Private ownership, these three words seem to have magic power, making the protagonist unable to stop. He seemed to have found the answer that he had been struggling to find before.
Private ownership is an economic system whose most fundamental aspect lies in human selfishness. Under the private system, property is exclusively occupied individually or collectively, so private ownership is one of the most basic signs of an exploitative society.
Private ownership is also considered to be one of the basic signs of a relatively efficient economic society. The development of productive forces is what gives rise to private ownership.
At the end of primitive society, as productivity continued to increase, new production tools or methods were invented, which directly promoted the emergence of relative surplus products. The distribution of surplus products was the earliest prototype of private ownership.
The current stage of the Big-headed Ant Kingdom seems to the protagonist to be close to the primitive public ownership stage of primitive human society.
Public ownership is an economic system relative to private ownership. Under this system, ownership of the means of production disappears and there is no exclusive possession of the means of production.
Like in the Big-headed Ant Kingdom, valuable resources (such as nests, food, etc.) are owned by every ant, that is, publicly owned. Of course, some high-quality food is only available to male ants and queen ants, and soldier ants and worker ants have no right to use it. However, this also reflects public ownership. This high-quality food is publicly owned by the male ants or queen ants.
This seemingly fair public ownership social structure plays an important role in ensuring the continuation of the ant race and ensuring competitive advantage. It has also made close relatives such as ants and bees one of the few insect races with a social structure.
But in the protagonist's view, as the ants have learned to use fire and have acquired the characteristics of primitive civilization, this public ownership system will eventually restrict the further development of civilization.
Let’s take a look at the historical experience of human society.
It is a historical necessity that mankind moved from primitive society to slave society and from public ownership to private ownership. This is the result of the development of productive forces, and it is also the need for the development of productive forces.
Primitive society was originally a "gathering-hunting" economy, and the relationship between humans and natural food was purely about obtaining food. In this way, when the population naturally increases to a certain level, the amount of food produced in the surrounding areas will no longer be able to support such a large population, and humans will have to migrate to other places and live a wandering life without a fixed residence.
The outstanding problem of this "gathering-hunting" method of obtaining food is that the food source is unstable. Often, prey cannot be caught for many days. Even if prey can be caught, it often requires the cooperation of many people. Sometimes even if you are lucky enough to catch a huge prey, there are simply not a few hunters who can finish the meat before it spoils. In this case, it is more advantageous for humans to share food with each other than to eat it alone - the excess meat is wasted if not eaten anyway, so it is better to share it with other hunters who have not caught prey for the time being. When one day he is hungry, other hunters can share the prey with him to avoid starving from time to time.
This is the case for the cave people. They "use publicly owned tools, work together, and distribute food together. There is no difference between rich and poor," which refers to this kind of life. They adopt this life and economic model not because they have a particularly high level of consciousness, but because they are forced by life and cannot survive without adopting public ownership.
But when humans began to engage in farming and animal husbandry, the situation changed—human beings changed from mere food seekers to producers.
This means that the newly increased population not only eats food, but also invests in labor production, allowing the land to produce more food, and the food source becomes more stable.
When productivity increases to a certain level, specifically, when a person produces more food than he or she needs, the increase in population will not only not bring about a food crisis, but will instead bring about a surplus. In this way, there is no need for humans to move around, and the population will grow much faster.
Stable food sources mean there is no need to continue public ownership. Farming and animal husbandry can be managed by small-scale families, and there is no need to mobilize the entire tribe. Due to human nature, small families will also actively abandon the public ownership system in production and harvesting.
Therefore, at this stage, the implementation of private ownership in human society is a matter of course.
With the emergence of private ownership, commerce, mathematics, astronomy and calendars, human civilization finally dawned.
After the protagonist traveled to this world, although he became an ant, he also hoped to transform the ant society, obtain better living conditions, and become the king of the ant world.
His series of practices and measures to transform "Dongyang City" have achieved a lot of results.
For example, he stole fire from the main nest, allowing "Dongyang City" to obtain the important resource of fire.
With the help of fire, the protagonist achieved simple pottery firing, giving "Dongyang City" more suitable containers for storing water and food. Taking advantage of the physical properties of pottery, the use of pottery knives and pottery spears also allowed the big-headed ants to use artificial tools for the first time.
The protagonist leads everyone to domesticate mealworms and flies, which can not only provide a stable source of meat for "Dongyang City", but no longer have to rely solely on hunting. Moreover, flies can also become mounts and have important military applications.
The protagonist also led everyone to sow grass seeds and opened up a small piece of farmland. The farmland is growing well now, and if nothing goes wrong, new grass seeds will be harvested in a few months.
It can be said that the protagonist relied on his own experience and experience to single-handedly bring "Dongyang City" from a primitive tribe that originally relied on "gathering and hunting" to a primary civilization stage capable of "farming and animal husbandry".
Today, there are tens of thousands of ants in "Dongyang City", which is larger than any secondary nest, second only to the main nest that combines various resources and advantages.
Now "Dongyang City" is basically not worried about food shortage. As long as "Dongyang City" continues to expand its agricultural scale, it will not be difficult to support more ant colonies.
But it seems to be developing rapidly, but the protagonist always feels that there is a problem with the development of "Dongyang City".
The rapid development of "Dongyang City" in the past was due to technological progress, such as fire, pottery, planting and animal husbandry.
Although "Dongyang City" is still continuing to develop, it relies on the marginal effects of expanded production rather than the benefits brought by technological progress.
It is not impossible for the protagonist to continue to lead technological progress. The knowledge, experience and vision he has accumulated as a human being are thousands of years ahead of these ants.
But when he wanted to do this, he found that both himself and "Dongyang City" had reached a bottleneck.
