On 4/08/2014 12:59, Kelly St. Clair wrote:I wouldn't want to be a hunter-gatherer either. We're well past the point where everyone can be better off than that. However, our ancestors suffered quite a bit to get us here.
On 8/3/2014 5:48 PM, Rupert Boleyn wrote:
immobile people tied down by possessions and crops they
can't up and leave can be forced to pay taxes, to provide labour, and
this allows specialisation, and once you've started down that road you
can't really go back.
It takes a very long time before farmers are, on an individual level,
better off than hunter-gatherers, though a small segment of the
population has it pretty good from even the earliest days.
And I, for one, am willing to make that tradeoff - even though I'm not
even the top segment (though I may be close, depending on where you
start drawing the curve). Hunter-gatherers make up stories about the
moon; specialists *go* to it.
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