Risky Food-Finding Strategy Could Be a Key to Human Success
today.duke.edu
today.duke.edu
That depends on your individual capabilities. What you're capable of producing and the value of that production.
If you're around the median or below, there may be an argument for that cooperative style of existence. In a modern, industrial civilization where people in the top tiers of competency are highly rewarded (and sometimes very far beyond that), it makes no sense to stick yourself in a cooperative small scale living context if you're in the top 1/3 to 1/4 or so of competency (you'd become a net charity entity, which is fine, however you'd just be better off donating a share of your surplus output in a manner of your choosing instead (which we've turned into taxation); or alternatively you'd be dragged down to the median output level or below by the cooperative tribe, in the style of crab mentality, they would not long tolerate your exceptionalism unless they get to ride you far beyond their fair share).
Even if you accept your premise that there is one dimension of capability, what is the metric, more tubers than you can eat?
Probably "time spent finding 'enough' tubers to eat/share."
We need to not confuse "cooperative" as an adjective describing people working together with "cooperative" as an ownership model. Really, though, some cooperatively owned organizations are very successful. Yes, even in the US. REI is a customer cooperative. Hy-Vee food stores are a workers' cooperative. Many rural areas have telephone, electric, gas, or other cooperatives. My parents belong to an LP gas cooperative for example. They live along a road where their side is served by a commercial electric company and across the road is served by the local electric cooperative. These specific-purpose cooperatives work well.
You could, as a high earning tech person, build a fully cooperative neighborhood with other people who earn similar money. You could form an insurance pool for healthcare, unemployment, accidents, and such. Since you'd be choosing who's in your cohort, so you don't need to worry about substantial differences in earning power. Or you could do what many high-skilled people do - start a new company with a handful of equal partners, where your income and success are equalized across an entirely different organization of willing equals.
Earning a person's full labor means paying for their necessities - and some extra for loyalty. Without it they will always be distracted by survival.
Quite a nice model.
You don't have friends or family? They drive the model you describe - and have for millennia - without fancy constructs like co ops. Or sacrificing personal space/privacy.
Gambling by putting more energy in, for the change of quicker and larger payout is definitely not inefficiency.
Their gas guzzling car example explains their thought process: humans, whilst hunting, are running hot. They're inefficient at the task of maintaining themselves between meals.
That's made irrelevant by the fact that they're collecting more food on average, so they're actually more efficient overall, but that only becomes true once you factor in food intake.
Sort of like saying that a lorry is a less efficient way to travel than a car. True until you mention that the lorry has many tons of cargo which must make the journey with you (or in subsequent trips), _then_ the reverse holds.
By pooling high risk strategies with big payoffs, the expected value of the whole is greater.