Coordination vs. Productivity: The History of Constraints

A retelling of Western history based on the tension between productivity and coordination technologies

The Constraints

Asked at a meeting of intellectuals which one book he’d wish to have while stranded on a desert island, G.K. Chesterton trolled the social-desirability-biased answers of those who spoke before him - “The Bible”, “War and Peace” - with a flat “Thomas’s Guide to Practical Shipbuilding.” It is the right answer though. A lonely shipwreck’s fate is constrained by the affordances of his physical environment and the technical knowledge at his disposal. He faces the productivity constraint. But consider the case of two shipwrecks. They may well have the shipbuilding guidebook, but fall into conflict over the division of labour and resources. They have a relaxed productivity constraint compared to a single person, but may perish because of lack of cooperation. They still face the productivity constraint (resources and technology), but they also face a coordination constraint. The coordination constraint is the maximum single-mindedness they can achieve. It is shaped by two variables. The first variable is the game-theoretic situation set up by the environment. Are the resources so scarce they foster rivalry? Is the island so big each person can go their own way? The second variable shaping the coordination constraint are the coordination technologies they possess - trust, respect, language, conflict resolution techniques, etc.

As the number of shipwrecks increases, the coordination constraint can become even more binding. The Lord of the Flies boys might have coordinated better if they chose “The Bible”, “War and Peace”, or other coordination classics, over the ship building guide.

This essay looks at Western history through the lens of the productivity and coordination constraints and how one or the other was binding for societies at different historical periods.

Pre-Agriculture (< ~10,000 BC)

Productivity Constraint binding. Coordination technology overhang

In the pre-agricultural, hunter-gatherer era humans develop an astonishing range of coordination technologies. They create groups with a shared identity, like bands and tribes. They come up with norms that govern intra-band relations and develop tools for norm enforcement - the gossip, the banishment, the sacrifice, the marriage, the chiefdom, the elders. They develop tools for legitimizing the norms - the superstition, the ritual, the taboo, the spirits of the ancestors. They use sophisticated signaling techniques like painting, sculpture, and jewelry alongside some inter-tribe coordination techniques like barter and jirga.

They develop all these coordination technologies, but they are hitting the productivity constraint. With the productivity technologies at their disposal they cannot increase population and output. No matter how well they coordinate there is only so much game to hunt and so many berries to pick. That’s the Malthusian world. It does not mean that they live at the edge of starvation, but some productivity constraint limits the population growth, be it a bad winter every few years or a raid by a neighbor band that itself is at the population limit.

Thus the hunter gatherers have a coordination overhang. Their coordination technology is better than what the environment asks them for.

Pre-State (10,000 - 4,000 BC)

Productivity constraint lifted. Coordination constraint binding

The gradual discovery of agriculture in the Middle East around 10,000 BC lifts the productivity constraint. Suddenly a band gets access to a productivity technology that allows it to create more output. More output allows more people and a stronger tribe, so wherever the environment is conducive to agriculture, the farmers eventually gain a foothold. Agriculture is a back-breaking labour, but once discovered there is no coming back. A sedentary population increases to fill the new niche. Returning to hunting would not support the increased population.

I speculate that this period is characterized by farmers coexisting with hunter-gatherers that continuously raid them. The coordination constraint becomes the binding one. Farmers could produce more and the maximum-coordination productivity is being pushed further away through better crop species, more docile animal breeds, and better agricultural tools and techniques. But the newly-agriculturized villages do not possess the coordination technologies to effectively defend from raids. Therefore total output (populations x production per person) remains below the maximum productivity of agricultural technologies.

Pre-Narrative (4,000 - 500 BC)

Coordination technology breakthrough, but not enough to reach maximum productivity

Uruk, Ur, Eridu and other cities that appear in the alluvial plains of southern Mesopotamia in the early 4th millennium BC are a coordination breakthrough. Now an effective, but not sufficient, protection against nomadic raids is available. The appearance of cities and states leads to an efflorescence of coordination techniques. The cuneiform, the kingdom, the social hierarchy, the cast, the army, the epic, the religion, the pyramid, the mausoleum, the palace, the tax and money, and long distance trade soon appear. The state as a coordination solution quickly mushrooms and spreads to all areas of productive agriculture. States eventually fill all the niches - Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Levant, Zagros, Asia Minor, Crete and Peloponnese in the West, and the Indus in the East.

The state coordination is however poorly developed and the threat of the nomads is not fully alleviated. So the coordination constraint bites before the limits of productivity can be hit. The heady days of the Bronze Age turn sour with the coordination tech crash of 1177 BC. A cascading breakdown of states in the Eastern Mediterranean coincides with the nomadic invasion of the mysterious Sea Peoples.

Pre-Scientific (500 BC - 1450 AD)

Advances in coordination technology, but societies locked into stagnant equilibrium

The gradual emergence from the Bronze Age Dark Ages is accompanied by gradual refinements to the coordination technologies. The Babylonians invent the law. The Greeks come up with philosophy, narrative history, geography, democracy, and more. The Jews and the Arabs dream up more effective religions. The Romans master the state administration and the army. The Franks invent feudalism.

Innovation usually happens where there is a degree of slack in the system. A perfectly competitive market and a perfect balance of power between hostile states are not conducive to experimentation. When there is no free energy in the system resources are not devoted to productivity technology research. After the slack-rich Greek period, little productivity tinkering takes place. There are no new general purpose technologies, except for the horse shoe and the mold-board plough that unlocked productive agriculture north of the Alps.

I suspect this stagnation is because the states of the period existed in harsh competitive environment. Coordination technologies where at their limit and new effective ones were quickly adopted (e.g. Islam). All coordination effort went into the centralization to keep the invaders away and staving off internal collapse.

Output was not at its productive limit given the available productive technology, but not far from the limit. The horse and plow agriculture done by single-minded society would produce more, but not 10x more. New productivity technologies were far from the exploration frontier. At times when there was coordination slack, it went into coordination-luxuries (Notre-Dame de Paris, Notre-Dame de Reims, Notre-Dame de Chartres).

The Pre-Scientific period was stuck in a long sub-optimal Nash equilibrium.

Pre-Industrial (1500-1820 BC)

Disruption of stagnant equilibrium allows sub-empire level coordination breakthroughs. Productivity constraint close

The Pre-Industrial period’s origins trace back to population reduction due to an epidemic that originated in Asia in disputed circumstances. Likely this creates sufficient slack in the system to allow for more coordination experimentation. Sub-empire level coordination techniques arise and are not nipped in the bud: the trade republic (Venice), the protestant sect (Hussites), the bank (Fugger), the chartered company (VOC), the colony (Madeira), the modern university (Oxford). This is accompanied by development of physical tools and techniques for coordination: the double-entry book keeping, the printing press, the scientific method. Still no great productivity technology breakthroughs happen, but the discovery of the Americas creates additional slack in the system. Now in Europe there is both slack in the system and a competitive pressure between a large number of entities. This allows for a runaway cycle of innovation both in coordination and productivity, which is followed by population expansion.

Eventually as the disruption of the societies adapt to sub-empire coordination technologies and the competition matures. Re-centralization effort becomes necessary. The states consolidate into enlightened empires. But, slack still exists in the colonies, and the great coordination solutions of 1776 and 1789 take place.

The binding constraint is now the productivity technology.

Pre-Internet (1820-1970 BC)

Break through in productivity constraint. Coordination needs to catch up.

The industrial revolution is the first major shift in the productivity constraint since the agricultural period. As Great Britain runs into productivity constraint in coal mining, there is enough coordination technology overhang for the steam engine to be not only invented but disseminated and applied at scale. Industrial revolution spreads through the West. Population explodes and coordination technologies are invented to try to deal with it. The state coordination technologies include the modern democracy, the party, the nation, etc. Ideologies like communism, nationalism, and liberalism emerge. Modern bureaucracy, pensions, insurance, bond markets, criminal justice are implemented. As population increases and state competition matures and intensifies further state coordination and centralization is required. Eventually the industrial revolution reaches the great coord-tech winter of 1914-45.

The post-war period creates a great effort to develop more effective coordination technologies - the international governing body, the international corporation, the NGO, the mass media, the modern management, the fiat money, the modern finance, the mutually assured destruction, and the game theory itself.

This time the world runs into the productivity constraint.

Pre-AGI (1970-202X BC)

Coordination technology overhang. Productivity at limit. Stagnant equilibrium

From around 1970s the world enjoys a coordination technology overhang. Further slack in the system is created by reduced population pressure via urbanization, feminism, and Chinese communist diktat. State competition is less heated and societies benefit from the Pinkerian long peace.

Innovation in coordination technologies continues - the internet, the social media, the business school, the consultant, the cryptocurrency, the independent executive agency, the investment bank, the hedge fund, the global elite coordination.

But no 10x productivity breakthrough happs. As a result improved coordination within organisations locks the economy into sub-optimal equilibria with no free energy, no slack. Most people slave in the coordination economy (Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs). Energy policy is locked in by the knife fight between necessity and activism. Health care and education are in signaling overdrive. Construction is stifled by nimbyism. Medicine and aviation are crashed by regulatory harmonization.

As the development of AGI appears within reach there is a potential for 10x breakthroughs in productivity. But it will possibly, but not necessarily, come from a perfectly internally coordinated agent. We will examine this in the future essays.