Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive

by Jared Diamond

Within each village, instead of hereditary leaders or chiefs, there were just individuals, called “big-men,” who by force of personality were more influential than other individuals but still lived in a hut like everybody else’s and tilled a garden like anybody else’s. Decisions were (and often still are today) reached by means of everybody in the village sitting down together and talking, and talking, and talking. The big-men couldn’t give orders, and they might or might not succeed in persuading others to adopt their proposals. To outsiders today (including not just me but often New Guinea government officials themselves), that bottom-up approach to decision-making can be frustrating, because you can’t go to some designated village leader and get a quick answer to your request; you have to have the patience to endure talk-talk-talk for hours or days with every villager who has some opinion to offer.