A long lasting society

Question

A while ago, the richest men and women in a country got together and came up with a type of society that could endure long enough until it became advanced enough to launch space conquering missions.

The first thing noticed by these rich and wise people was that the resources of the country got depleted too fast. They decided to make the country predominantly rural, and not give the people access to any other advanced technology than contraception. So, the country itself lacks any industry and agriculture beyond what was available in the 15-th century Europe.

There is, however, a small minority of people, less then 1% of the population, who live completely different lives. They are selected in various ways from the general population of plebs based on their native abilities. They are the drivers of the technological progress of the country. These people are highly skilled workers, scientists, artists etc.

But their lives are extremely hard. They work very long hours and they often die of overwork. To make things worse, the low class, the plebs distrust and hate them, because the ruling class has spies who keep spreading rumors about them. Some of the ruling class' spies are tasked to keep an eye on these highly skilled working class, so they do not organize themselves and challenge the ruling class.

There are many other functions of this highly skilled class apart from advancing technology. For example, if there is a famine or some kind of natural disaster, their job is to use the technology available to mitigate their effect. If there is a serious pandemic, the same people would produce medicines and vaccines.

The plebs are treated more like a gene reservoir. The government interferes in their lives when there is an extinction causing catastrophe, or they try to do very stupid things, like cause massive forest fires, or poison lake waters.

My question is: could this society resist for 500 years, until manned spaceflight could become possible?

What exactly would keep the ruling class to stick to the plan until science and technology was advanced enough to make spaceflight possible? What should they do to keep the highly skilled class in line? Could the plebs prevent this plan from working?

The country itself is not at war with anyone, because the other countries are not advanced enough to challenge it.

Edit. This is a post-industrial society. It is known about spaceflight . There already is a qualified workforce. The goal of this society is to make the general population consume less, until space colonization becomes possible. The masses are not really oppressed. Apart from the demand that they send their brightest children to be educated as highly skilled workers, they can do as they please, as long as they don't try to create their own governmental structure.

The other countries don't count in any way, or could be easily dealt with.

Answer 1

Aristoi:

I think your society will not achieve it's goals (though how they know about space travel is a mystery), nor will they be terribly stable. Something like this was dreamed up by the ancient Greeks, who proposed a ruling class based on service to society, selective breeding, and personal austerity. Even the Greeks, who brought us such social experiments as Athens and Sparta, didn't attempt to make this system work. But the IDEA was so appealing, rulers wrapped themselves in the idea of Aristoi "noblesse oblige", which is where we get the term "Aristocracy."

• Your structure depends on the stability of an autocratic system oppressing the "unworthy" common class, and attempting to exploit the innovative class. There is no motivation for commoners to support the society, and no motivation for the innovators to innovate.
• Your system will suppress the very innovations it needs to advance towards high-tech. If the Ruling class determines which advances disrupt the social order, they will only allow innovations with no potential threatening implications.
• Technological innovation doesn't usually have a long-term goal in primitive societies. It is innovation to solve problems like "this mine won't stay dry" or "Dirty water is killing too many workers." But the agenda is being set not by necessity, but the ruling class.
• Since only the innovator class is allowed to innovate, ideas and innovations from the leader and commoner class are suppressed. The pool of possible innovation is reduced.
• Innovations affecting the lives of the common folk (like mining techniques, labor-saving devices, clean water, disease prevention) are apparently seen as unnecessary. But these very things lead to general technological advancement.
• Why have birth control? Labor is the main function of commoners, and without labor-saving technology, you need all the workers you can get.
• Despite the monitoring of the innovators to prevent rebellion, you are by definition putting the cleverest people in a position where they are actively mistreated and given a strong motive to overthrow the system.
• Your system doesn't account for outside societies and social orders. Innovation will bleed over into the less advanced societies, causing them to advance to the more advanced level. Unhappy innovator-class people will flee to other societies and raise their levels of technology without the restrictions placed on them in your society.
• I can't think of a highly innovative society on Earth (at least in the modern age) that was stable for 500+ years without having at least one major turnover of the social order. Technological change will inevitably lead to SOME kind of significant alteration of (at least) how workers work, how educators are educated, and how much knowledge and freedom is given to the common people.

Answer 2

This answer will focus on just a few problems that a proposed society will have. It will also be based on an assumption that somehow this society has been successfully established (whether it is possible or not is another question).

1. Industry and agriculture

It is worth mentioning that Europe was not technologically and culturally homogenous in the 15th century. However, this is beyond the scope of this question, so we will assume that if some technology, know-how, knowledge, etc. was available somewhere in Europe at that time, the proposed society has it.

One of the most used agricultural systems in the 15th century was an open-field system:

The typical planting scheme in a three-field system was that barley, oats, or legumes would be planted in one field in spring, wheat or rye in the second field in the fall and the third field would be left fallow. The following year, the planting in the fields would be rotated. Pasturage was held in common. The tenants pastured their livestock on the fallow field and on the planted fields after harvest.

This system was not very efficient and the yields were somewhat low:

Annual wheat production at Battle Abbey in Sussex in the late 14th century ranged from 2.26 to 5.22 seeds harvested for every seed planted, averaging 4.34 seeds harvested for every seed planted. Barley production averaged 4.01 and oats 2.87 seeds harvested for seeds planted. This translates into yields of 7 to 17 bushels per acre harvested. Battle Abbey, however, may have been atypical, with better management and soils than typical of demesnes in open-field areas.

For comparison, today's wheat yields range from 3 to 8 tonnes per hectare (approximately 44 to 119 bushels per acre). In 1961, the yields were lower and ranged from 1 to 3 tonnes per hectare (approximately 15 to 45 bushels per acre).

In addition to low yields, medieval agriculture was subject to frequent crop failures that led to famines.

The population of Europe reached about 80 million people by the mid-14th century. And the open-field system was struggling to support it. It is speculated that one of the reasons for the Black Death's (1347-1351) high mortality rates was the overall poor health of the population due to insufficient nutrition (this documentary was available for free on some streaming platforms some time ago).

The open-field system persisted for over a thousand years, so keeping it in place for 500 years is not a big deal. It is doable. However, it places a hard limit on population. This limit can be somewhat higher than historically observed if:

• better plough technologies are used (check the Second Agricultural Revolution for details);
• better crops are used (e.g. potatoes, modern varieties of wheat, rye, barley, etc. which all have higher yields and higher nutritional values);
• better land management (can use the same three-field system but manage the land differently);
• better storage solutions are available;
• overall better management of the food stocks (with the focus on managing crop failures).

While it is possible to support a slightly higher population by improving logistics and management, it is doubtful that the population will be able to reach the numbers necessary for supporting the industrial base required for space flight.

For example, Russia is a country with space flight technology, a relatively low population (approx. 145 million), a huge territory, and an abundance of natural resources. It is also reasonable to assume that most space-related technologies are developed and produced within the country (this does not mean that all raw and intermediate materials are sourced or produced within the country, though). Russia, theoretically, can be self-sufficient while maintaining the modern level of technology (some raw materials will still have to be imported; self-sufficiency might also require the abandonment of consumerism).

Please note that the current urbanisation level of the Russian Federation is 74%. It is also the country with 'one of the highest tertiary attainment rates across OECD countries, at 63% of 25-34 year-olds compared with the OECD average of 44%'.

It is also worth mentioning that Russia, China, and Japan (3 historical examples of the rapid increase in industrial and technological capacity) had to rapidly urbanise, modernise agriculture, and adopt universal education in order to accomplish their goal of technological advancement.

2. 1%

A. Historical trends

A popular estimate is that on average¹ about 85% of the Medieval European population were peasants, i.e. agricultural labourers with limited land ownership. The rest 15% of the population were nobility, clergy, and townsfolk. Administration, law, trade, crafts, scientific research, war, etc. were the fields that these people specialised in. I would suggest consulting specialised literature for specific details pertaining to various occupations and laws and practices associated with them.

Medieval society was highly structured and did not have many 'freeloaders': Every class, every occupation had its role, obligations, and place in society. There is a good reason why most countries had more than 1% of the population involved in non-agricultural activities.

I am not sure that 1% would be enough to fill all necessary non-agricultural roles even if we eliminate everything not related to space technology and assume that the proposed nation is completely safe from all other countries.

B. Every genius stands on the shoulders of ants

If talent (or high IQ) was the only thing necessary for technological advancement, humanity would've already colonised the entire universe. There are plenty of geniuses in human history.

Real science is nothing like books or TV portrayals of it. A lot of discoveries are accidental, literary: Some clumsy person makes a mistake in an experiment and gets an unusual result that accidentally happens to be important. Other discoveries can be made only because an army of unnamed, unknown, mediocre scientists spent decades gathering data and repeating the same experiments.

A genius may be able to look at things from a different perspective and conceptualise new relationships, but even a genius is not capable to generate knowledge out of the air with no reliance on previous data and research.

There is also a need for a small army of helpers that would verify genius' ideas, apply them in different contexts, make them known to wider society, and so on.

C. 'Native' abilities

The selection process for the 1% is described as follows:

'They are selected in various ways from the general population of plebs based on their native abilities.'

This is potentially highly problematic for two reasons:

• ability != result

  Talent plays a minor role when it comes to achievements. It is much more effective to provide more opportunities to more people.

• high chance of missing experimental innovators

  There are two types of creativity: Conceptual and experimental. Conceptual innovators tend to reach their peak early in life (the 20-30s), experimental innovators tend to produce results much later (the 50s). It is also worth mentioning that conceptual and experimental innovations are often qualitatively different. Experimental innovations tend to solve problems on a more general, abstract level.

---

As mentioned in the beginning, these are just a few problems with the proposed society. There are more other problems but discussing or even pointing them out would make this answer unbearably long.

---

¹ There were differences between countries, regions, and time periods. For example, England had fewer nobles (members of the aristocracy) than many other European countries, but it had higher urbanisation levels. Eastern European countries had lower urbanisation levels but a higher percentage of the population were considered nobility (notably Poland and Hungary).

Answer 3

It would be an extremely weak society.

A functional society involves an alliance between a large segment of society which can control the rest and ensure dominance. None of your classes are stable.

The geniuses aren't treated well.

They are overworked, not allowed to ascend their families, the government intentionally encourages the plebs to attack them, the government spies on them.

The plebs are treated terribly.

They are pressured to see how much better off the geniuses are, have their technological development restricted, and have little to no chance for class mobility, and the rich are pressuring them with propaganda.

The rich are heavily restricted.

They can't spend their wealth well in pleb villages, they need to focus on consuming less, and they're focusing on a distant fancy of space travel, rather than immediate needs.

It's a terrible, dystopian society, and every segment of society has an extremely strong incentive to rebel and fight back.

When you want a long lasting, stable society, think of the strong and dominant groups that are gonna seek to twist society to their goals. How do they gain from society staying the way it is immediately?

Here are several organizations you could consider adding to stabilize society.

A bureaucracy. Advancement to noble title or genius is done with examinations and tests and becoming part of the bureaucracy. As such, the higher classes need to support the plan if they want to gain political power and prestige.

A religion. Consider having a religion that supports the poor, and encourages the power of the state. They can lower dissent and act as a check against abuses by the rich or the geniuses against the poor.

Guilds. Groups of skilled professionals, they can help maintain a technological stasis by enforcing their monopoly with a particular science, and foster talent from the plebs.

Pleb unions. Councils of richer and more prosperous workers can help you mobilize large numbers of plebs when you need them, and negotiate grievances.

Soldier castes. In return for a lot of loot, soldiers can help put down rebellions from enemies, and by mostly marrying within can ensure that they are not influenced by outside opinions.

Gender roles. By enforcing a particular type of behaviour by men and women, you can ensure a sense of stability for people in a particular role, and have an easy excuse to punish people who are unwilling to bend to social norms.

Pick a few and add them for a longer lasting society.