> That’s old info. That’s before the massive force multiplier of the omnipotent digital info and tracking of everybody. Tactics wear out over time. Nations and organizations adapt and adopt new methodologies, tactics, and strategies to counter these controls. The bigger problem is not the one way ratchet of government power. It's the one way ratchet of shrinking liberty in the face of the "safety" (control) created by mass popularization or acceptance of a technology. Industrialization increasez population density far too much, helping corporations to shape the modern environment (and the economic and legal superstructure) that sustains them possible. We're well passed dunbars number, but is there another larger number that balances the forces of expansion/industrialization with human liberty? If we look at the most economically free cities on earth, Hong Kong, they have a population of 7.5 million. Looking at one of the most corrupt and monopolist cities on earth, NYC, it has a comparable 8.8 million. So clearly its not simply a matter of population size *nor* density. Over at https://generativist.substack.com/p/dunbars-number-is-quadratic > Extrapolating with data from other primates, Dunbar himself theorized that the binding constraint was neurological.[1] That — impressive as our brains may be — we can't seem to juggle social relationships with more than 150 people. Expanding that to the upper-bound of 22,500 possible inter-relationships, (150²), it sure does seem challenging! But, as the band/tribe example demonstrated — and as Herbert Simon emphasized endlessly — the environment itself shapes problem-solving considerably, and we are remarkably proficient at shaping ours. Thus, I don’t think cognition is what binds; I think it’s mostly environmentally-shaped social time. Interestingly one of the reasons cited for hong kong's economic success is *strong* enforcement of laws against vice and corruption. This fits with the hypothesis in the link, that regulatory and social environment play a much larger role in the efficient management of a society. We see this in the dialectic progression of history, the defeat of small tribes, leading to villages, villages defeated or unifying into cities, cities into city states, states into principalities, principalities into fiefdoms and eventually into modern nation states. We see this in the overturning of many governments of the past, leading to two outcomes: failure and the rise of worse leadership, or the institution of reforms that are less exploitative and less destructive of a region and its economy. While this may seem like a tangent, its important to note theres parallels in the economies of scale employed in suppressing the American population and the west. It means at a certain point, existing methods see diminishing returns, as the population grows resistant and adapts or paroxysms of upheaval occur, when the population spontaneously organizes at an adaption/activity level that stresses the governing regime and its own ability to counter-adapt faster than said adaption can handle. You may call it an "avalanche" if you like. Propaganda everywhere tries to deny this effect, everywhere you go, to demoralize, and suggest nothing can or will ever happen, but history does not show this at all. The ruling regime, wherever throughout history, by *necessity* projects an air of total invincibility, even *inevitability*--right up to the moment the military has turned on them, their currency has collapsed, and the population have openly stopped obeying any orders from the regime. So it has been. So it will be again. In some of the most repressive, locked-down, and overly-monitored places on earth, American prisons, they cannot even stop smuggling. Most prisons do not even have enough guards to stop the prisoners, even with force used against the inmates, if the prisoners decided to simply stop obeying. The same is true of us Americans and the u.s. as a whole. edit: butchered the spelling of this post.