"This is the story of humanity as a whole..."
It is the history of humanity, and history only begins after records begin being kept. History does not include the hundreds of millennia that people lived prior to the advent of agriculture that enabled overlords to parasitize collective labor. Centralization enabled overlords, war, and political power. Decentralization didn't before agriculture arose, and won't when tech advance enables people to themselves produce the blessings of civilization.
You have previously expressed a lack of interest in technological matters, which I can understand. However it is relevant to political power because decentralization of the means of production prevents parasitization of the production of collective labor, because it doesn't require collective labor. When someone makes something they use, there is no profit taken by some capitalist, no taxable event that funds government. The maker keeps what they make, and only they gain the benefit of their productivity. They can share their wealth with whom they choose, but not be robbed of it by overlords. This decentralization is the cutting edge of tech advance in every field of industry. The most advanced tech is the most productive, and outcompetes less productive tech. It is important to understand these principles to understand politics, war, and power today, because these facts cause increasing desperation of overlords who are accelerating the conquest of the world as quickly as possible before their wealth declines and becomes inadequate to achieve that conquest.
The story of humanity as a whole is in process. The end hasn't been written because we're not extinct. After the Younger Dryas caused the extinction of 77 genera of megafauna the food sources that provided thousands of meals with one kill were gone. Humanity was forced to slave away nurturing plants and adopt agriculture, and that created centralization some ten or so millennia ago. Before that, for all the hundreds of millennia that people lived, they were relatively equal, because no one could parasitize collective labor beyond harvesting a mammoth, and people could just go kill another mammoth and avoid dependence on any potential overlord. After we become able to ourselves produce the blessings of modern civil society using distributed table top tech, that relative egalitarian society will again be possible, and the sybaritic wealth overlords desperately seek to maintain, that is the source of their political power, will no longer be able to be parasitized by centralizing production.
Our natural state isn't chattel to overlords. This is a temporary transition from Stone age to Space age technology, and that technological transition is largely complete. We continue to develop and distribute the infrastructure of decentralization, but economically that process began long ago, and approaches the tipping point, the clinal boundary after which it becomes an irreversible state. The story our posterity will read will be of their own sovereignty and the temporary subjugation of humanity for a few millennia under psychopathic overlords that strove to prevent humanity from escaping their control, unsuccessfully. If the story ever ends and the final chapter is written, the vast majority of the tale will be about egalitarian societies and human sovereignty, not sheeple husbanded by profiteers.
Thanks!
Hi,
I was not referring to the prehistory of mankind. We don't know prehistory because we have no records. We have architectural artefacts, for example, and our interpretations of them, the oldest ‘records’ of our existence. I wasn't talking about the end of all humanity, I wouldn't speculate on that. But a third world war would certainly result in the end of most of us, for example.
Please give me three concrete examples from industry that are one hundred percent decentralised or where the means of production are completely self-sufficient and without the use of collectively performed work (including how these products reach you). Just briefly, please.
Of course I didn't say such had happened. Decentralization hasn't finished rolling out. "We continue to develop and distribute the infrastructure of decentralization, but economically that process began long ago..." There isn't a switch that flips and everything suddenly becomes completely 100% decentralized and all centralized production ends. There is a gradual roll out of infrastructure as tech advance enables higher productivity at end points than collective labor can compete with.
The erosion of the mechanisms that enable investors to extract wealth from production gradually reduces their take, and wherever individuals produce their own goods and services they retain the full value of their production. This transition increases daily the wealth retained by such individuals as the infrastructure rolls out, and becomes more advanced and increases productivity more.
It is entirely possible to mine, smelt, and produce iron alone. However this isn't the most productive way to make iron today, because that tech hasn't advanced to the point it is more profitable to do so than it is to make iron in a mill using collective labor. But there are products it is more profitable to take a collectively mined resource and fabricate an end product yourself, particularly when bespoke products tailored to the needs of the consumer are possible. Increasingly modern circuit boards and electronics, for example, aren't designed in a Chinese factory and mass produced because small manufacturers of circuit boards enable people to order a small run of boards to be printed that they then use to manufacture devices themselves, such as motors, radios, or any of the myriad electronic devices today possible.
Because such small manufacturers don't have to buy 100k circuit boards and sell a product to the mass market, but can make 20 cameras or stepper motors for their own use, this new DIY production reduces centralization and improves productivity at the same time, and businesses like PCBway, that produce such small orders of custom circuit boards, also decentralize the economy, not being corporations owned by investors, but are small privately held shops that don't pay dividends to investors. They still pay taxes on their profits, so the decentralization isn't complete, but it is more decentralized than the electronics market was before. This shift in wealth resulting from greater decentralization gradually reduces the wealth of the investor class, and increases the wealth of smaller producers, private parties like PCBway, and their market isn't Dell or IBM but individuals or other small companies making products for their own use, or for a small market.
This is what's ongoing, and it's happening in agriculture, transportation, communications, construction, and every field of industry.