Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law of Technology states:
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
As I realized at the Liberty Fund colloquium I attended in Tucson last weekend, I think there is a corollary:
Any sufficiently advanced society is indistinguishable from magic.
The explanation shall have to wait for when I have more bandwidth. One clue: the mechanisms of society (law, money, etc.) are, in essence, simply forms of technology.