> to value free time over money.
I value free time over money, but, from what I can tell from the article, it seems that the author seems to believe that hunter/gatherer societies have a lot of “free time” on their hands.
I’d suggest taking a quick shufti through some documentaries about life in hunter/gatherer societies.
People in the wild don't hunt elephants to survive. They survived pretty well for ages, they climb for honey, find smaller animals. It's not easy but it seems most humans are capable of it. I'm pretty sure the deal is worth it. The amount of satisfaction in apt usage of your senses and body is quite immense. I suffer daily due to insufficient stimulation (to the point I volunteered my time for truck unloading) both physical and intellectual. And if you look at half the population, you can probably read that on their face too.
Once it's no longer choice between 'apt usage of your senses and body' and 'insufficient stimulation', but between maximum performance and starvation, it stops being fun. Just read the happiness on faces of homeless.
The "homeless" who do, don't stay homeless for long.
In fact, I once read a story about pygmy tribes in Africa, and their hunters would sit around smoking pot, waiting for prey.
Not sure that helps the aim, when it shows up, but hey, I guess they know how to handle their pot.
That's different from "free time," though. Veterans will tell you that combat assignments also have a lot of waiting around.
Hunting for food, when you have to do it often is work like any other. No matter how much you like aspects of it initially.
ps: Sincerely, I mentioned above about volunteering. I used to wake up at 6 in the morning to unload truck 3 times a day. For free. Yet, I woke up every day very nicely, went there free minded, felt like a damn game to me. I gained daily rhythm (important for health), daily physical activity, sense of contribution as it was a food charity helping people in the area and zero obligations.
Meanwhile my colleagues, who were paid employees were all angry. All. Ranting about not being paid enough, won't make more efforts for that money, not being respected, having to obey or I'm fired, having to follow some stupid orders not being useful, having to come early for nothing, paranoia of being less favored.
Being a free man requires a lot of effort, but gives you a lot. Seeking your own goals is powerful.
This is true.
I have written here, about my experience. After leaving my company of 27 years, where, frankly, I hated the work, even though they loved me, I started looking for other work; especially of a more technical bent (I was a manager).
I was shown the door at every company I applied to. In a few cases, they were nice enough to open the door, before throwing me through it.
So I have set up shop doing coding for a 501(c)(3). I don't make a dime, but I code 10 hours (or more) a day, seven days a week.
It's a joy. I have never been so happy.
Also, despite some insinuations, my work is not "hobby" or "hermit" work. The application I'm developing now, consists of three servers that are aggregated by a pretty large-scale iOS native app. I wrote two of the servers (one was the work of about ten years, the other, seven months). I've been writing the app for a year. I could have done it in a lot less time, but the folks I'm working with didn't really have a clear idea of how it would work, so we've been refining it as we go.
It would make a lot of Fortune 50 companies cry, and I'm doing it for free.
It seems to me that our society all revolves around an absurd pressure for housing~.
If you give a roof, clean water and some veggies to people, .. expect a solid 5x increase on every metric. When you stop playing shitty politic games, surprisingly people have more energy.
But since people are under threat they accept what the market offers and we're in this sad pool of misery.
UBI might never work but after my little volunteering and others [0] I was under the impression that we need a device of this kind to free people.
[0] did write a vuejs app for a small business while working an uber eats like gig, I was happy writing stuff for the pleasure of being useful and on my own terms. Deliveries were a social balancing trick, I get brain time off, stay on rhythm, avoid procrastination. And whenever I had an idea for a feature, I'd push a commit from my car (I took a laptop with me).