[@catchamber] You can't join a group and be fruitful if you don't contribute though right? There will be a leader(s) in every group of individuals. Humans aren't all the same. Some are bound to be smarter, more athletic and have more leadership qualities. A group can't form without the conscious effort to do so and their can't be order without a solid direction. If you don't follow the group, you will eventually not be apart of that group.

Also the idea of not following or learning from history because there's not enough of it recorded is erroneous in the current age of social media where nearly everything can be easily found if you know where to look. There's plenty of recorded history, it also makes less sense to look that far back when technology has only made more things possible and expanded how the society interacts with one another. Humans have adapted. If we want to proof something could work, that's an older concept like anarchy or non-government societies functioning and thriving as well as Capitalistic economies. We'd likely already have examples of it...

Edit: Also...

[quote=@catchamber]
Beyond all of this, let's consider a scenario where everyone's survival needs are taken care of via automated systems. What exactly would a bunch of ocean dwellers need to riot about, how would they riot, and why?
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Ignoring that this would be impossible, because there's no such thing as a free lunch. But humoring the idea of limitless resources without cost. You also horribly misunderstand humans if you think that there wouldn't be arguments, fights or turmoil. Just because people are afforded what they want. What if one of those boat dwellers, didn't like the black colored boats to be near their sea and tell them to go elsewhere? What if one had a hot woman that was happily married? But it wasn't fair that they couldn't have their turns with her. What if someone just wanted to see the look of their face when they cut a hole into another ocean dwellers neck? And the other fellow ocean dwellers understandably didn't want that guy around. Greed exists as a sin for a reason. The slippery slope fallacy when it comes to social issues is often fleeting, because people do constantly want more. I mean in this theoretical scenario they'd already be self deluded into thinking they could have anything they wanted. Why wouldn't they protest the sea? Because they wanted it to no longer be wet...they should have a device that makes all water not wet! Why doesn't the automated system defy logic and reason? Why can't it make me a real woman or a dragon? (You get my point.)