patrick.net

astrid: We need welfare moms in our society. Then we can tax the middle class and give the money to them, and in turn they can buy products from our companies. This arrangement benefits everyone.

Well, not everyone. But certainly everyone who counts. :o

"you are wrongly assuming that ‘the monarch’ suddenly appeared on the scene in societal evolution and that the monarch owned everything, both of which are not really true, especially when you look at the Magna Carta, the beheading of Charles I, the French Revolution and so on."

The Magna Carta was great, it started the early framework that lessened the monarch's absolute ownwership of all property and people. This lessening of control was what allowed the Industrial Revolution to take place where it did, when it did. After all, people who are allowed to keep some of the fruits of thier labor, without all of it going to the monarch, have more incentive to be inventive and more productive. A scary thought to those who espouse the "from each, to each" philosophy.

And can't you do better than Charles I or the French Revolution? Charles the first was knocked off by Oliver Cromwell, with Cromwell becoming an absolute dictator. The French Revolution brought Napoleon, who actually had emperor and king among his titles. These examples help prove my point that historically most human societies were ruled by monarchs.

"We need welfare moms in our society"

Yes, the slumlords need someone to "force" into the slumlord's dirt floor, vermin infested huts.

LOL. That's why the slumlords killed off the buffalo herds. No other option than renting now! Muahahahaha!

Well I don't know about other countries, but this one is starting to look like "House of Lancaster, House of York".

We have royal families that swap roles. Clinton, Bush, now maybe another Clinton. Are we grooming more of their kids for leadership? Maybe we need another Kennedy in the job again. Some choice there.....

In fact, talking about 'progressive' or 'regressive' societies or similar conceptions of 'forward evolution' and 'continuous improvement' in peoples is now very politically incorrect in social science and development circles. You can only say that soem societies have a more advanced technology than others. For instance, the Romans were arguably more barbaric and uncivilised than the HG Kung of Africa due to their aggressive colonising behaviours and harsh punishments. So you cannot create a 'hierarchical' taxonomiy of societies and proclaim that things are always just getting better and better, except in terms of material wealth or wellbeing. For instance, the US has more visible homelessness, more ghettos and more healthcare problems than Australia, and yet has a higher per capita GDP. Which is more 'progressed' in nature?

Brand Says:
Who promised us a 2-day working week?

I dunno, some journalists and futurists, maybe the odd hopeful politician...

Lean and rangy is a sign of health in a sedentary society. What about nutrition and periods of starvation in H-G societies? You ask what’s the difference between a spear-thrower and a squash player. Well, for starters, the squash player isn’t going to die if he can’t find a ball for two weeks.

Poeple die regularly in the US because they can't afford healthcare. Further, HG societies are inherently small and can live within the means of the environment they inhabit.

The simple life sounds great until your lifespan is 50 at the outside.

There is a lot of misunderstanding about people's lifespans. Some of the calculated averages include infant mortality rates, so this myth that people in medieval Europe had an average lifespan of 35 for instance is a nonsense -- if you survived childhood, it was quite likely that you would live to the ripe old age of 60 or 70 -- hence the Biblical mention of 'three score and ten' years for a lifespan. (Note that the Aramaic societies were also simple agrarian and partially nomadic societies when that was written.)

Anyway, if the H-G lifestyle is so great, why aren’t you living it, Sean? Give up the computer, car, healthcare and house. Then your carbon footprint would be zero. There’s still enough fish and game in the world that you could live like a hunter-gatherer.

Some people choose to. I'm not the least bit interested in living a HG lifestyle, unless society collapses in the next 50 years due to running out of resources, which is not a remote possibility. But, once again, I am not arguing that we should live a HG lifestyle. I have not argued that anywhere on this thread or any other thread, so it's a straw man argument again. My argument all along has been that there are praiseworthy aspects to these simple societies which we have lost. In fact, we have lost them so much that many of the posters here are demonstrating that they can't even grasp the concepts, such is the level of their own enculturation.

Social donations are also made in our society in the form of international aid, welfare benefits and programs, donations to charity and foundations, and so forth. However, some countries have instituted more reliable and guaranteed forms of redistribution than others, possibly having a lot to do with their own histories. The criticism is constantly that not enough international aid is given, or aid is only given to resource-rich countries in a quid pro quo, or that in fact countries are deliberately being entrapped in toxic loans which the instigators know can never be repaid.

J.K. Rowling was a welfare mum. She is now richer than the Queen of England. You may have even bought one of her books.

HeadSet Says:
“We need welfare moms in our society”
Yes, the slumlords need someone to “force” into the slumlord’s dirt floor, vermin infested huts.

Once again, my own inner city suburb here was a slum of timber cottages only 150 years ago, with massive overcrowding in each house, and floor levels set below street level so that they flooded regularly. Didn't stop the landlords coming around to collect the rent each week. Typhoid was endemic from inadequate sewerage. Huge piles of animal bones were burnt each morning to make charcoal to process sugar cane at the original CSR sugar refinery on the hill, and the smell drifted over the suburb.

I really recommend you follow the link above to the 'Worst Jobs in History' site and have a look at a few of them to see how some people lived. Look up Victorian chimney sweeps and mudlarks, for instance. This was a society that failed to redistribute effectively, hence the writings of Dickens, etc. Now you are complaining that 'welfare moms' are something akin to cockroaches. The mom that stays at home while hubby does all the money-making is fine on the other hand, as is Paris Hilton.

you survived childhood, it was quite likely that you would live to the ripe old age of 60 or 70

Do curiosities of averages also explain all the archaeological evidence?

C'mon DS. Cut the equivalency crap. Of course evolution and social "progress" are undirected by your definition. That's mere semantics. They are directed -- both of them -- by iterative survival dynamics. You can bitch and moan all you want about how those dynamics are interpreted, but they simply *are*. All the forces of postmodernism cannot change that anymore than you can halt the march of the arrow of time.

You could have made a perfectly good argument about how lifespans are markedly longer in our (post)modern society, but that the cumulative quality of life experience is worse or no greater. I would have still proven you were wrong about that, but at least it would have been an honest argument. But denying even such fundamentals as life expectancies of history and injecting some fairy-tale fictions instead only makes you and your allies in this argument sound just plain silly.

HeadSet Says:
“you are wrongly assuming that ‘the monarch’ suddenly appeared on the scene in societal evolution and that the monarch owned everything, both of which are not really true, especially when you look at the Magna Carta, the beheading of Charles I, the French Revolution and so on.”

The Magna Carta was great, it started the early framework that lessened the monarch’s absolute ownwership of all property and people. This lessening of control was what allowed the Industrial Revolution to take place where it did, when it did. After all, people who are allowed to keep some of the fruits of thier labor, without all of it going to the monarch, have more incentive to be inventive and more productive. A scary thought to those who espouse the “from each, to each” philosophy.

And can’t you do better than Charles I or the French Revolution? Charles the first was knocked off by Oliver Cromwell, with Cromwell becoming an absolute dictator. The French Revolution brought Napoleon, who actually had emperor and king among his titles. These examples help prove my point that historically most human societies were ruled by monarchs.

Your point was that the 'monarch owned everything, and all wealth was returned to the monarch'. What everyone else lived off then is a mystery. Your point was not that most human societies were ruled by monarchs, which is also numerically suspicious. (However, I will have to accept that you have added up the sum total of all known human societies in history and the number which were identifiable 'kingdoms', and concluded that at least 51% were monarchies. I look forward to seeing the analysis.)

So you have just changed your point dramatically, and I would suggest that most societies historically have not been monarchies on a count. The rest of the teleological tripe about how it all lead to capitalism and isn't it great is just so much nonsense, given the already advanced technology of Europe at the time it was all occurring. You could check your facts even with wikipedia on all this. Is this one of those occasions when one realises one is actually debating a 12 year old on the Internet? Perhaps you should study some social history when you're old enough to go to college...

Randy H Says:

Do curiosities of averages also explain all the archaeological evidence?

You should present it then.

They are directed — both of them — by iterative survival dynamics.

Well, it goes beyond mere survival. But look at some of the jobs on the website indicated and tell me whether you would prefer to have been a mudlark 150 years ago or lived in a HG society where you were an equal. Don't bother writing back until you've done that and ruminated on it.

Growing populations following the agricultural revolution lead to higher birthrates which lead to more social problems and crime due to lack of jobs and lack of a welfare system to cope with the population pressure. This lead to the creation of a stigmatised convict class, where convicts were first sent to the US, then to Australia, often for trivial crimes against property for survival. After each 'excising of the convict stain' to purify the society, more impoverished people turning to petty crimes against property miraculously appeared to fill the gap. It's only been the latter half of the 20th century that it's started to settle on a decently humane equilibrium -- and half the posters on this site then whinge about the evils of 'welfare'.

But denying even such fundamentals as life expectancies of history and injecting some fairy-tale fictions instead only makes you and your allies in this argument sound just plain silly.

Which fairytale fictions exactly? People seem to read every 3rd sentence I write and ignore every qualification I make, and further miss the base point utterly. What was the life expectancy of persons 150 years ago in Western society?

Hmm, the Schiller Institute, which you've referenced as authoritative in the past, seems to think that life expectancies in the West circa 150 years ago were around mid 40s in Europe, the most best at the time. Today they are around 70.

I will give you this, life expectancies grew very slowly from 400BC to 1300AD, when they dropped for a couple centuries, then started climbing quite rapidly after 1800.

Of course they also show you're full of shit about the 3 ages pre history, where archeological evidence puts average age at just about 18. That "eight-teen", not "eight eee". Of course there are some lucky specimens that lived in to their 30s, quite old for pre history for HG societies.

Paleo = 18
Meso = 26
Neo = 30
Early history = ~32
1AD = ~26
thru 1400 = ~35
Black Death = ~26
Colonial = 30 .. 40
Early Industrial = 40 .. 55
Post War = 55 .. 70

I've really gotta see the stats that explain away that trend as an aberration.

Really, picking straw man comparisons is irrelevant. If you want a comparison you have to pick *statistically likely birth conditions*. That is, you can't compare the best of your set to the worst of mine. You have to pick where you'd probably have been born in each era, and how likely you'd have been to survive, and what your quality of life would have been.

Have you netted out infant mortality?

That is, what is life expectancy at birth vs life expectancy at say 20 years of age? You are just publishing life expectancy at birth figures, which means with a 25% infant mortality rate (dying between 1 and 5) the overall mean is dragged down considerably.

So you would need to present an array rather than a single vector of data.

The funny thing is, this is a side debate not of my construction or of anything but incidental interest -- I haven't raised the question of any kind of mortality in my writing, except that some people here seem to have drawn a connection that massive economic inequality in a society = greater longevity for all, for some reason -- not just technical developments. This thesis is arguably disproved by comparing the current US mortality rate with other comparable countries.

I am just debating that once you reached late adolescence/early adulthood, your life expectancy was considerably greater -- more to make the point. I am not contesting that considerable work has been done in vaccination and sanitation over the last 100 years of history (and sanitation has been a large part of it) or that the 2nd half of the 20th century hasn't resulted in enormous leaps forward in technology. These arguments are quite beside my other arguments. The debate, to my mind, is whether the famous US indifference to inequality and its relatively poor welfare state leads to worse life outcomes than in other comparable countries with more equitable income distributions (as per the thread topic, more or less). This appears to be so, as US life expectancy is lower than many other advanced nations, and its healthcare system is ranked 37th in the world for quality by the WHO, with denial of access to care one of the outstanding features.

Coming into this discussion late, but for what it's worth I work in a union. Yes, it carries its own set of frustrations, but overall, I feel more confident in my job security and benefits than in the last several jobs I held in the private sector. At the end of the day, I would much rather be annoyed by a lazy coworker than:

1) Working with crappy benefits
2) Wondering all the time if my manager is trying to get me fired
3) Working forced overtime without pay
4) Having to work someplace for a year just to qualify for their non-matching 401k program.
5) Wondering if speaking out about an unethical practice will get me fired

Randy H says: come spend a weekend in lovely Marin, where at any of our $40 lunch coffee shops you can listen to a deadly serious conversation about why they have chosen to not immunize their children.
Once again, for those of you who think Randy is kidding... when we were interviewing pediatricians, ours asked us whether we would be immunizing our children (I don't imagine this is a conversation that occurs where I grew up in the Midwest). At any rate, when we said, "Yes", she replied that was good as they wouldn't accept non-immunized kids into their practice. The funny thing is, when an "outbreak" does happen, these idiots are the ones who are going to be asking for your children's "papers", as other non-immunized kids represent the greatest threat to their non-immunized offspring. (At this point, the heartless can insert a suggestion for a non-immunized playgroup...)

Randy, I am not suggesting a return to the "bad ole days", but seriously, we are losing topoil 10 to 40 times faster than it is being replenished. That ain't sustainable over the long haul. You need to get yourself a CSA veggie box... and besides, if your local farm experiences a catastrophic failure, you can always go to the neighborhood Safeway :-)

Just heard of a couple that bought their rental on the Peninsula. We are talking a 3/2 near the $1 millon mark. I cannot imagine the calculus that went into this decision.

On a positive note, the Craigslist Bay Area ReduceOMeter just set a new record with 297 listings for July 20&21.

Regarding the secondary side debate that seems to have started concerning infant mortality in history, and the introduction of new diseases from domestication of animals, you might like to look at the following scholarly article, fortunately available in its entirety, which examines the debate in anthropology which has occurred over several decades as to whether mortality rates changed from palaeolothic to neolithic periods, and on until the 20th century.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0PCG/is_2_20/ai_111014981/pg_1

Naturally, everyone on patrick.net seems to have read all of the literature on this topic already, and having been informed by it can therefore put the question to bed in a mere 5 seconds as already demonstrated -- I appear to be the only one to have gained only a smidgin of undergraduate training in this area, vs the PhD studies in histodemography clearly undertaken by everyone else, which is why their answers are so pithy and certain.

The fact that it has been heavily researched and debated for decades by leading anthropologists and is still a subject of debate does not worry the experts at patrick.net in their pithy, authoritative summaries. Instead, the 'Schiller Institute', that noted anthropological resource, can provide all the answers in one table. The Schiller Institute has been described by the London Metropolitan Police as a "political cult with sinister and dangerous connections", but their presented data and its sources are unimpeachable and heavily used in academic treatments of demotic history.

The patrick.netters clear understanding of the 'hygiene movement' of the early 20th century, and the fact that since the early 20th century and particularly since the 1950s quality of life and longevity increased significantly does not stop them from claiming that in fact it has been like this for 10,000 years of human history. Other experts contend that Georgian and Victorian life was often miserable for many, but patrick.netters know that it was actually a golden age of prosperity for all.

Nor do they conflate and confuse technological developments and breakthroughs which have accelerated and compounded with each other since the Enlightenment began, with rampant economic inequality -- they know these two phenomena are in fact one and the same -- scientists are in fact the richest people in society. The fact that infant mortality was extremely high prior to the 20th century, particularly in cities, while economic inequality in those times was also high, does not and should not trouble them, as this is the United States of Amnesia which can only look forward and never back.

The article Was there a Neolithic mortality crisis? Journal of Population Research points out that it is very hard to deduce any sort of information about longevity based on palaeo- *or* neolithic fossil evidence, which would call the Schiller data heavily into doubt. They may have backwards extrapolated, who knows, or made it up.

One possible source of guesstimated data is to study extant HG-type societies relatively unaffected by Europeans or other cultures, and look at their demographic age profiles. However, it is increasingly difficult to do as most tribes have had increasing access to other influences now. In the case of Australian Aboriginals, it is difficult when they have substituted (poor quality) Western foods for traditional foods, and been corrupted with alcohol and drugs, and caught new diseases -- it simply becomes a contemporary health problem of a new type. Rates of diabetes and heart disease are now very high, brought about by change of diet. Their cultures and social structures have been broken down by colonisation also, creating further problems. There are still other people around the world living simple HG-type or horticultural lifestyles however who could provide insight, in South America, the New Guinea Highlands and Africa...

In the case of combined MMR vaccinations, I'm still not convinced there isn't a link to encephalitis or autism. I would immunise against each separately over time. The Urabe strain of mumps vaccine was known to cause encephalitis or meningitis in some cases, before it was discontinued by the drug companies involved. The original papers claiming an MMR-autism link have been discredited somewhat, but I would rather be safe than sorry in this instance.

I'd rather be safe than sorry with my children too. I'm no medical genius, but seems to me the best way to do that is...

So to distill DS' arguments to a readable form:

* Longevity in modernity is only increased because of less babies and kids dying before adolescence.

-- This is false, incidentally, by the Schiller data which shows population growths along with infant mortality, and longevity. DS is wrong because populations grew very fast, meaning both decreased infant mortality and increased longevity.

* Everything modern from animal husbandry to industrialization injected death and suffering into the human condition. Maybe less babies and children died, but that's beside the point.

* If one survived the gantlet of things from disease to predation to malnutrition to starvation to infanticide to abandonment to intertribal conflict that might kill them from birth to around 14 years of age, one would have lived longer than Methuselah in a hunting-gathering-we're-all-equals paradise. More kids live through childhood today, but for what? A pathetic life of enlightened education, unparalleled learning and communication, and free time to sit around and blog about how much nicer it might have been to be a brave 70 year old aboriginal tribesman.

Anyway, it's been a good debate as always.

The perspective DS is arguing is not an isolated phenomenon. I hear derivations of this all the time, especially here in hyper-hypocritical Marin County. DS is unique only because he actually tries to back up his positions, which is why it's so fun to deconstruct them. Sort of like when someone actually tries to prove the Earth is only 12,000 years old or we never landed on the Moon.

It's really interesting. And I think a bit sad. And very hypocritical, to a point of arrogance, but very interesting nonetheless. But it's all moot. Progress will march on. We aren't going to return to hunting-gathering tribes of 16 year old marauders with clubs and spears, outside of something quite terrible happening like a nuclear war or an asteroid strike. At which point, of the .01% of us who survive would try our best to retain anything we could from the "good old days" of modernity.

Has anyone figured out a way to set up a killfile on this blog?
TIA
SP

Randy,

Perhaps I've fallen prey to hypocritical nonsense, but there are aspects of the H-G discussion which interest me. Not because it attaches to fashion, nor because its origins are prescientific, both of which are irrelevant.

In order to skip the idealogues, I search NCBI PubMed for research abstracts and studies. Consensus is that we're a stone age genotype, but there's no consensus on what this means practically. So I stay tuned.

"you only got rich by exploiting others"

Well... certainly there ARE other ways (but this is the most expedient!)

I post a listing (for free) on Craigslist? Let's make it say... "Work at Home"? I have a "training system/whatever" we'll be selling for... I dunno $2,000? And YOU get to keep HALF the profit! (Let's assume the "product" is basically worthless, as they usually are)

I say I have people making 10-15?K a month. And why not. So I get a hundred guys on board selling this... "product". Now, if they're lucky they'll sell TWO a month (or 2K). But since I have A HUNDRED guys out there pounding the phones I make ONE HUNDRED K a month! Not bad!

So you tell me? What's easier? Getting on the phone, or getting on Craigslist?

Folks, I full well realize there's little empathy for sales people (because we tend to focus on the end buyer) but a "sales person" is about 1,000 times more likely to be taken advantage of and abused then a person in the sex trade, foster child or altar boy. Sorry, that's how it is. Until this changes, look for the abuse to "trickle down".

Bruce

Consensus is that we’re a stone age genotype, but there’s no consensus on what this means practically.

I agree. I'm at the mercy of the best science and data which I fully expect to develop over time. Given scientifically demonstrated evidence of anything DS posits I'll happily incorporate that new learning into my world view.

I just know this: I wouldn't have wanted to be a cave man. If I got to choose any century to be born into from the Stone Age to 21stAD, I'd choose 21stAD. Maybe being a pre-history hunstman would be a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.

Isn't there some Mitochondrial DNA evidence that humans almost died out well into our evolutionary line that coincides with some sort of cataclysmic volcanic event? That episode alone would have pushed life expectancies down to well below DS' claims of octogenarian berry pickers. I read about this some time ago in Science, but I don't know if it's been discredited since then.

For me, food would definitely be the worst features of living the noble savage lifestyle, followed by boredom, lice, the bad teeth and lack of bathing opportunities.

Humans could use a serious genetic upgrade. Now that we're sedatory internet dwellers with a high life expectancy, how about:

Skinny genes
New set of teeth at 35, 50, and 70
Youthful skin pores
Better cancer fighting genes
Lifetime pigment production
Extra lung, liver, pancreas, heart, etc
Wasabi gland...

Wasabi gland

Yes! I fully support such genetic engineering. In my perfect future I can fully select among a variety of genetic and bio-mechanical enhancements.

I also read somewhere that signs of human back problems are at least 150,000 years old in the fossil record. A byproduct of our "erectus" part of the equation. (Science magazine, probably sometime in the early 90s). Maybe the neo-luddites would like us to return to a pre-bipedal stage where we all enjoyed a Utopian bliss of no back strain or degenerative trauma.

I'll put my money with the guys decoding and enhancing the genes, thank you.

The real answer to all these terrible problems we face, like overpopulation, environmental decay, global warming, big scary asteroids, is to continue to develop our social, technical and scientific systems to overcome them. I could take your same arguments and roll them back to the middle ages and say that agriculture and dynasties caused non sustainability via cities and caused plagues. I’m partial to antibiotics and science solving plagues rather than killing off half the serfs and returning everyone to berry picking.

Ok, I missed the bulk of weekend debate here over neo-Luddism and HG-v.-post-Industrialism, but a couple of quick points:

Is it not possible to be concerned about sustainability of the earth's human population (and accelerating population growth, esp. among the poorest, least stable, least equipped nations) and other global-scale problems (Peak Oil, topsoil loss/degradation, etc.) and *not* be a technology-hating, Shamanic-yak-horn loving Neo-Luddite?

My own concerns about overpopulation and population growth expanding beyond technology's limits to compensate does not arise from a fear and/or hatred of technology and the relative comforts of modern society. Rather, it's just the opposite: I am gravely concerned that rising world population (esp. among the Third World) is going to suck more and more of our resources into future conflicts over declining limited natural resources (oil, food, fresh water, etc.) to the extent my own standard of living will greatly suffer.

I don't "hate" progress or want to deny its benefits to my family, my countrymen or anyone else in the world. Quite the contrary, I would love to see the rest of the world's standard of living rise to the level of First World industrial societies. However, I don't see this occurring in countries that already have relatively high population-to-natural resource ratios, and extremely high birthrates. How much of any nation's limited resources can be devoted to building out infrastructure, or public education, or R&D on high technology when a large % of the population is close to starvation and more hungry mouths to feed are being added every day?

Yes, the world's economy is not static, and improvements in agricultural technology do significantly push the envelope of population "sustainability" levels outward. However, let's not forget that the earth is still a basically closed system. Unless/until someone invents relatively inexpensive and scalable warp drive technology, this is the only large-scale habitable world we have. Malthus's basic observation that unchecked human populations tend to increase geometrically, while the food supply increases arithmetically is still valid, despite historic anomalies like the 1960s' "Green Revolution" (which BTW was only possible via massive increase in use of oil-fueled mechanisation, petrochemical fertilizers, insecticides, etc.).

I want a future world of sustainable prosperity, opportunity, good health, and a clean, healthy environment that everyone can enjoy for many generations to come. I just don't see how we get there from here without recognizing that there *are* some natural limits to human population growth. Whether or not we choose to impose some reasonable limits upon ourselves (contraception, limited family size), or do nothing and have the environment impose limits upon us forcibly (famine, war, plague, etc.) remains to be seen.

HARM

No quibbles.

We'll try to do (a), but it will be (b) that balances the accounts. It's just the way of things, though we do incrementally improve every cycle.

I view it as a constraints-problem. Even if you dialed up all productivity and efficiency by 100x, we'd still be at carrying capacity because we'd just consume and reproduce right up to that level.

It is the nature of our construct. It is the terrible trade-off we've made with iterative natural selection in order to survive as a species. Of course we should *try* to make things better. But we should also be fully self-aware of who we are as a species.

I dare say that, should we ever encounter another sentient, technology using species (highly debatable, I know, but most agree at least possible), they will inevitably also be evolved socially and physically from a terrible, violent, stressful history. Because that's what pushes progress forward. If you live in Eden and everyone is at peace, why build a rocket ship in the first place?

I dare say that, should we ever encounter another sentient, technology using species (highly debatable, I know, but most agree at least possible), they will inevitably also be evolved socially and physically from a terrible, violent, stressful history. Because that’s what pushes progress forward. If you live in Eden and everyone is at peace, why build a rocket ship in the first place?

No doubt violent conflict over scarcity is a key part of what got us here ("here" being technologically advanced society relative to 99.9% of previous human history), but I don't believe that's *all* that got us here. I think a strong natural curiosity and desire to learn how the universe works is at least as critical an ingredient. Any society that has the former but lacks the latter is doomed to an endless cycle of bloody conflict with little forward progress, IMHO.

Witness the direct involvement and philanthropy by billionaires who have already achieved their own personal "Edens" here on earth to expand the frontiers of science and improve the lot of the less fortunate (Branson's X-Prize, Gates Foundation, etc.). Is this just another example of "bigger yacht" one-upsmanship by way of public philanthropy, or are there other motives at work here? I can't read the minds of Bill Gates or Richard Branson, but something tells me that basic human curiosity and the drive to improve the species has *something* to with it, even if that's only a secondary motive.

Even if 100% of the human race were 'fat and happy' by contemporary standards, I'm convinced we would still seek to 'improve' ourselves and explore the universe.

When we're all "fat and happy," no doubt we will induce artificial debilities to make our lives more interesting.

While we wait for the DQ Chronicle charts to come out (which have the $/sq.ft. numbers for "fortress" unbelievers), here are some DQ stats for select California cities.
In the East Bay, BAP is still prime!
Berkeley median is up 16.44%.
Albany median is up 26.55% (on a small number of sales).

In the land of pocket listings, Mill Valley is up 7.76%.

In SiliValley, well, this one kinda jumps out at ya:
Crapertino median down -19.55%. Did they sell a bunch of condos (or what) this past month? Cracks in the fortress?

EBGuy,

In the East Bay, BAP is still prime!

Didn't you mean: "BAP33 is still prime"?

Randy H Says:

So to distill DS’ arguments to a readable form:

* If one survived the gantlet of things from disease to predation to malnutrition to starvation to infanticide to abandonment to intertribal conflict that might kill them from birth to around 14 years of age, one would have lived longer than Methuselah in a hunting-gathering-we’re-all-equals paradise. More kids live through childhood today, but for what? A pathetic life of enlightened education, unparalleled learning and communication, and free time to sit around and blog about how much nicer it might have been to be a brave 70 year old aboriginal tribesman.

No, I'm not claiming any of that at all, so they must all be straw men arguments. It must be a distillation of something else.

I just said 'gosh, it was interesting about the property relations in these extant HG societies that we have discovered in recent times'. Everything else has been extrapolated, confabulated and constructed by posters with various axes to grind, so they will have to deal with their own peculiar demons in reconciling those views with what was posted, I guess. In psychology, we call habits like that 'heuristics', or, in extreme cases, it's called the psychopathology of 'splitting', the habit of leaping to extremes of judgement as a way of short-circuiting decision-making, putting words in people's mouths that were never intended, etc. In other words, creating mental black and white pictures out of shades of grey ideas, much as the human eye alters contrast beyond reality to respond to sudden light transitions, etc.

There are plenty of Aboriginal people living in more or less tribal situations today who reach 60 and so on, but it's hard to tell with European interference how much their lives have altered. But I didn't start a debate on mortality, someone else did, and I don't even know why. However, the original post was to discuss how property relations came about, where, as we've pointed out, people these days can retain more and more, a la Bill Gates Sr's book, and there was a debate about estate taxing, etc.

I've also seen a lot of pretty uninformed stereotyped Hollywood cliches about 'cave men', marauding 16 year olds with spears, etc. In fact, it seems highly unlikely from the record that man inhabited caves much at all, they went into them for ritual purposes, including burials, etc. The other thing, all such societies had methods of social control, just as we do today, that means 16 year olds don't maraud with spears -- there was a role for elders, who were greatly respected and held to possess ritual magic, the wisdom of the tribe, etc. Young men had very few rights and were kept on a pretty tight leash back then, unlike today. Unfortunately, people still believe in a garbled Hobbesian-style view of early societies, which was totally imaginary on Hobbes part, and predates serious anthropological study and assumed that people were atomised and individualised more as they are today and extrapolated backwards...

As for the Schiller Inst life expectancy figures, the fossil record is incredibly bad from the period under discussion, so the figures are probably concocted from a guess.

I would also consider the history of warfare under 'civilisation' also, e.g. the Roman sacking and mass slaughter of Carthage, the Mongols invading central Asia and Europe, WW1 and WW2, the Cold War, etc, etc, in considering just how 'civilised' we have become. The inter-tribal skirmishes of HG tribes pale by comparison, but the sentiment is still the same -- we are basically pretty primitive apes with advanced neocortexes, still being driven by chimp-like urges -- e.g. see Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence.

the fossil record is incredibly bad from the period under discussion, so the figures are probably concocted from a guess.

Translation:

The bones they keep finding are of people too young to support my thesis, therefore the fossil record is unreliable. The dna techniques are too new and don't support my thesis, therefore they are unreliable. This wasn't my point anyway, yet I refuse to cede it to the point of pure lunacy, because some extant aboriginal tribe somewhere has "elders" over age 70.

I'm in some strange Bizzaro World where I'm arguing with the Anti-Creationist, and he's just as bad as that Texan with dinosaur and human prints in the mud in his back yard.

Yes, somewhere another aboriginal tribe known as the Dogon supposedly knew about the dog star Sirius long before it was discovered even though they couldn't have, physically. Oops, guess not. Cultural "contamination" and a wild-eyed neo-luddite wishing to prove the mysterious complexity of ancient mysticism were the cause ... not so mysterious after all.

Of course "primitive" people today have longer lives. There's no mystery in that at all.

Of course “primitive” people today have longer lives.

Perhaps because they eat raw meat (such as fish)? ;)

Just a thought.

Will someone please start a new thread. Looks like some Marinites got loose and ended up in Michigan.

ORGANIC FARMING CAN FEED THE WORLD, U-M study shows
University of Michigan
http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=5936
ANN ARBOR, Mich.
July 10th. — Organic farming can yield up to three times as much food on individual farms in developing countries, as low-intensive methods on the same land—according to new findings which refute the long-standing claim that organic farming methods cannot produce enough food to feed the global population.
Researchers from the University of Michigan found that in developed
countries, yields were almost equal on organic and conventional farms. In
developing countries, food production could double or triple using organic
methods, said Ivette Perfecto, professor at U-M's School of Natural Resources and Environment, and one the study's principal investigators. Catherine Badgley, research scientist in the Museum of Paleontology, is a co-author of the paper along with several current and former graduate and undergraduate students from U-M.
"My hope is that we can finally put a nail in the coffin of the idea that you
can’t produce enough food through organic agriculture," Perfecto said.
In addition to equal or greater yields, the authors found that those yields
could be accomplished using existing quantities of organic fertilizers, without putting more farmland into production.

Randy H Says:
the fossil record is incredibly bad from the period under discussion, so the figures are probably concocted from a guess.
Translation:
The bones they keep finding are of people too young to support my thesis, therefore the fossil record is unreliable.

No, because that's what the state of the art experts have concluded, from the article I referenced earlier. Similarly, there are very poor fossilised records from the period 7 MYA to 14 MYA which would answer a lot of questions about human and ape evolution from Proconsul, and so on and so forth, due to poor fossilisation in jungle habitats, so science will never know the answers to some things. Sorry about that...

Of course “primitive” people today have longer lives. There’s no mystery in that at all.

Well, they could have shorter lives, the same, or longer lives, due to new diseases of diabetes, heart disease, alcoholism, smallpox, colds, influenza, measles, mumps, rubella, tuberculosis, HIV, etc, and the problem of incarceration and deaths in custody. Some of them now live on a diet of tinned spaghetti and no longer hunt, catch or forage much for food. However, there's little doubt that extant HG societies discovered in the past 2 centuries engaged in a lot of inter-tribal warfare, often based on grudges, suspicion and beliefs in magical tampering, sometimes over territorial matters, etc. 'Primitive' is another no-no word in expert circles as well. (Technologically) simple societies. Pre-industrial societies. Stateless societies. Nomadic societies. But you'd know that from the Ph.D ;)

just to contrast the Hollywood Flintstones cave man fiction and fantasy of the way homo sapiens (modern man) lived for 200,000 years before the last 10,000 years of history in HG societies (in which dinosaurs apparently did co-exist with cavemen!), this is taken from Marshall Sahlins 'The original affluent society' work, where the early European invasion of Australia found:

It is a mistake, Sir George Grey (7) wrote, to suppose that the native Australians "have small means of subsistence, or are at times greatly pressed for want of food". Many and "almost ludicrous" are the errors travellers have fallen into in this regard: "They lament in their journals that the unfortunate Aborigines should be reduced by famine to the miserable necessity of subsisting on certain sorts of food, which they have found near their huts; whereas, in many instances, the articles thus quoted by them are those which the natives most prize, and are really neither deficient in flavour nor nutritious qualities". To render palpable "the ignorance that has prevailed with regard to the habits and customs of this people when in their wild state", Grey provides one remarkable example, a citation from his fellow explorer, Captain Stuart, who, upon encountering a group of Aboriginals engaged in gathering large quantities of mimosa gum, deduced that the "unfortunate creatures were reduced to the last extremity, and, being unable to procure any other nourishment, had been obliged to collect this mucilaginous". But, Sir George observes, the gum in question is a favourite article of food in the area, and when in season it affords the opportunity for large numbers of people to assemble and camp together, which otherwise they are unable to do. He concludes:

"Generally speaking, the natives live well; in some districts there may be at particular seasons of the year a deficiency of food, but if such is the case, these tracts are, at those times, deserted.

It is, however, utterly impossible for a traveller or even for a strange native to judge whether a district affords an abundance of food, or the contrary... But in his own district a native is very differently situated; he knows exactly what it produces, the proper time at which the several articles are in season, and the readiest means of procuring them. According to these circumstances he regulates his visits to different portions of his hunting ground; and I can only say that l have always found the greatest abundance in their huts."(8)

The Original Affluent Society--Marshall Sahlins

The entire article is worth reading to dispel a few more myths...