After reading [[Against the Grain by James C. Scott]] it occurred to me that a lot of what he's saying about "humans are parasites of the cows but also cows are parasites of the human" is sort of predicated on the idea of the cow as an individual, but if we think of the _herd_ as the unit of measure, then the herd lives on thanks to human servants, and that paradigm doesn't seem to get discussed much. It reminded me of [[2021-12-20 Giants#What Unit of Measure]]. #articleseed/afterword