You could have made this comment about the wonderful virtues of communism or direct democracy or anarchy just as easily as you did about tribalism, and it would have had the exact same flaws as this comment.
It's easy for a small society to get along with itself, relatively speaking*. If we reduced our population to the sort of size where that was viable, we could be a tribal society with a gifting economy or we could be anarcho-syndicalists or we could rule through direct democracy or we could even have a theocracy and things would still be pretty great (because even if the leader's title was God-King Who Must Be Obeyed, at that size a population the leader would be pretty well in touch with what people needed and wanted and would be obligated to provide it in order to maintain power).
But it wouldn't work so perfectly for a society of our size and complexity. We would have to give up a lot to make it work... so much so that I'm not prepared to say that it qualifies for any reasonable definition of "solution".
But at the same time, there are lessons to be learned from this. In our society, the people who clamor the most for higher taxes on the wealthy include some of the wealthiest people in the world and some of the people who give the most money to charity as it is (I'm thinking of people like Warren Buffett and the Gateses)... the people who are against that aren't the Haves so often as they're the Wanna-Haves... the people who think that they're inches away from actually pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. (I'm thinking of people like "Joe the Plumber" here, and much of the Republican base.)
The phenomenon you're describing in the tiny closed economy of a tribal society is the same thing that the far right is stirring up fear against in our economy: "wealth redistribution" and "collectivization". Everybody comes together and throws something into the pot. Those who have the most, have the most to give. We all take care of each other. And so on.
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It's easy for a small society to get along with itself, relatively speaking*. If we reduced our population to the sort of size where that was viable, we could be a tribal society with a gifting economy or we could be anarcho-syndicalists or we could rule through direct democracy or we could even have a theocracy and things would still be pretty great (because even if the leader's title was God-King Who Must Be Obeyed, at that size a population the leader would be pretty well in touch with what people needed and wanted and would be obligated to provide it in order to maintain power).
But it wouldn't work so perfectly for a society of our size and complexity. We would have to give up a lot to make it work... so much so that I'm not prepared to say that it qualifies for any reasonable definition of "solution".
But at the same time, there are lessons to be learned from this. In our society, the people who clamor the most for higher taxes on the wealthy include some of the wealthiest people in the world and some of the people who give the most money to charity as it is (I'm thinking of people like Warren Buffett and the Gateses)... the people who are against that aren't the Haves so often as they're the Wanna-Haves... the people who think that they're inches away from actually pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. (I'm thinking of people like "Joe the Plumber" here, and much of the Republican base.)
The phenomenon you're describing in the tiny closed economy of a tribal society is the same thing that the far right is stirring up fear against in our economy: "wealth redistribution" and "collectivization". Everybody comes together and throws something into the pot. Those who have the most, have the most to give. We all take care of each other. And so on.