@amerika @Forestofenchantment @Humpleupagus @Nudhul @moira @mrsaturday @verita84

> Everything we have from the ancients suggested highly hierarchical societies,

This is incorrect for several reasons.

First, the survivor bias. Sumerians, for example: we have their records because it was clay tablets. This required a massive specialized class of scribes, because everyone else was illiterate. Same with Egypt. Same with all of them. The end result is that, without massive specialization--which you only get through urbanization, because you cannot have a large swath of the population that doesn't grow food unless it lives close enough to one that does--you don't get a written record of ancient civilizations.

Second, there is a matter of scale that you continue to ignore completely. You cannot have a king for a nation-state as large as the US.

Third, what we actually have from the ancients is a family structure that does not currently exist.

Last, you confuse "hierarchies" with "monarchy and hereditary titles and knights and shit". Offices have a hierarchy, but it's not hereditary and is tied (in a good company, anyway) to performance, and in a small company is tied almost entirely to who is willing to put in the effort to make sure something gets done. You are arguing in favor of a thing no one argues against (hierarchy as a concept) and then drawing an imaginary line from there to "feudalism" and then circling "feudalism" in red ink and scrawling "QED" under the circle.
the_savage_mind--claude_levi-strauss.pdf