Comment by lhl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lhl | Hacker News Reader

Any article on quality of life in agrarian societies should also be contrasted to what life was like in pre-agrarian (hunter gatherer) societies. Jared Diamond wrote the most well known/accessible essay entitled [The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race](http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html):

> "Are twentieth century hunter-gatherers really worse off than farmers? Scattered throughout the world, several dozen groups of so-called primitive people, like the Kalahari bushmen, continue to support themselves that way. It turns out that these people have plenty of leisure time, sleep a good deal, and work less hard than their farming neighbors. For instance, the average time devoted each week to obtaining food is only 12 to 19 hours for one group of Bushmen, 14 hours or less for the Hadza nomads of Tanzania. One Bushman, when asked why he hadn't emulated neighboring tribes by adopting agriculture, replied, "Why should we, when there are so many mongongo nuts in the world?"

Of course, that's sort of besides the point... Before the mid-70's productivity and median compensation were correlated, however for the past 40 years this has diverged. Since 1973, median hourly compensation grew 10.7% while productivity has increased by 80.4%[1]

Keyne's prediction in 1930 on the leisure society in the US would have been correct if the public had continued to share in society's gains. Instead these gains have been increasingly captured by the top centile. The share of income by the top 1% has increased over 120% since 1979 [2]. While the top 20% has also nominally increased (~30%) all the other quintiles have had a negative share as a result.

Now, knowing this, is there anything that can be done to reverse these trends? It seems that we've been locking in socio-economic mobility [3] and our entire government has entered "regulatory capture." [4][5]

[1] http://www.epi.org/publication/ib330-productivity-vs-compens...

[2] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequalit...

[3] http://www.ibtimes.com/us-social-mobility-casualty-income-in...

[4] http://i.imgur.com/PVpFY.png

[5] http://www.the-american-interest.com/article-bd.cfm?piece=10...

>One Bushman, when asked why he hadn't emulated neighboring tribes by adopting agriculture, replied, "Why should we, when there are so many mongongo nuts in the world?"

This sentence illustrates one of my main gripes with JD's "sunshine and happiness" view of hunter-gatherer societies. Hunter-gatherer lifestyle is fantastic for that small fraction of folks who live where there are plenty of mongongo nuts (so to speak). He sort of handwaves the majority, who are eking a bare subsistence out of the land, or worse, alternately subsisting and starving.

Well, the whole point is that the populations for successful hunter gatherer tribes would be stable. Barring drastic ecological changes and (more commonly) attacks/displacement from technologically superior outsiders, aboriginal tribes have continued living as they have for centuries (even millennia).

Of course that type of society wouldn't be able to support a population of 7B people, although based on the 2.4B in poverty you'd be hard pressed to argue that technological society is really doing much better (ignoring the whole carrying capacity question entirely).

As someone enjoying typing on the Internet right now, I'm by no means arguing any return to the past, but it'd be silly not to acknowledge how much longer we work than our ancestors.

Don't discount the state of constant warfare most aboriginal societies live in. If you have a neighbor, he wants your mongongo nuts.

Hmm, while this the assumption (in some pretty flawed) early anthropology, I think the modern consensus is that hunter gatherer societies were relatively peaceful, both amongst themselves[1] and between each other[2].

Of course, successful/stable hunter-gatherer societies are pretty geographically isolated, since encounters by tribes w/ more "advanced" (post-agrarian, colonial, modern) societies usually has meant obliteration.

[1] http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201105/how... [2] http://www.sott.net/article/264152-Warfare-was-uncommon-amon...

Recently I read Pinker's "Better Angels" [1]. Using archeological records, he argues that dying from a violent death was extremely likely in hunter gatherer societies.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature

Not an anthropologist, so take my casual observations with a grain of salt, but I can think of quite a few examples of latter day stone-age societies that are notably bloodthirsty. The few remaining indigenous tribes in the amazon, for one. 'Headhunters' in Indonesia, for another.

My other gripe with it is that as a member of a non-hunter-gatherer society I value the fact that my diet is more interesting and varied than just mongongo nuts.

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