We had thousands of years where power was derived from ruling over territories and owning land, until they were surpassed by the factory-owning bourgeoisie of the 19th century, who could produce more commodities more efficiently without needing much land at all.
The ancient nobility were numerically constrained by the population and territory they controlled. This meant that the social structures were based on stability, respecting your betters, to become a noble your father had to be a noble - because the only other way was conquering and taking land from the current owner. They didn’t want a culture based on entrepreneurship or independence because it was a zero-sum game.
But as technology advanced, anyone could strike it rich by inventing some new method of doing something more effectively. Someone who owned a match factory didn’t lose their match factory, or they money, if someone else got rich with a new model of loom (they could lose their factory to a new type of match, but it was more abstract, no roving horde of barbarians was pillaging it). So it was all good for culture and society to change. You could be born as a nobody and become rich through your match factory.
But there are only so many processes that are low-hanging fruit, hence why you don’t see many solo "inventors" coming up with things, the investment to see a result becomes higher and higher. Maybe in the future we will see a regression to a mean. Maybe the CFO of Snap Inc will be an inherited position and the CEO of Meta will be divinely ordained to rule. Or maybe AI will get more and more advanced, technological innovation will speed up, and we’ll have no idea where it goes.
> there are only so many processes that are low-hanging fruit
You might be right, but the commissioner of the U.S. Patent office said in 1899, "The patent office ought to be closed, as everything that can be invented has been invented". There might be lots more coming
The ancient nobility were numerically constrained by the population and territory they controlled. This meant that the social structures were based on stability, respecting your betters, to become a noble your father had to be a noble - because the only other way was conquering and taking land from the current owner. They didn’t want a culture based on entrepreneurship or independence because it was a zero-sum game.
But as technology advanced, anyone could strike it rich by inventing some new method of doing something more effectively. Someone who owned a match factory didn’t lose their match factory, or they money, if someone else got rich with a new model of loom (they could lose their factory to a new type of match, but it was more abstract, no roving horde of barbarians was pillaging it). So it was all good for culture and society to change. You could be born as a nobody and become rich through your match factory.
But there are only so many processes that are low-hanging fruit, hence why you don’t see many solo "inventors" coming up with things, the investment to see a result becomes higher and higher. Maybe in the future we will see a regression to a mean. Maybe the CFO of Snap Inc will be an inherited position and the CEO of Meta will be divinely ordained to rule. Or maybe AI will get more and more advanced, technological innovation will speed up, and we’ll have no idea where it goes.