The diagram shows how freely people developed in the different forms of society

The long way to adabism*

or: The Legacy of the forms of societies and what it has to do with Bitcoin

E.L. Tankred

Published in

Coinmonks

12 min readApr 1, 2022

(Klicke hier für die deutsche Version.)

*Adabism is an acronym and stands for: auto-determinata actio ad bonum commune, which means: ‘self-determined action for the common good’.

The history of mankind is the history of technical progress and our attempts to adapt to it. For this adaptation we have needed decades, centuries, sometimes even millennia. When we succeeded, a golden time lay ahead of us.

Underlying this observation are two important findings. The more famous of the two is by Charles Darwin. He spoke first of the “survival of the fittest” [1]. According to him, those who have best adapted to the environment have an advantage in the struggle for their survival. As humans, we are masters at adapting to the environment because we can create the necessary tools.

The second finding results from the transfer of Darwin’s theory of evolution to our socio-technical development [2]. This development follows a circle:

People invent tools that help them adapt to the environment.
New tools change the environment.
People adapt to the changed environment. -> Cycle starts again at 1…

Technical progress follows social progress and vice versa. As if a rubber band were connecting social with technical achievements, neither can do without the other, neither can hurry away from the other [2].

We are denied prosperity and cultural advancement to the extent that we cannot adapt to technological progress. In this article, I will show that our nature-given personality traits have been in conflict with money as a technology for more than ten thousand years. And how we can solve the conflict with the help of Bitcoin.

Pre-human

Our development began around 3.8 million years ago [3] with the 1.10 to 1.50 meter tall Australopithecus, better known as pre-humans [4]. I mention the body size to point out their fragility. In the battle pre-human against mammoth, the former were hopelessly outgunned.

That raises the question of the survival advantage of our ancestors. What was their survival-of-the-fittest-secret? The Australopithecus species took care of each other. They warned and helped each other. Helping each other within a horde went so far that pre-humans shared their knowledge of first techniques and primitive tools. Decentralized knowledge as protection against oblivion ensured the survival of the gaggle.

If there had been only one knowledge bearer per horde, the risk of losing experience would have been much greater. Shared knowledge could best prevent this loss. At the same time, social exchange stimulated the further development of techniques and tools.

This socio-technical interplay of cohesion and progress enabled pre-humans to transition to primitive society [5].

Primal society

Left: A prehistoric man | Right: Lightning Donate QR Code

The techniques and tools that everyone learned and used to their own advantage ensured the survival of all. This self-interest also led to joint hunting and, in turn, served the common good.

As a group, Homo sapiens could slay more mammoths or giant sloths than one could alone. In addition, hunting in a group brought them more food than the hunters needed. They shared the prey with others from their horde. Everyone knew that their chances would be redistributed the next time they hunted. This fostered the culture of reciprocity [6]: giving today enables taking tomorrow. This reciprocity was nothing more than the social saving of security in the form of favors.

With the transition to agriculture in the New Stone Age period, the division of labor began. Homo Sapiens specialized, which led to the emergency of trade and the need for money [7].

Money made trade easier. Of course you must not imagine money as it is today. Salt, Kauri shells and grain belonged to the first instrument of payments. Up to today, goods in demand that are durable and rare are best suited as money [8].

The changes that money provided to the social fabric were observed by John Yellen in the case of the indigenous Kung people. The monetary instead of social storage of value freed clansmen from their survival strategy of sharing food, techniques and tools [9]. They were no longer dependent on the help of others after an unsuccessful hunt or harvest. Instead, they were able to ensure their security through monetary savings.

To the extent money promoted individualism, it contributed to the decline of social cohesion. This is what I call the anti-social side of money. It is strengthened by the human motive of autonomy. The autonomy motive summarizes the essence of three motives: power, validity and achievement [10]. Today, these personality traits are characteristic of people who have acquired great wealth [11].

Loans and inheritances further widened the differences in wealth. Peasants who lacked grain seeds had to borrow them at an interest [12]. The wealthy passed on their lives’ work to their descendants. These rich-born formed the first upper class.

Slave-holding society

Left: Slaves and slaveholders | Right: Lightning Donations QR Code

The division of labor, trade and private property led to a realization: wealth is created by the difference between (labor) costs and sales proceeds. The search for ways to reduce one’s own labor costs gave rise to slavery in prehistoric times. Captives were no longer killed, but forced to work [13].

The autonomy-motivated upper class recognized the potential. They directed their actions toward organizing work and progress. The safety-motivated lower class, on the other hand, worked to avoid debt. If people had too many debts, they lost their freedom and became slaves, forming the lowest societal class.

A look at all slave-holding societies shows that progress faltered in them. For example, Heron of Alexandria did not invent the steam engine, although he opened temple doors by steam [14]. Slavery was socially accepted by the whole society at that time, so there was no need to replace slave labor with machines. The first steam engine was invented a good 1,500 years later.

A similar lag in progress was also evident in the southern states of the USA. In the northern states, industry boomed while the South stuck to agriculture [15]. The slaves gave the farmers of the southern states no reason to look for other ways to increase productivity or to industrialize.

In accordance with socio-technical dependence, unfree people mean social stagnation. People who are forced to work feel as little interest in it as they do in progress.

In contrast, the freedom of slaveholders led to a relatively high culture. The greatest leap was undoubtedly made in the Greco-Roman world [16].

Social stagnation among unfree people hinders the progress of technical development and vice versa. This socio-technical dependence is also conspicuous in the following forms of society.

Feudal society

Left: Feudal peasant | Right: Lightning Donations QR Code

The reasons for the end of slavery are manifold. They range from lack of acceptance to its unsatisfactory productivity. The place of the slave-holding society was taken by the feudal society.

At the beginning of feudalism, free peasants farmed their fields for their own benefit. This self-interest reanimated their interest in their own productivity. The peasants tried to increase this with ingenuity. Those of them who were also lucky in the location of their land succeeded best. Increasing productivity increased wealth, which was unevenly distributed in favor of the feudal nobility [17].

Over time, feudal nobility discovered land as a new means of power. They found ways to transfer the land of the free peasants into their ownership. From then on, feudal lords demanded taxes for use of their land [18].

The form of the tax liability significantly influenced both peasant productivity and progress. The tithe motivated farmers to improve their working methods. The delivery of the surplus demotivated peasants. In the first case, peasants had to hand over the tenth part of their harvest, and in the latter case, everything that exceeded their own needs [17].

Social restrictions slowed down technological progress to increase productivity. How great could the prosperity of feudal society have been if all people had been free?

Capitalism

No one can say what degree of prosperity could have been achieved in feudal society. To estimate the answer, perhaps a look at capitalism will help you. Division of labor, trade and private property had proven themselves in the past. Capitalism adopted them. What people are still looking for is how they can best use these three elements for the benefit of society.

From slave-holding society to feudal society, prosperity increased because people were given more freedom to act in their own interests. Private ownership of the lives of the labor force became private ownership of the land of the labor force. At the same time, a few people maximized their freedom at the expense of others.

Capitalism tried its luck with private ownership of the means of production. This gave people more freedom in the sense of self-determination, because means of production were multipliable compared to one’s own life or land. Everyone could start their own businesses.

Private ownership of the means of production inevitably created competition between commodity producers [18]. Since then, independent competition has created the greatest prosperity in human history, general health and long periods of peace [19].

Although our prosperity is reaching new heights, our sense of happiness is withering away [20]. Society’s fears for the future are growing along with the gap between rich and poor. There are many reasons for this, but ultimately they are all social, not monetary.

This begins with social comparisons that others are wealthier than oneself, continues with climate problems that promote fear for one’s own life and that of one’s descendants [20], and ends with the fears born of social loneliness [21]. Like slavery and feudalism, capitalism has found its way to concentrate wealth and restrict the freedom of the many.

Our primal brain misses the security and equality of primal society. The desire for security is reflected in the dominant relationship motive of humans [10]. It is the most widespread personality trait in the world and yet our society is not oriented towards its happiness.

Instead, the focus is on GDP, which is in the interest of those with a dominant independence motive — those who strive for achievement, power or prestige. They have an easy game because their independence motive is not in the nature of most people. Or in game theory terms, people with a dominant autonomy motive value harmony less. This is a problem for those who put their emphasis on strong relationships to satisfy their security motive. They seek to compensate for a lack of harmony rather than gain advantage at the expense of others.

Adabism

Left: Happy children in Spoconism | Right: Lightning donations QR code

Thus, the personality motive of autonomy is the reason why our leaders in life, business and politics are able to assert themselves over their security-motivated followers to this day [11]. Their self-interest dominates that of others. Their independence is more important to them than social cooperation for the good of all.

As long as the autonomy-motivated do not lead a monopoly, Adam Smith’s invisible hand of the market remains intact. According to Smith, self-interested striving leads to the good of the whole society [22]. However, the invisible hand fails wherever the autonomy-motivated can restrict market competition and influence it in their favor.

If you look at what our leaders base their independence on, you always come down to money. Money is the technology which we have not completely socially processed until today. Without the invention of money, the leaders of the primitive society would not have had a store of value that sufficiently released them from the welfare of the other members of the horde. Without money, slaveholders and feudal nobility would have had no reason to exploit slaves and serfs. At the same time, money acted as their tool which they used to accumulate even more wealth. The drive for autonomy attracts money like a magnet that hovers over everything.

Bitcoin can solve the social problem of the centralized power of a few leaders to some extent. Peer-to-peer money decentralizes this power and gives everyone more self-determination, more freedom, because no one can change Bitcoin to their own advantage.

Although Bitcoin’s protocol decentralizes the power of money better than fiat money can, it continues to centralize the power of Bitcoin owners. For those particularly successful in trading, Bitcoin provides a wallet that increases their purchasing power. This property of Bitcoin, based solely on technology, will continue to rein in our socio-technological progress. People will not be able to live in complete self-determination for the benefit of all until the distribution problem has been irreversibly solved.

Redistribution can be done with an Unconditional Basic Income based on Bitcoin, which is based on a microtransaction fee. In 2016, the volume of German financial transactions was about 318,976.9 billion euros [23]. Even then, a microtransaction fee of 4.8 per mille would have been sufficient to pay out a monthly Unconditional Basic Income of 1,500 euros to every German.

To make myself clear: Redistribution should only give people education, food, clothing and a roof over their heads from birth to death. It is not to help all people achieve equal prosperity. They only need the freedom to self-determination. This freedom drove technical progress in primitive times, during slavery, feudalism and capitalism. It will do the same in adabism, because progress always solves (and triggers) social problems in the final analysis.

Redistribution drives progress

With a redistribution of wealth, people will get back to their roots. They can be there for each other instead of having to focus on their own wealth. They can chase progress together for the good of all. They can share their knowledge more readily because their livelihood is no longer directly tied to it. And yet, the achievement-motivated can achieve greater prosperity, the power-motivated can lead change for the good of all, and the validity-motivated can make a name for themselves that lasts longer than their lives. We need the autonomous personalities for our progress just as much as the relationship-motivated ones. The only thing we don’t need is the concentration of money.

Only when money redistributes itself automatically can we act as a global community. We will experience the greatest technological advances of all time and be able to adapt to them more quickly.

***

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