Social Structure. Almost all species of domesticated large mammals prove to be ones whose wild ancestors share three social characteristics: they live in herds; they maintain a well-developed dominance hierarchy among herd members; and the herds occupy overlapping home ranges rather than mutually exclusive territories. ... In that way, many adults can coexist in the herd without constant fighting and with each knowing its rank. That social structure is ideal for domestication, because humans in effect take over the dominance hierarchy.
Winner's Lock
Winners eliminate competition; victory becomes permanent control.
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A group forms a stable, linear hierarchy where the alpha individual dominates everyone, the beta individual dominates everyone except the alpha, gamma everyone except alpha and beta, and so on. Hierarchies establish a status quo by ritualizing inequalities. Two baboons encounter something good—say, a spot shaded from the sun. Without stable dominance relations, there’s a potentially injurious fight. Likewise over the figs in a fruiting tree an hour later, and for the chance to be groomed by someone after that, etc. Instead, fights rarely occur, and if a subordinate forgets his status, a “threat yawn”—a ritualistic display of canines—from the dominant male usually suffices.
So what turns an otherwise rigid, almost robotic dominance hierarchy into something teeming with politics? In a word: coalitions. Allies who wield power together. ... Two-against-one maneuvering is what lends chimpanzee power struggles both their richness and their danger. Coalitions are key. No male can rule by himself, at least not for long.
Anyone could take complete control if only she had five supporters with automatic weapons pointed at the rest. She would remain in power so long as the five gunmen continue to back her. But there need be nothing special about her or about the gunmen beyond the fact that they grabbed the guns first. ... There is no prize for coming in second. Paying supporters, not good governance or representing the general will, is the essence of ruling.
Rockefeller was always insistent that Standard’s competitive advantage had nothing to do with preferential transport rates, but his correspondence reveals that rebates could single-handedly transform an unprofitable plant into a profitable one. ... In the 1870s, Rockefeller began to assemble a marketing organization to eliminate the middlemen, independent agents who had earned three to five cents per gallon of kerosene. Since they handled Standard kerosene and competing products—an intolerable situation for Rockefeller—and often cared more about gouging consumers than expanding markets, he decided to get rid of them.
The cornerstone of the studio system was the victory Zukor won over the large first-run theater in major cities and the ongoing block booking system. In America’s ninety-two largest cities, the studios owned more than 70 percent of them. And though these first-run movie palaces comprised less than 20 percent of all the country’s theaters, they accounted for most of the ticket revenue. As the writer Ernest Borneman put it in 1951, “control of first run theaters meant, in effect, control of the screen.”
THE TRAP: SUCCESS TO THE SUCCESSFUL If the winners of a competition are systematically rewarded with the means to win again, a reinforcing feedback loop is created by which, if it is allowed to proceed uninhibited, the winners eventually take all, while the losers are eliminated.