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Can progress come about without individualization?

The middle sector is the artist’s focal point in this sculpture from the Bronze Age, raised from below and burdened from above -  Public Domain \ Published on Mediim's Data Driven Investor as Were Itinerant Craftsmen Free Agents During the Bronze Age and Why Does it Matter? The middle sector is the artist’s focal point in this sculpture from the Bronze Age, raised from below and burdened from above -  Public Domain Prior to the 1930’s when Australian archaeologist, V Gordon Childe, presented his theory about the metal smiths of the Bronze Age and their concomitant relationship to the power elite, archaeologists considered craft making merely as a result of economics. Childe identified the powerful role that prestige goods played in the early development of craft specialization and connected the emergence of craft specialists with an itinerant metallurgist culture in prehistoric Europe. A debate emerged around the social and political role that specialized craft prod

Were Bronze Age Specialized Makers, Freemen or Slaves?

Centralization vs Decentralization in the Bronze Age In 2004 anthropologist Edward M. Schortman  and Patricia Urban published  Modeling the Roles of Craft Production in Ancient Political Economies ,  a research paper discussing trends in an active archeology debate over the role of craft production during the Bronze Age. Modeling the Roles of Craft Production in Ancient Political Economies  is an interesting read, particularly because it likewise describes contemporary social organization, or perhaps, better said, what was contemporary, yesterday, but is now rapidly unravelling and no one yet knows where it is going. Contrasts between the centrally managed Sumerian culture and a European egalitarian class of itinerant makers can be applied to contemporary political organization, vulnerable to change, in a world responding to coronavirus. Sumerian Votive Figure Ancient Mesopotamia   Public Domain Dedication (CC0) Before the 1930's when  V. Gordon Childe’ began investi

After the Restoration, A Reintegration of Cottage Industries?

Down with the Tower to Liberate Diversity ! mitya-ivanov unsplash With the entire world is in a state of transition, I decided to break with my better judgement and to reach out to one of the units of economic development in Maine’s overbearingly centralized economy. I don’t know if it was because I have been reading many articles about money on Medium, or because of it being a time when the old towers of power are in precarious standing that I felt more emboldened than before to speak truth to power. Between the lines the of polite conversation, there was a current of hostility. Central management is aware that I write truthfully of the long history of corrupt practices in Maine’s centrally managed economy . A centrally managed economy uses wealth redistribution as a system of control. Open criticism of the system is neither expected nor anticipated. There is no direct line to be drawn between the undercurrent and the fact that I am a critic of the system but there are

Economic Complexity Theory in the Time of Coronavirus

Originally created for Medium These  vintage prototypes  by Weston Neil Andersen, presented in the images throughout this story, tell of a love for the work process which evolved into our company,  Andersen Design Introduction I grew up in a business in a home that designs and handcrafts ceramics. For a while the business also had a production employing about 25 people in a separate location. It was found that our type of production is better suited to a smaller more intimate setting, such as a business attached to a home. However, over the course of 67 years, the size of the of the line grew too wide and large to be produced in a small studio and I envisioned that the future of production should be a network of small independently owned ceramic production studios, which could function as an interactive network. Last month my idea was an anomaly as if existing in an alternate reality, but as the world turned toward social distancing and sheltering in place, the world