All of which are small groups that rely on a ton of interpersonal trust. Large groups that lack interpersonal trust (like nations) tend to fail under communism.
Catal Huyuk, Mohenjo-
Daro, Harappa, Tripolye-Curcuteni, Norte-Chico, Hopewell, Ain Ghazal.
Populations from hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands of people, over the course of millennia, in effectively completely egalitarian, likely communal societies.
And those are just the ones we’ve found.
Indus River Valley civilization may have been as many as 5 million people, no rulers, no social hierarchy, uniform housing, no monumental/elite structures or housing, no evidence of centralized power or government, standard weights and measures, collective infrastructure projects, etc etc.
It lasted roughly 1400 years.
So… no, you don’t actually need a small groups. You actually only really need it to be completely socially unacceptable for some to live in excess while others suffer.
In the entirety of human history, the only mechanism by which the human condition as a whole is improved is by applying a portion of the private surplus towards the public good. How much is a question of the moral character of the civilization in question.
In the 50’s, in the US, if you made over $200k (~$2.2million in 2025 dollars) you paid over 90% of every dollar earned above $200k in taxes. The top corporate tax rate was 52%.
I’d argue that the US is reverting to the average global experience precisely as its domestic market breaks down due to interventions — eg, destroying small businesses via regulation and mass importation of foreign labor.
The people who have won the game in our current system love to point to this statistic, as if "extreme poverty" is the only thing that matters.
Even if people have a roof of their own head and bread in their belly, they don't like living with anxiety about being able to pay off debt, or what would happen if they had an unexpected hospital stay. And above all, they don't like working so hard only for the value they produce to be sucked up and used to buy back stock for the benefit of billionaires.
