Unscarcity Notes

Palace Economies

Palace Economies Palace economies of the Bronze Age centralized production and distribution through a single palace bureaucracy tracking resources on clay tablets. They were efficient in stability...

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Palace Economies

Palace economies of the Bronze Age centralized production and distribution through a single palace bureaucracy tracking resources on clay tablets. They were efficient in stability but brittle: when palaces fell to droughts or invasions circa 1200 BCE, entire civilizations collapsed.

The book uses this as a caution against a monolithic “Earth OS” AI. A single point of coordination becomes a single point of failure. Unscarcity’s federated Commons and distributed Pillars are designed to avoid palace-style fragility while keeping interoperability.

Archaeological evidence from the Mycenaeans, Hittites, and Minoans illustrates both the power and peril of hyper-centralization, informing modern resilience thinking.

References

  • UnscarcityBook, chapter2
  • Eric H. Cline, “1177 B.C.” (2014)
  • Wikipedia: Palace economy (accessed 2024)
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