Thread by @sfiscience

"The emergence of #government as organized #violence-cum-#robbery"
SFI Seminar by @CoenTeulings (@UniUtrecht)

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"What's the motivation of this paper? We've seen in most of these locations that there was an #emergence of some form of hierarchical #government [correlated with] a monopoly of #violence and increased #inequality [and] most people lost."

- @CoenTeulings (@UniUtrecht)

Citing work led by SFI's Tim Kohler in 2017 showing the increase in #inequality (as measured by #GINIcoefficient) as society evolves greater political #scale and more complex/abstract means of production:

Modeling the #emergence of #government as a dynamic #game, trying to observe roles, identities, and social #norms as the properties of multiple subgame #equilibria (i.e., #tribes, #chiefdoms, #states):

"I can only see what someone does if I'm monitoring them. This is critical."

Incorporating #taxes, #wages, & #robbery in the "emergence of government" game:

"I can never be robbed for more than I have after wages spent. This implies it is much more attractive to rob the chief [and that therefore] you need a large defense force for the chief."

#violence

"You have marginal returns on investing in arms both for attack & for defense. This makes things a little complicated."
"The 2 best strategies are [not subgame perfect, i.e.] 'we both invest in grain [& not] in arms (given no robbery) [but then attacking yields greater payoff].'"

On stable #strategies re: #investments in grain, tubers, surveillance, arms...

"In a single-tribe #society, being larger is good. But at some point, monitoring starts to dominate. What at the end what kills a single tribe is that monitoring costs get out of hand."

In the "Warring Tribe" strategy, "People are not forced to invest in arms, but they voluntarily do; we have no monitoring here, so we need coordination. We have a common enemy. But the larger the tribe size, the lower our individual investment in arms, making robbery attractive."

On the emergence of the "Single Chiefdom" strategy and how it incents #sousveillance and an interest in #WageTransparency, and ultimately a centralized #monopoly of #violence:

"Farmers must not invest in arms or the chief will send someone to kill them."

(See also #revolution)

"There's a huge #efficiency gain in monitoring. The chief's power is #information. Soldiers know they can now only effectively use their arms by listening to the chief."

On '#KnowledgeIsPower', #Bureaucracy, & #TheState: