Scalability, Communism and Dunbar Number
In his book, Filters Against Folly , Garrett Hardin cites a very interesting reason as to why communism doesn’t work. The one line summary: communism doesn’t scale up. Huh? What is scalability? Scalability refers to a system’s ability to work the same way as it gets bigger and bigger. Engineers and scientists know that most systems do not scale up: this is why a mouse cannot be the size of an elephant. Mathematically, it’s because: “The weight of an animal goes up as the cube of its linear dimensions, whereas the strength of its supporting limbs goes up only as the square.” Ok, but what’s the connection to communism? Let Shane Parrish summarize the scalability argument : “The reason communism or utopianism can work at small scale is because of the tight knit nature of a small group…(but) The problem is that the system of communist distribution which worked for a tight-knit group of 4 people did not scale to 400. Each person, less visible to the group and less caring abou...