On 2004 June 23, `Mobile' and `Immobile' People and Societies, I described Reuven Brenner's categorization of people and societies into `immobile' and `mobile'.
For Americans, this language insults those who are `immobile' or come from `immobile' societies. So the terms partly fail to help thought.
On the other hand, as a distinction, the terms make sense.
In the Paleolithic, humans were rare and cooperative, as described in Differing Virtues. Using Brenner's terms, Paleolithic societies were `mobile'.
Then the human population began to fill its niches. As a consequence, groups fought more over resources, such as deer that could be killed; diets changed, so that more grains were eaten; and over the millennia, agriculture came to the fore. Societies became more `immobile'.
After a society became agrarian, those who protected the cultivators had to learn to think of neighbors has potential enemies, because they lived in a zero-sum society.
Those societies that failed to adapt died. Moreover, because rulers become tyrannical when given the opportunity, as Christianity and the US Constitution proclaim, leaders preyed upon the cultivators by taxing them heavily.
Chinese history shows this. Order and law have high initial and low incremental costs. It is expensive to build and train an army; with it, you can conquer not just one, but many cities. Consequently, single states emerged to rule all of China a very long time ago.
(When a ruling clan became excessively corrupt or lazy, it lost the `mandate of heaven', and a new dynasty gained sufficient support to win a civil war.)
Europe is more broken up than the eastern parts of China, so those who tried to unify it with pre-industrial technologies failed. In addition, in the latter 11th century, Pope Gregory VII divided the spiritual part of the continental religion from the temporal part, thereby providing somewhat of an alternative to local land-based powers.
After suffering the plagues of the 14th century, wages rose. This meant that machinery and other forms of technological advance become more attractive economically.
The combination of factors — multiple hierarchies, expensive labor, and more efficient technologies — led (over a period of centuries, with many twists and turns) to the industrial revolution.
During this period, because of their slow increase in technological capability and its side effects, such as the spread of urban diseases, Europeans became able to conquer and migrate to areas held by others. The Europeans defeated the residents of North and South America, rather than the reverse.
Second, after that frontier was filled, Europeans and their settler descendents were able to increase resources through modern technology.
Before 1900, of the non-European states, only Japan become a threat to the Europeans.
Since 1900, more of the rulers of people in non-European areas have gained an appreciation of advanced technologies. Moreover, the Europeans weakened themselves in two terrible wars in the first half of the 20th century. As a consequence, non-European have gained power relative to the Europeans and their off-shoots, such as Americans.
Moreover, the `rich countries' have adopted fragile technologies that are readily highjacked by enemies. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, in the United States, people have adopted four political traditions. One of these, `the Jacksonian Tradition', fits the thinking of those who rule `immobile' societies. While that tradition enabled the US to respond in the short run to threats against it (had the responses been carried out competently), it hinders the only effective long run strategy, which is to persuade those not sure that a `mobile' society is better for them and for the world than an `immobile' society.
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