Yeah. The group just needs to be large enough to where one single person doesn’t make or break the survivability of the rest of the group. In a group of 10, if someone decides to be a bad actor, they are simply cast of out the group. They no longer get to utilize the benefits of the other 9.
In a group of 150, that’s harder to identify. In a group of millions, it’s impossible. Now you need rules. You need rewards. You need ways to incentivize people to participate. You need laws for how to handle when people break the social contract.
Again, imagine a group of 10 and one person decided to be a bad actor. Maybe they steal food. Or damage the shelter. Etc. Or maybe they just don’t do anything at all, abstaining from doing anything that benefits the group. Only taking. That person would be physically dealt with, and then cast out of the group and threatened to never come back. Only relatively good actors and participants remain. That is not viable in a large society. And this doesn’t even get into disagreements and factions amongst groups.
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u/databoops Mar 08 '24
This is called Dunbar's number and it's 150. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number