Monday, August 30, 2010

Agriculture and politicians


Before the invention of agriculture we were all hunter-gatherers. In a society like this, everyone must pitch in: every day you have to hunt and gather food, and it cannot be stored. This type of society does not permit the existence of "lazy" people, all healthy hunter-gatherers are required to devote much of their time to get food.

The introduction of agriculture allowed the large scale production and storage of food, facilitating, in turn, the existence of "liberated" people who did not work in the collection and could pursue other trades such as entering into politics. In a word, it allowed the existence of full-time bureaucrats and hereditary chiefs. The existence of surplus also led to the creation of taxes, of course in kind, to keep this staff not working.

These complex political units of agricultural societies are better able to wage a war of conquest than an equalitarian a horde of hunters-gatherers.

And so here we are today, where we have large production and storage, important taxes and a large number of professional bourocrats. Yes, I know whom you're thinking of: the King of Spain and his family.


No comments:

Post a Comment