Mobilization of energy resources had been proceeding on a small scale
for ages. Successful civilizers made this one of their chief tasks,
mobilizing energy forces and materials and using them to build palaces,
temples, mausoleums and whole city complexes with appropriate defenses
against marauders and other enemies.
Administrative networks, adequate to produce such results, planned and
directed the construction and administered and policed the operations.
Using elaborate techniques of communication, transportation,
fabrication, beautification, accounting, planning, initiative,
leadership, mobilization, maintenance and replacement of labor power,
imposition and sharing of authority, discipline, adjustment to deviation
and opposition, means for dealing with revolt and rebellion, the
builders of civilization performed their necessary tasks.
As civilizations have matured they have grown at the nucleus, expanded
abroad and experimented more or less successfully with various means of
exploiting nature, man and human society. Most of the competitors for
survival and supremacy dropped out or were forced out in the course of
continuous survival struggles.
Survivors of the obstacle race dealt successively with personal
rivalries; class conflicts; civil wars; dictatorships; tyrannies; with
overhead costs that grew more rapidly than income; with empty
treasuries, inflation, depression, economic stagnation; with increases
in top-heavy bureaucracies; with parasitism; with hooliganism; with the
growing role of the military in decision making and administration;
sharing the honey-pot with migrants and invaders; with rivalry and power
struggle at home and abroad; with division, fragmentation and eventual
dissolution.
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