what makes you sure that a society that tied status more closely to such skills wouldn't have promoted someone better than Mao to the top?
There have been enough revolutions and (temporarily successful) peasant revolts to demonstrate how that usually turns out. Lenin famously said that "Any cook should be able to run the country" and I don't think it worked well.
If only someone had thought to send Lenin to cookery school.
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, then it goes here.
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