THE GLOBAL SOCIETY

Here, we create and describe the global society based on the theories and conditions we have presented above.

TITLES

The Global Society

The Global Economy

The Map

THE GLOBAL SOCIETY

With the help of Theories and Reports, we can now construct the Global Society. What will the human society look like, given the technical knowledge, machines, and equipment that humans possess? How does she create her subsistence using these, and what kind of society does that lead to? We can reason logically toward this society, which we will call the Global Society. This is our ultimate goal.

However, we will begin by logically reasoning our way to the hunter-gatherer society and then to the state society. This will give us a theoretical understanding of their nature. Since we also know from history and practice what these societies looked like, we can compare and assess how well our reasoning holds up. If our conclusions are accurate in these cases, then our logic may also hold true when we attempt to envision the yet unknown global society.

When one lives directly off nature, hand to mouth, there is hardly a society to speak of. One becomes a roaming group searching for food. This group cannot be very large, as nature’s resources are limited and must suffice for all. Yet, the group must be large enough to care for the young until they can fend for themselves. It must be able to carry forward future generations and survive hardships. A group has better chances of overcoming challenges than individuals.

They don’t roam aimlessly, but follow known, fruitful paths. They have campsites. They have a leader—an elder—who holds the group’s collective experience and knows how to navigate. One can assume the leader is understanding and inclusive. This “society” is open, and if the leader becomes troublesome, people can leave and start their own group. Nature is for everyone, and everyone can gather for themselves.

Relations with other nearby groups can be assumed to be friendly and familiar. There is no deep-seated hostility, and there may even be some exchange.

A foraging group might consist of about a dozen individuals. Hunters, however, must be far more numerous—perhaps ten times more—especially if hunting large game. A core group of strong and agile men is needed to bring down prey like a mammoth or a buffalo. Hunters need support, and once the prey is downed, others are needed to help process it. Tools are necessary: hunters need spears, and sharp implements are needed for butchering.

A hunter society is not only larger than a forager one, but also more tightly organized. Hunting dangerous and elusive prey requires discipline and instinctive cooperation. Everything depends on the hunting team. If the hunt fails, the consequences can be dire. Thus, there is a leader who makes all important decisions. There is no room for debate during the hunt—it’s a high-operational situation where one person commands. The same organizational structure continues during off-season. In this society, everyone has a role and tasks to fulfill. It is disciplined, and personal eccentricities are not tolerated. There may even be a need for enforcers.

Unlike forager societies, hunter societies are not open. You cannot simply leave if you are unhappy. Alone, you cannot bring down large game—you would be lost and vulnerable.

That is what we might expect, in theory, when humans live as foragers or hunters. And how did it turn out in reality? History tells us—it’s well-documented. Our reasoning matches the historical facts. Our theoretical model holds up.

What we have logically reasoned and briefly described aligns with how foragers and hunters actually lived. They organized themselves directly according to their subsistence situation. There were no alternatives—it was about extracting the maximum benefit from their efforts.

In fact, the same people or group could shift organizational form depending on seasonal changes. This was the case for the Plains Indians in North America. In summer, they moved in small family groups gathering food from valleys and riverbeds—they were foragers. In autumn, as the buffalo migrated south, they gathered into large hunting bands—becoming hunters. They adapted to what nature provided, which also gave them a varied diet.

It’s hard to find a better example or clearer proof of our theory: human society is a consequence of its subsistence mode.

In the ancient world—before the emergence of state societies—all humans were hunter-gatherers. There were groups, bands, tribes spread across the globe—tens of thousands of them. All were tightly linked to their subsistence conditions and organized accordingly. The environment was diverse—green and wild, land and sea, winter and summer, wet or dry, hot or cold. Humans adapted to it all.

Next: The Agricultural Society

Next, we will logically reason our way toward what kind of society emerges when humans begin farming. How do they organize to extract the most from agriculture? What kind of society does that create? We’ll follow the same theoretical reasoning as we did with the forager-hunter society, and then compare it with historical reality.

In agriculture, humans gather everything useful from nature—plants and animals—and cultivate them in one place. She or he becomes a farmer. This allows a tenfold increase in yield from the land compared to foraging. As a result, humans no longer need to wander—they settle permanently. They choose the most fertile spot and make it their own.

Permanent settlement brings many advantages. People can build sturdy dwellings to protect themselves, their animals, and their harvest. They can store food, creating security and planning ahead. They can establish workstations to refine their methods and specialize. They can keep more tools and possessions, which were impractical to carry while nomadic. There are many benefits. Among the drawbacks: people now live in their own waste, increasing the risk of disease outbreaks.

They become a small community—a farming village. Its geographical size is limited by how far people can walk to the fields. Beyond a certain point, it’s better to divide into two villages. But as with foragers and hunters, it’s beneficial to have a sufficient population to handle life’s difficulties—disease, care for the young and elderly, etc.

No formal leadership is necessary; everyone does their tasks. It’s not a hunting group, and one cannot simply leave if unhappy. It’s not an open society—people are tied to the village, which may cause internal conflicts or tensions.

Relations with nearby villages may be positive—socializing, mutual benefit, and exchange. But also disagreements, particularly over boundaries.

The society resulting from the agricultural way of life, as far as we can see, is the farming village. One village after another forms a patchwork across the fertile landscape. It’s as if the hunters and foragers settled permanently on the spot.

That would complete our theoretical analysis—this is the society that forms if humans are farmers. But with hindsight, we know this isn’t the end. Something much, much larger arises: states. Our theoretical reasoning must continue—we must reconsider, think deeper and on a grander scale.

From Villages to States

Socially, not much changes—people still live in groups. But natural land becomes agricultural land. What was once foraged is now stored in barns. Villages become depots, and the landscape becomes a mosaic of depots.

These depots contain everything humans need: food, clothing, tools, even jewelry. From this, a new category of people emerges: raiders. They come in hordes from “beyond the mountains,” plundering and burning. Like locusts, they sweep across the land, covering hundreds of miles.

The villagers fight for their lives, but the enemy is too powerful. They try to barricade themselves, build palisades—but eventually those are breached. They can’t hold out, and the villages form their own militia. Over time, militias become permanent military forces, capable of counterattacks. Eventually, the military separates from the farmers, builds their own garrisons, and answers only to themselves. They possess the means of violence and therefore the power. They become the ruling class.

This elite wants as much land as possible. How much they can conquer depends largely on communication and mobility. High mountains and seas limit them. They expand—not just by miles but by hundreds of miles.

The farmers have little say. They choose the warlord who takes only part of the harvest and doesn’t destroy everything. They choose someone who looks and speaks like them. Thus, a nation is formed—but an unholy one.

The agricultural economy thus leads to something much bigger than farming villages: giant societies, or states. These become class societies. At the top: the ruling class who use violence to claim their territory. At the bottom—and most numerous—are the farmers who produce the food. Farmers are regularly taxed, and the structure becomes institutionalized. The society becomes a state society or nation-state.

Taxes are collected by officials, and law and order are maintained by police. The military defends and expands borders. There is constant warfare—either physical or verbal. Land is everything in this form of society.

Agriculture ends in a dual society. At the bottom: villages that provide food. At the top: rulers who take from the farmers. Our theoretical reasoning could have stopped at villages if we didn’t know the outcome. The lesson is: human nature is possessive—survival trumps all.

The Global Society – Theoretical Only

When we arrive at the Global Society, we have no historical precedent. We have only theoretical reasoning to guide us. But based on how we reasoned our way to the forager-hunter society And with the state society, we are sufficiently trained to take on the Global Society with some success. Describing the global society is our great final goal.

The two societal forms—hunter-gatherers and state societies—are, at least in terms of subsistence, quite similar. Both rely on extracting resources from nature using simple tools, primarily through muscle power.

Now, as we enter the era of the global society, the method of subsistence is something entirely different. Machines now do all the work. These machines use fossil energy and come in all forms. There are machines that extract materials from the Earth’s surface, collecting ore, timber, petroleum, and harvesting crops. Then other machines, usually concentrated in facilities, process these materials to extract the substances that are of interest to humans. These substances can be further developed or even transformed into entirely new compounds. After that, semi-finished products are created, which from all directions and in various forms become final products. Final products can be assembled by machines, but also by skilled humans performing multiple tasks at once.

Everything is transported—over short or long distances—and placed in stores or so-called markets where consumers can pick them up. A typical grocery store may carry 10,000 different items from all corners of the Earth.

The machines and their processes are made possible by technological knowledge acquired by humans, which in turn is based on the natural sciences.

Machines are also made as engines that power various vehicles. They power ships, cars, trucks, trains, and airplanes. Both goods and people can be transported quickly and efficiently. Air travel enables a person to circle the globe in not 80 days, but in just two. Goods in a container can be shipped from door to door, across continents, without a single person needing to touch it. People can communicate with one another from anywhere on Earth through a universal telecommunication network. Information can be exchanged in seconds.

The importance of communication is often underestimated, but it determines how far one can reach and thus how large an operation or organization can become. Today’s communications are global—while a human may get tired from long travel, goods and information do not. For them, distance doesn’t matter.

Global communications are a boon for machines. Machines are powerful and can produce substances and forms no human could create. However, they are simple-minded and can only perform one task—but in enormous quantities. A machine can churn out its product around the clock, for millions of years or more. Therefore, it needs the world population as its receiver. At very large production scales, machines can be made fully automatic. The price then becomes almost nothing—mere cents.

Global communications enable fully automated production that costs almost nothing. They pave the way for the global economy. In the global economy, world citizens have access to all raw materials and whatever can be made from them. They can eat bananas, drink coffee, wear cotton clothes, fuel their cars, and pave roads. Even small, specialized needs can be met, like medicine for rare diseases. Coordinated research also yields far more.

In the global economy, the market decides what each country should focus on—what they are best suited for, such as raw materials and their initial processing. Further processing and high-tech production can take place anywhere on Earth. It ends up where there is high technological development and a culture of knowledge. If a country lacks raw materials, it sells its labor. If it has nothing, it still benefits through a spillover effect. But being outside the global economy means relying only on what you have—which may be very little.

The machine/technological mode of subsistence promises everything to everyone for nothing. Life becomes easy—and that’s what the people of the Earth want. Nothing, therefore, can stop the rise of the Global Society.

Through the global economy, all the world’s people will collaborate. They benefit from and trade with each other. This is fundamentally different from the agricultural era, when the goal was to control as much land as possible. That led to wars, world wars, and massive military build-ups. In the Global Society, wars have disappeared—and with them, the military.

In the global world, life is no longer a struggle for survival—it is guaranteed. People express this by reproducing and increasing their material standard. Eight billion people all require consumption, but the Earth’s resources and regenerative capacity are limited. The planet cannot indefinitely deliver without collapsing, polluting, and becoming depleted. It cannot provide so much in a sustainable way. The equation doesn’t add up. The balance point may lie somewhere around three billion people—the more we take, the less remains. Humanity is exhausting itself. She is her own enemy.

In the Global Society, people can live wherever they want. They are no longer tied to arable land. They gather in megacities or large urban clusters, preferably in a pleasant climate. Here they can find employment, mostly in services, distribution, or general labor. Here they can receive care and social support, as well as enjoy entertainment—unless they are off traveling. The range of cultural activities is vast.

Such megacities naturally require governance and administration. All technical systems must function, as must the social order. This governance appears to be democratically appointed. It is hard for a small group to control a megacity. It is easier in rural areas where people live far apart. In a city, there is a dense population and many basements, alleys, and hideouts. This favors the majority, as any final confrontation between a few and the many will be won by the group with the most handguns.

The megacity manages—or rather owns—everything communal. The individual owns their own. To maintain order, there are police. There is much to steal or attack. One may assume that IT technology is widely used to monitor everything and everyone. People are surveilled—but also surveil themselves. The global human is not an object, like in the state society, but fully active—a complete person and part of the whole.

The cities and urban clusters are the most visible features on the Global Society’s political map. They are the hubs. Everything else is a tangled web of connections. How it all forms a whole is hard to understand. It just is—it’s an organism. The Global Society, it should be said, is not a power society. There is no ruling elite with subordinates.

The above summary aims to sufficiently capture the essence of the Global Society:

• It encompasses the entire world population

• It is cooperative

• It is peaceful and lacks military forces

• It exploits the full potential of machine technology

• It is enabled by seamless communications

• It is civilian and human-centered

• People gather in large cities

• It depletes Earth’s resources and is currently its own enemy and downfall

THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

When messages—spoken or written—can be sent across the world in a second, when businesspeople can meet within a day via air travel, and when goods can be transported cheaply in enormous container ships, the entire world becomes open to creating a global economy.

A global economy refers to an economy shared by the entire world’s population—currently eight billion people. It’s an economy that everyone contributes to and lives off. It is today’s economy, even though economies are still often regarded as national.

The larger an economy is, the more it gives back. More goods can be produced, and long production runs make each item cheaper. This, of course, is what people want, and it is the direction the economy is moving in.

In earlier times, people had to toil for their daily bread. Back then, the economic unit was the agricultural village, and the state was a sum of many such villages. The village was practically self-sufficient and did almost everything itself. Besides sowing and harvesting, they made clothes, tools, and houses. Fabric was labor-intensive to produce, which is why industrial manufacturing began here. The textile industry broke through village life and marked the start of a larger economy.

More and more goods began to be manufactured industrially, and soon the nation-state came to be seen as an economic unit. But it didn’t stop there—eventually, the nation-states were also surpassed, and the entire planet became a single economic unit. With that, geographical expansion was complete; future expansion could now only be inward and qualitative. All of this happened at a rapid pace. The accompanying social reforms were largely left behind and suppressed in an increasingly strained system. The journey toward a global society remains to be completed—as of the year 2025.

When the entire planet becomes accessible, a global economy can be created. Everything humanity needs is taken from the Earth—and naturally, it’s taken from the most productive locations. Iron ore and minerals are extracted from the richest mines, oil from the most abundant wells. The same goes for agriculture: rice, maize, wheat are grown where they yield the most. The same with coffee, bananas, and grapes. If there’s competition for land, the market decides what should be grown. Poorer land is used for grazing, even poorer for forestry. Fish are where they are and must be caught on site. This ensures that each raw material is as cheap as possible. Everyone gains access to everything. Everyone, as stated, can eat bananas and wear gold jewelry.

The further processing of raw materials is done by machines, preferably close to the source. Final production is placed near population centers, often with increased use of human labor. Facilities and machines can perform one task—but in massive quantities. Humans can perform many tasks but only one at a time—for example, making a garment. Clothing production is hard to automate. A robot, however, can assemble a TV. Mass production can in principle be automated, but not unique products such as a building.

In short: it’s the machines doing the work. The machines are like a giant—perhaps god-sent—that has landed on Earth to collect and assemble what humanity needs. The giant transforms it into consumer goods and places them in various distribution centers called markets.

The giant—i.e., the machines—does the job. But it’s the human who created and controls them. She ensures they are maintained, operated, and improved. To do this, she has developed technology. Knowledge has become a major factor in the global economy. In classical economics, production was shaped by three components: raw materials, labor, and capital. Later, knowledge was added. Today, one might say knowledge has replaced capital: production is driven by raw materials, labor (manufacturing), and knowledge. Capital is still important, but it floats around the globe and isn’t in short supply. Knowledge is more crucial.

The global economy is structured so that each region (or nation) contributes what it has or does best. This is fed into the global production apparatus, which then distributes everything through a network. Each country can be placed within a triangle: at the top is knowledge, in one corner manufacturing (labor), and in the other raw materials. Countries rich in one area are found in the corners; those with all three are in the middle.

[Illustration of the triangle]

At the top of the triangle—knowledge—we find Japan and others. In the manufacturing corner: China, Southeast Asia. In the raw materials corner: Saudi Arabia, Russia. Those with it all, like the USA, land in the center.

The farther a country is out toward one corner, the more specialized—and vulnerable—it is. If Saudi Arabia were isolated and couldn’t sell its oil, it would be a disaster. The oil would remain in the ground, worthless. The whole country would be thrown back a hundred years, and the Saudis would return to a Bedouin lifestyle.

If Japan, which depends on its knowledge in electronics, couldn’t export its products, something similar would happen. They would have to survive on rice and fish. But to emerge from an agrarian state, they need oil and iron ore—both of which Japan lacks.

China has cheap labor but little oil and iron. The country is large, with a big population, and could perhaps manage halfway. But only a few could afford cars.

The USA has access to everything and could manage fairly well even if completely isolated. If there were tariffs instead of total isolation—some kind of thresholds or filters—there would be only a modest reduction in national output and living standards.

Free trade is vital, and for it to work optimally, a market economy is essential. Nothing else makes sense. How else could one determine what to produce, where, and how much? The buyer knows best.

In a market economy, the buyer chooses what he or she wants. The buyer maximizes satisfaction with the least possible expense. If we replace “expense” with “environmental impact,” the market economy offers the greatest satisfaction relative to environmental cost.

Another aspect of the global economy is what people do. Since machines arrived, major changes have occurred. People no longer need to toil in fields or factories. What people did in the 1800s is entirely different from what they do in the 2000s. This shift can be visualized in seventh-parts—like a “weekly schedule.”

Day 1800s 2000s

Mo Upbringing Education

Tu Work Manufacturing

We Work Distribution

Th Work Care

Fr Work Retirement

Sa Old age Play

Su Rest Play

In the 1800s, people spent 4 out of 7 days on manufacturing. The same figure in the 2000s is 1 out of 7.

Today, humans focus on activities that cannot be mechanized or automated—such as caring for one another and playing.

The global economy is based on fast and cheap communication. The best raw materials from all over the world are used. It harnesses the mass production capabilities of machines.

The global economy promises everything for everyone—for nothing.

THE MAP

Planeten visas hur samhällena blir dels när människan sysslar med jordbruk dels när hon använder sig av maskiner.

Drawings

THE MAP

The planet shows how societies develop both when humans engage in agriculture and when they use machines.

Drawings