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Comment by ThalesX | Hacker News Reader

> This imaginary past where most people didn't live in fear of unexpected expenses, debt, struggling to pay all their bills, and not earning enough money didn't exist.

I call bullshit... Debt. Bills. And for that matter, money. These are things that our species lived for hundreds of thousands of years without. Furthermore, there are tribes that even to this day live without these struggles.

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> there are tribes that even to this day live without these struggles.

Instead of debt and bills, that moves the problem up to struggling to defend against tribes with better weapons who want your land/labor. Or natural disasters and no resilience due to trade network. Or dying from bacterial infections and childbirth complications.

It's hard to assess, especially from our position, which set of challenges the human soul prefers. But there's an interesting point to be made, touched in both "Civilized to Death: The Price of Progress"[0] as well as "The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity"[1] that no 'savage' has been interested in non-coercively joining an 'advanced' society, whereas there are plenty of examples of 'civilized' people choosing the 'savage' life. I don't think the choice is as clear cut as it would superficially seem.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Civilized-Death-What-Lost-Modernity/d... [1] https://www.amazon.com/-/en/David-Graeber/dp/0374157359

As is plainly evident, the vast majority of savages have chosen to incrementally create and join civilized societies. It’s a much larger challenge for an illiterate hunter gatherer to make a multi millennia jump into modern society than it is for someone to do the reverse.

This says nothing about their level of wellbeing.

> As is plainly evident, the vast majority of savages have chosen to incrementally create and join civilized societies.

Have they chosen? Or were they civilized?

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