classes.

Might there have been competing elites?  The better fighters have a value to the foragers or to the cultivators alike.  People with pattern recognition skills have a value to the cultivators that they don't have to the foragers.  What are the roots of our intellectual orders?  Understanding the rhythms of the sun?  A Stonehenge is not parasitic on a pastoral society, it is a planting aid.  Seeing the patterns in nature?  The proper clues to a future rainstorm make your rain dances more effective.  Is it the physical talents the warrior has, or the intellectual talents the observer has, that demonstrate favor with the gods?

The warriors and the observers might both be competing to serve the cultivators.

If these farmers didn't protect the elite, the elite wouldn't protect their food stockpiles from bandits. Stealing grains is, after all, much more valuable than stealing perishable foods.

"Thus," the authors of the new hypothesis write, "we concur with conventional productivity theory that farmers in hierarchical societies produce surplus, but our contention is that rather than surplus generating the elite, the elite generate the food surplus on which it can flourish, once the opportunity to appropriate rises."

Unfortunately, there's no easy way to test whether the "opportunity to appropriate" occurred to cultivators negotiating with warriors and observers, or whether the observers and warriors made common cause to help themselves to some of the crop.  What do I keep posting about symbiotic rather than parasitic governance?