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Timeline of Economic Extraction and Value Control

A layered map of how value is created, stored, abstracted, and controlled across human history, understood through an Infinitist lens.

What this maps:
How humans extract value from reality, labor, land, symbols, time, and eventually attention itself.

Core arc:
Gift → Barter → Currency → Obligation → Trade Empires → Capital → Industrial Abstraction → Finance → Digital Markets → Attention & Data

Notes:

• Dates are approximate and mark emergence, not dominance.
• Each stage does not e rase the previous one; layers stack.
• Extraction becomes more abstract over time.
• Control increasingly shifts from material constraints to symbolic and cognitive constraints.
• This timeline is descriptive, not moral.

Gift Economies – Relational Value

Emergence: ~300,000 – 10,000 BCE

Core Characteristics

• Value created through reciprocity, trust, and social bonds
• No fixed prices; obligation is social and temporal
• Wealth measured in relationships, not surplus

Extraction Logic

• Extraction is limited by reputation and group survival
• Hoarding is socially punished

Key Figures & Studies

• Marcel Mauss — The Gift (1925)
• Hunter-gatherer anthropology
• Economic anthropology

Infinitist Lens

• Low abstraction
• High relational coherence
• Yin/Yang: giving/receiving as balance

Barter Systems – Direct Exchange

Emergence: ~10,000 – 3,000 BCE

Core Characteristics

• Direct exchange of goods and services
• Value negotiated situationally
• Requires coincidence of wants

Extraction Logic

• Limited scalability
• Value tied to use, not accumulation

Key Figures & Studies

• Adam Smith (retrospective analysis)
• Archaeological trade records

Infinitist Lens

• First step toward abstraction
• Value detaches slightly from social bond

Early Currency – Symbolic Value

Emergence: ~3,000 BCE (Mesopotamia, Egypt, China)

Core Characteristics

• Tokens, silver weights, shells, coins
• Value stored symbolically
• Enables taxation, debt, and state control

Extraction Logic

• Value extraction shifts to measurement and accounting
• Debt becomes enforceable

Key Figures & Studies

• David Graeber — Debt: The First 5,000 Years
• Cuneiform accounting tablets

Infinitist Lens

• Symbol replaces object
• Yin/Yang: trust in symbol vs. material reality

Feudal Obligation – Land and Hierarchy

Emergence: ~800 – 1400 CE

Core Characteristics

• Value extracted through land ownership
• Labor tied to obligation, not wages
• Hierarchical and inherited

Extraction Logic

• Surplus flows upward via rents and tithes
• Mobility is structurally constrained

Key Figures & Studies

• Medieval economic history
• Marc Bloch — Feudal Society

Infinitist Lens

• Extraction stabilized through status
• Control via social immobility

Mercantilism – State-Controlled Trade

Emergence: ~1500 – 1750 CE

Core Characteristics

• Wealth measured in bullion and trade surplus
• Colonial extraction
• State-chartered monopolies

Extraction Logic

• External extraction replaces internal reciprocity
• Colonies as resource reservoirs

Key Figures & Studies

• Thomas Mun
• Early political economy
• Colonial trade records

Infinitist Lens

• Extraction externalized
• Yin/Yang imbalance: accumulation without regeneration

Capitalism – Abstracted Labor Value

Emergence: ~1750 – present

Core Characteristics

• Wage labor
• Private ownership of production
• Markets set prices

Extraction Logic

• Surplus value extracted from labor
• Time becomes commodified

Key Figures & Studies

• Adam Smith — The Wealth of Nations (1776)
• Karl Marx — Capital
• Classical economics

Infinitist Lens

• Labor abstracted into time
• Self increasingly mediated by market identity

Industrial Labor Abstraction

Emergence: ~1760 – 1900

Core Characteristics

• Mechanization
• Interchangeable labor units
• Factory systems

Extraction Logic

• Human effort synchronized to machines
• Productivity prioritized over meaning

Key Figures & Studies

• Frederick Taylor — Scientific Management
• Industrial sociology

Infinitist Lens

• Human expression compressed
• Yin/Yang: efficiency vs. alienation

Financialization – Value from Value

Emergence: ~1970s – present

Core Characteristics

• Profits decoupled from production
• Derivatives, speculation, leverage
• Capital self-referential

Extraction Logic

• Value extracted via ownership, not creation
• Risk displaced downward

Key Figures & Studies

• Hyman Minsky
• Thomas Piketty — Capital in the 21st Century
• Financial economics

Infinitist Lens

• Recursive abstraction
• Extraction without material grounding

Digital Markets – Platform Economies

Emergence: ~1995 – present

Core Characteristics

• Platforms mediate exchange
• Network effects dominate
• Marginal cost approaches zero

Extraction Logic

• Rent extraction via access and infrastructure
• Users both consumers and producers

Key Figures & Studies

• Shoshana Zuboff
• Platform economics
• Network theory

Infinitist Lens

• Infrastructure becomes power
• Boundaries between labor and leisure blur

Attention & Data Economies – Cognitive Extraction

Emergence: ~2010 – present

Core Characteristics

• Attention monetized
• Behavioral data harvested
• Prediction and manipulation of choice

Extraction Logic

• Value extracted from cognition itself
• Humans become feedback nodes

Key Figures & Studies

• Shoshana Zuboff — Surveillance Capitalism
• Tristan Harris
• Behavioral economics

Infinitist Lens

• Extraction reaches the self-model
• Yin/Yang crisis: awareness vs. capture

Meta-Extraction Crisis

Emergence: ~2020 – present

Core Characteristics

• Simultaneous extraction of time, attention, emotion, identity
• No external “off” space
• Psychological saturation

Extraction Logic

• Value extracted pre-consciously
• Choice architectures replace coercion

Key Figures & Studies

• Consciousness studies
• Media ecology
• Complexity economics

Infinitist Lens

• Compression across layers
• Necessitates meta-awareness to restore balance

Infinitist Core Observation (Economic)

As value becomes more abstract, extraction shifts from matter → labor → time → attention → identity.

Integrated Pattern

• Early systems constrained extraction by survival and reciprocity
• Later systems constrain humans via symbols, systems, and cognition
• Modern extraction targets the conditions of consciousness itself

Return-to-Oneness Implication

• Awareness of extraction mechanisms restores agency
• Integration across layers (material, social, cognitive) is required
• Economics becomes a consciousness problem, not just a resource problem

This timeline is not an endpoint.
It is a diagnostic map — showing where extraction now operates, and where awareness must evolve next.