if you're not afraid of marxist theory you should check out Graeber's Turning Modes of Production Inside Out: Or, Why Capitalism is a Transformation of Slavery
I'm somewhat familiar with Marxist theory. I'm a fan of quite a bit of it. Not EVERYTHING, but I like quite a bit. I think a lot of people have been looking for a modern, credible, academic source... that's what I meant in all honesty. I'm a self-described Anarcho-Syndicalist / Libertarian Socialist for the most part, however and to my uncomfortable detriment, I've noticed that I often have issues getting along with other self described Anarcho-Syndicalists. It's incredibly stupid, and I cannot explain it. I'm a black sheep in a sense. I am not currently familiar with your link, so I will certainly check it out. Thanks!
What are the best books to read for figuring out the best form of government? I've been reading C4SS's stuff, and reading some Unqualified Reservations (he advocates a completely non-democratic government, which is kind of interesting because it never occurred to me that democracy might bad... I don't believe him yet, but it's still interesting to consider) and Locke and Hobbes and... I'm just not sure. I've thought this before, but there might not be a perfect form of government. Maybe humanity forever spirals into different forms of government until some form of post-scarcity is reached, and then government is relatively unnecessary because humanity will have nothing to fight over because they have everything they could possibly want. Or maybe not. You certainly seem to have settled on Marxism (anarchist syndicalism). I don't know, I find it farfetched that anarchy could ever work due to several of the arguments given over at Unqualified Reservations (namely that if there's an absence of power, something will fill it).
i'm partial to /r/Anarchy101's reading list i think it's kind of funny how you say we'll eventually reach a post-scarcity society in which government is unnecessary and then immediately dismiss marxism, anarchism, and syndicalism which are pretty much the most complete bodies of theory on post-scarcity stateless societies. the idea that anarchist societies exist in a power vacuum is wrong. anarchists aren't simply trying to eliminate the state and property, they're trying to construct non-hierarchical social institutions that encourage cooperation, to eventually displace our current hierarchical social institutions that encourage domination. there's no power vacuum because the vacuum is filled with something else. furthermore, it's kind of a silly question in the first place, because the "failure" condition is actually where we are right now. when an argument against anarchism utilizes a state or other hierarchical system as a theoretical bogeyman, it's kind of fucked. any anarchist society will obviously have to overcome state aggression to even establish itself. by the time the society is operational and widespread, the question has become a moot point. AFAQ Section I.5.11: How will an anarchist society defend itself against the power hungry? AFAQ Section J.7.6: How could an anarchist revolution defend itself?if there's an absence of power, something will fill it
Nothing I read in that article indicates that managers got their tactics from the slave owners. It could be that managers came up with these tactics based on the free market just as much as the slave owners did (both had the same pressure of increasing profits), so it was convergent evolution, not that the managers inherited ideas from the slave owners. Incentivizing workers isn't a completely nonobvious idea anyway; it isn't as if issuing incentives to workers has to mean that the managers got their ideas from slave owners.
I'm not sure that it's meant to imply that they got their tactics from slave owners; I think it's intended to demonstrate the comparisons between current, and 200 year old business intelligence / reports / and what we today call analytics. One could fairly reasonably see the correlation.