patrick.net

Eliza,

The land is not so good, and it will need more fertilizer next year in order to grow anything much at all

Reference please. The data was the opposite. Tonnes of active-ingredient fertilizer per sq unit has decreased by approximately 8x, not increased in the US over the past 20 years. What has increased is total tonnage, but that's because more square acres are now in production, not because they're using more per acre.

Have you ever picked up a basket of strawberries at a farmer’s market in France?

I lived in Mougins for a while. The best food in the world. I also happen to know that provincial French farms are anything but what you're describing. I'd love to see you explaining your notions to one of these old farmers in Provence. The food there is better for a number of reasons, the main one being the manner in which it is prepared.

anyway, you have to eat them fast because they will start melting by late afternoon.

You mentioned you grew up poor. So did I. My grandparents in rural, agricultural Ohio also tended a multi-acre "garden" which they'd had since the depression & war. The food produced from this garden was seldom a delight. The tiny portion they were willing to serve fresh, including strawberries that rival anything you'll ever eat in France I might add, were delicious. But they canned, pickled, jarred and dried 95% of what came out of that garden. Using all kinds of things we'd call "organics" today, as well as lots of nasty preservatives. Why? Because they were poor, and they learned how to use their land for sustainability during a period of time when many waited in line for food. From my late grandfather's perspective, he'd most certainly view your vision of "sustainability" as purely decedent frivolity. He'd tell you calories per acre isn't what matters, what matters is calories actually consumed from the land.

My grandmother used to tell us when we complained we didn't like the taste of something that taste was something we could enjoy when we were rich, for now we should worry about filling our bellies.

Like I pointed out to DS, discrimination on higher points of quality is a luxury afforded by luxury. I am a food-bigot. I hate bad food. Probably because I grew up eating bad food. But I also have no delusion that all this quality-of-life stuff is mostly the domain of those who are already well off.

Cuba has also been doing pretty well in terms of output per acre–they pretty much lost access to machine parts and fuels and pesticides and

I have that DVD. Very interesting. My take was that Cuba imports enough staple ag (imports have grown something like 5x over the past 10 years) from South America on lucrative terms (for political reasons vis a vis changes in S American governments because of US blunders), that now they are able to enjoy the luxury of little "farmers markets". Lots of things are easy when they're effectively free. What exists in Cuba currently may be a temporary geo-political subsidy program. It could last for a while, but eventually their chums in South America will go the way all state-run economies go. I give it about 6-8 years. Sooner if their trade with the EU forces them to open their markets.

ozajh

Output per acre in terms of yield, tonnes, return on capital, return on assets, efficiency per labor, the list goes on. I don't have calories per acre, but I'll eat my hat if that figure isn't also similarly high at scale.

Anyone can be more efficient on a micro-farm or in a garden. Oz has very small agricultural operations compared to the US or EU. Very very small, in fact. The US operates massive scale ag, which is somewhat essential to the entire chain unless we're all ready to see a whole lotta suffering. Here's an idea of the scale. Even if you buy into the "80% of US grain production is merely an input into meat production" argument, and you eliminate all that, the remaining 1/5 is still larger than the net output of Europe, not to mention the fact this is flawed because Europe also raises livestock, and people actually eat that livestock so eliminating it requires replacement with other sources of foods, probably grown somewhere. (I'll ignore the fact this externalizes the whole overfishing problem; after all, people need to eat 'something').

Your book from the 60s and 70s? You're kidding right? That was 50 years ago, not long after WWII. Of course that was true then. This is the very story. The US didn't sit idle during that period. We modernized our ag production business, which is why my wife's family is on it's last elderly generation of family farmers, all of the kids having long abandoned the family farm for jobs in suburbs and cities.

In fact, the WTO Doha round is very interested to read many of the speeches. There were actually dozens of countries arguing that the US should have "productivity growth caps" placed on our Agriculture because we're *still improving* productivity year-to-year, even today, and at an "alarming" rate. They argued things like the US should stop improving and investing in ag for 10 years, 20 years, longer, in order to allow the developing world to effectively catch up. Ironic, that these countries also have a terrible time feeding their people.

Tell me where the money comes from, if it isn’t from the exchange of labour for a roughly constant reward for most of us. My pay is rock solid, only creeps up at 3% a year with the odd bonus. So you tell me where the money comes from, given that most people’s wages are roughly constant?

I think it is ironic that you make that statement, then in the next paragraph say that Google is "free." Anyway, the average standard of living is going up worldwide, mostly due to the efforts of China, but going up nonetheless. Even in the US, standards of living are creeping up. Where does that come from? Mostly gains in productivity. Sure, the guy who invented the copy machine and then gave away his fortune was pretty noble, but in your vision of the world, he wouldn't get a fortune in the first place. I know I sure wouldn't do my job if I didn't get paid to do it.

Why does the programmer get paid more than the garbage collector? Serious questions only please. But instead of lamenting his sorry plight, you should be trying to figure out ways to automate the collection of garbage. No one should have to do difficult, dangerous, mind-numbing physical labor. Though I wonder what we are going to end up doing with the masses of unemployable, due to either an unwillingness to study or an inability to do so, that this future society would create.

I recently re-read _A_Brave_New_World_ which I had not read since I was a teenager. I know it was intended as a distopian warning, but to me, the society seemed pretty great.

Isn’t that what I said about invention and technological advances in the following paragraph?

I am sorry, I just don't see this anywhere in your writing on this topic. I see your paragraph where you mentioned Aboriginies, but that was the last paragraph in that post. We are actually not that far apart, in many ways. I don't defend our current system of wealth distribution and admire the Scandanavian model (like you do) I am just not ready to throw the baby (Capitalism) out with the bathwater (massive wealth disparity).

Oh and I don't think we are headed to inevitable overpopulation and mass die off. When people have economic incentives to do so, like in post-industrial societies, they naturally decrease their birth rate. All the wealthy countries have a fertility rate below replacement rate.

We just need to get the whole world up to that standard of living before we run out of resources. I don't know if we are going to make it or not, but we have a chance.

The working masses don't have leisure time, they're too busy trying to survive or work multiple low wage jobs due to cover rent, childcare, car repairs, medical.

Folks who have so much leisure time to write long opinions here are among the "rich".

"The land is not so good, and it will need more fertilizer next year in order to grow anything much at all. Reference please. The data was the opposite. Tonnes of active-ingredient fertilizer per sq unit has decreased by approximately 8x, not increased in the US over the past 20 years."

I perhaps was not clear. My intention was to say that fertilizer must be used on a yearly basis, not that the land required ever-increasing amounts of fertilizer. So on that point we are in agreement.

"Have you ever picked up a basket of strawberries at a farmer’s market in France? I lived in Mougins for a while. The best food in the world. I also happen to know that provincial French farms are anything but what you’re describing. I’d love to see you explaining your notions to one of these old farmers in Provence. The food there is better for a number of reasons, the main one being the manner in which it is prepared."

Actually, I was traveling on a budget--this was a backpacking trip in college, and I only had a little savings--so I ate in a restaurant perhaps once. Otherwise, I had a lot of fresh stuff from markets--sometimes cooked by me, sometimes uncooked. Great either way, and I couldn't cook so well then.

I'm not so sure you understand my, um, notions, well enough to dismiss them--perhaps I have not been clear. I think produce is better if the people growing it have the luxury of paying a bit of attention--as they would on a more modest-sized farm, and which they cannot do very effectively on the really giant operations in the midwest. I'm not tied to permaculture or organic or biodynamic or any other such buzzwords--I just notice that the farming goes better when people pay attention and work the living system like a living system rather than a factory. And sometimes the buzzwords go along with that. We are seeing factory farmed organic now, and I'm guessing it will be different from small farm organic. Also, I think that produce tastes better and is more nutritious if it isn't shipped very far and gets to the consumer rather quickly. I'm thinking that one day old spinach tastes better than four day old spinach. Not such wild notions, really. You are more than welcome to disagree, of course.

Yeah, I enjoyed a lot of preserved foods as a child, too--though items frozen in the chest freezer turned out somewhat better than the canned things and required far less work. And make no mistake, our garden was only as organic as the various bugs and blights allowed--but in the end it was mostly organic, and we took care of the land, and thought about what it needed, and there was relationship there. And I'm thinking that the relationship with the land, under any name, may be what matters. That, and shipping time. Shipping produce cross country or around the world may make sense to the market, but it is neither efficient nor delicious. Otherwise a tomato from the farmer's market or from my backyard would not invariably be twenty times better than one from the grocery store, right?

Jimbo Says:
» Isn’t that what I said about invention and technological advances in the following paragraph?

I am sorry, I just don’t see this anywhere in your writing on this topic. I see your paragraph where you mentioned Aboriginies, but that was the last paragraph in that post.

I wrote:
"However, surplus and a fixed habitat also breeds culture, creativity and the space for invention…"

We are actually not that far apart, in many ways. I don’t defend our current system of wealth distribution and admire the Scandanavian model (like you do) I am just not ready to throw the baby (Capitalism) out with the bathwater (massive wealth disparity).

I am. Once again apparently there is only 1 possible form of 'capitalism' which has to lead to massive wealth disparity -- what the Nordic states are doing apparently isn't capitalism -- formally the deployment of capital to achieve a result -- tempered with a social democracy based on delivering universal quality of life outcomes. If only US capitalism worked, it wouldn't be necessary to make films like 'Sicko', for instance.

As the article says:

In contrast to many of his peers in corporate America, Mr. Sinegal, 70, the Costco chief executive, argues that the nation’s business leaders would exercise their “unique skills” just as vigorously for “$10 million instead of $200 million, if that were the standard.”

As a co-founder of Costco, which now has 132,000 employees, Mr. Sinegal still holds $150 million in company stock. He is certainly wealthy. But he distinguishes between a founder’s wealth and the current practice of paying a chief executive’s salary in stock options that balloon into enormous amounts. His own salary as chief executive was $349,000 last year, incredibly modest by current standards.

“I think that most of the people running companies today are motivated and pay is a small portion of the motivation,” Mr. Sinegal said. So why so much pressure for ever higher pay?

“Because everyone else is getting it,” he said. “It is as simple as that. If somehow a proclamation were made that CEOs could only make a maximum of $300,000 a year, you would not have any shortage of very qualified men and women seeking the jobs.”

hmm, I wouldn't think that US ag efficiency would be any higher, or much higher, than Oz efficiency -- many universities here have ag sci programs, and globalisation and communication means that technology transfer occurs very quickly these days, whether it's mechanisation, animal husbandry, pesticides, irrigation techniques, or whatever -- at least between comparable 1st world countries. Further, many Australian farms have been consolidated into larger and larger lots by giant agribusiness over time, also leading to efficiencies and economies of scale.

What would be damaging is the 10 year drought and the consequent massive reduction in primary output in some areas, on the world's driest continent.

Australia is still a massive wheat exporter, tho, constantly bumping into US Senators and US farm subsidies. Wheat, wine, wool and wuranium...

Anyway, I would need to see comparative figures by country by acreage and rainfall... I could see that methods of French cheese production might be a little cottage industry and parochial, but it's high-tech all the way over here...

The WTO Doha observations seem amazingly ass about, but nothing would surprise me about WTO proceedings. I would think that making international donations or reducing prices on massively efficient surpluses might be a good thing to do in these numerous unnamed 'starving countries' with their dictators who refuse to feed the people. maybe the lost revenues from sharing would serve to undercut the flow-on effects which means some people get $50M salaries p.a.

not to mention technology transfer and introducing these massively efficient farming techniques to these seemingly constantly 'developing' countries. after all, we needed regime change in iraq in the interests of freedom and democracy, and heping them rebuild their shattered economy and infrastructure, andno expense is going to be spared, for some reason. let's regime change all the other countries and give them the agricultural techniques and know-how they so sorely need as another, similar act of munificence...

DS: Australia is exporting wheat, wine, wool and... WMD?!? :o

I've quite enjoyed some of the reds coming out of New South Wales.

WMD precursors... we should therefore probably be castigated a rogue nation in the axis of evil, but luckily we get to define what is acceptable instead...

erk, don't remind me of the sparkling shiraz from the mudgee vintner last night...

"The working masses don’t have leisure time, they’re too busy trying to survive or work multiple low wage jobs due to cover rent, childcare, car repairs, medical.

Folks who have so much leisure time to write long opinions here are among the “rich”."

Touche, Sybrib. We have an odd quirk in American society that no one likes to admit they are "rich." Several bloggers have eluded to a million dollar personal net worth, but I would suspect these folks would only apply the "rich" moniker to folks with a pile much larger than thier measley million. A possible reason for the millionare modesty may be the belief that if "I" can do it, anyone can. Another reason may be the newly minted rich do not want to lose touch with their working class heritage. Either way, if you have a million dollar net worth, you are rich.

Using Sybrib's binary of "working masses" and "rich," how many Americans would be in the "working masses" vs "rich"? I suspect it would be somewhat higher than the "1 in 200 Americans is a millionare."

"the ’self made’ millionaire was able to manipulate others and their economic relations in a way that disproportionately benefitted him or herself at everybody else’s expense."

Uh, that is how politicians acquire wealth. The power to "manupulate" others comes from the player with the legal monopoly on the use of force. The businesswoman must use value for value relationships to convince people to buy her products or to work for her.

anyone who owns a house outright in sydney by now is almost by definition a millionaire, or well on the way to it. you only had to inherit a house someone paid $30,000 for in 1970 to do it...

Uh, that is how politicians acquire wealth.

I was speaking most loosely, in terms of generalities of ideas. the politician actually has to convince a lot of people to vote for them, repreatedly, and they don't generally resort to use of force. but if we want to get marxist and sociological, there is the proposal that the 'ruling class' constructs the very law itself to protect their interests, e.g. protection of property, employer-employee relations, corporate welfare, etc.

it seems to me that most people get rich by the perpetration of a 'con' of sorts, e.g. bill gates conned IBM into licensing DOS instead of selling it -- the only real way to get rich through a company is to sell a lot of items to a lot of people, repeatedly -- or a big item to a small number of people -- or charge annual 'maintenance' fees in the case of software -- and other forms of riches such as inheritances, share price escalation and executive salaries flow from that as corollaries, in fact...

"it seems to me that most people get rich by the perpetration of a ‘con’ of sorts, e.g. bill gates conned IBM into licensing DOS instead of selling it"

Pity for Goliath? (IBM at that time, lest we forget.)

Maybe we are thinking on a different scale. I'm not thinking of the richest guy on Earth, but of the run of the mill working millonare. I have read of people who were truck drivers at Walmart who retired as (barely)millionares bcause they put away part of thier pay into stock purchases. How about a middle class couple who saves part of one salary and banks the other? They could be millionares by retirement. How about the joe who (pre-bubble) bought a series of single family homes, using the combination of rents and his work salary (even pre-bubble, rents were lower than mortgages) to pay off the homes over 20 years? I do not see how any of these people "coned" or "manipulated" anyone.

The Neolithic Revolution is the term for the first agricultural revolution, describing the transition from nomadic hunting and gathering communities and bands, to agriculture and settlement, as first adopted by various independent prehistoric human societies, in numerous locations on most continents between 10-12 thousand years ago. The term refers to both the general time period over which these initial developments took place and the subsequent changes to Neolithic human societies which either resulted from, or are associated with, the adoption of early farming techniques and crop cultivation - the domestication of plants and animals. The first agricultural revolution introduced a completely new way of human existence, of dramatic social changes: including an increasing population density, specialization in non-agricultural crafts, such as clay figurine making in Catalhoyuk, barter and trade, the organization of a hierarchical society; the introduction of slavery, armies, the state, marriage and personal inheritance. This revolution marked a dramatic expansion of human "control" over nature and of humans over humans.

In particular, in opposition to the moveable personal property and communal property of the nomadic hunter-gatherer, a new way of life began that introduced private property, private ownership of land and buildings, valuable artifacts (and later accumulated money) - a private ownership system protected by the state that allowed one man to have control over the livelihoods of others. Systemic slavery also emerged in human evolution in this period, in almost all continents, where captured humans were considered as "things", the private property of wealthy individuals and families. The walled town of Jericho was established almost 12,000 years ago, in which captured hunter-gatherers were enslaved.

continue reading...

"anyone who owns a house outright in sydney by now is almost by definition a millionaire, or well on the way to it. you only had to inherit a house someone paid $30,000 for in 1970 to do it…"

My mistake. I assumed that the blogger millionares were refering to one million in productive assets (bank accounts, rental property, stocks). Adding residence equity (real or imagined) would skew things a bit.

the cliche and concept of a millionaire has been attenuated by inflation anyhow -- its currency has been debased over the decades -- owning a net $10 million may be a better cut-off point to be 'rich' -- plenty of pensioners are asset-rich and income-poor, for instance. i'm thinking more about the basis of differentiation or departure from the 'regular stiff's dream' of owning a single house, with 2 cars in the drive, with 2.6 kids, with 1 or 2 household incomes (although of course, the price of houses has escalated with dual incomes, for one, in a market response), in a regular paid job, and paying off a regular mortgage, rather than resorting to buying multiple houses (thus forcing others to rent from you, possibly in perpetuity) or any other scheme -- investing in shares is really taking indirect advantage of my theory of multiples. of course you need entrepreneurs and risk-takers to establish companies in the first place, people who don't take a wage from somebody else. however, i'm just trying to atomise what it is that makes the difference between gatesy, your average charismatic CEO on a bloated salary (as per the topic of the thread), or Tom Anderson of myspace, or whoever, and the average wage worker...

DS: I'm not much of a sparkling wine guy. More of a cabernet, pinot noir, merlot drinker. It goes well with some fresh bruschetta or a Caprese salad and fresh baguette.

The Neolithic article was interesting reading, but I'm not sure what point we were meant to infer? The way I'm interpreting the conversation, it seems that people believe that hunter-gatherers were happier than agrarian cultures? Quoting:

Richard Leakey and Roger Lewin, in their book Origins, explain the human transition from cooperative and sharing communities, to agricultural settlement: "Why then, is recent human history characterised by conflict rather than compassion? We suggest that the answer to this question lies in the change in way of life from hunting and gathering to farming, a change which began about ten thousand years ago and which involved a dramatic alteration in the relationship people had both with the world around them and among themselves. The hunter-gatherer is part of the natural order: a farmer necessarily distorts that order. But more important, sedentary farming communities have the opportunity to accumulate possessions, and having done so they must protect them. This is the key to human conflict, and it is greatly exaggerated in the highly materialistic world we now live in."

I find this to be a highly suspect premise. First, we have very little evidence of the psychological disposition of hunter-gatherer societies. We have so few artifacts and bodies that it's impossible to conclude that all H-Gs were peaceful. Contact with Native American H-G tribes showed that some of them were considerably hostile, notably about their hunting lands.

Second, I am not willing to write off the accumulation of possessions solely as a result of a sedentary lifestyle. Villages are an enabler to collecting items, but they are not the cause. Value is always the key to mating. In a H-G society, value is effectiveness in securing food, strength to protect one's offspring and social standing within a tribe. In an agrarian society, value is based on the productivity of one's land, the comfort which one can provide to one's mate and inheritable advantage for future offspring.

In short, in a H-G society, perceived value is based primarily on physical attributes. In an agrarian society, perceived value is based on wealth as represented by the accumulation of valuable and pleasing assets.

It's really just primates showing off. We haven't evolved past that yet. :)

"In particular, in opposition to the moveable personal property and communal property of the nomadic hunter-gatherer, a new way of life began that introduced private property, private ownership of land and buildings, valuable artifacts (and later accumulated money) - a private ownership system protected by the state that allowed one man to have control over the livelihoods of others. "

Are you saying that humanity went straight from hunter-gatherer to capitalism? That "one man" who had "control over the livelyhood of others" has been known throught the centuries as "king," "pharoh," "emperor," "khan," "kalifa," etc. The whole of human history since the Neolithic age has used the social order of king-priest-slave, save for some short time on Greece, Rome. and isolated areas in the last 2 centuries.

Why do you think that although some of the king-priest-slave civilizations achieved a high level, they never had an industrial revolution? Was it perhaps that since all increases in production would become the property of the monarch, thus no incentive to advance techniques? Maybe the real industrial revolution took place where the power of the nobilty to confiscate had decreased to the point where the inventors would be able to keep enough of thier earnings to make inventing productivity enhancements worthwhile.

"rather than resorting to buying multiple houses (thus forcing others to rent from you, possibly in perpetuity)"

Where does the "force" come from? People are free to buy a house if they want, rent apartments, or rent other houses. And there is such a thing as a vacancy. Perpetuity? I do not know about apartments, but in the single familiy homes I rented out, most of the tenants only stayed about 2 years. Some were new to the area and wanted to get to know the area before buying, others were only planning to live in the area a short while.

Force is used by the folks who bring you taxation and eminent domain.

Eliza

Thanks for taking the time to explain your position so that I got it better. In general, I agree. Where we part is on the function of the market and the purpose of scale operations. Things are shipped around the world in ag for a very simple reason: because that is where the markets are.

I like sushi, Acia berries, and out of season apricots. I can't get those here, but will pay to have them shipped to me. This enriches my life because I can consume yummy foods, it enriches the lives of the producers because they have more than their local yak herders to sell to, and it enriches thousands of other people who are put to work captaining boats, driving trains, flying planes, accounting for it all, building software to track it all, etc.

There is a large echo of elitism to those who oppose this system. But then, most people also don't quite understand how trade works and how it is responsible for increasing their standard of living. Not to mention that global trade is the largest anecdote to warfare. Vigorous trade tends to make the real costs of war (in economic terms) too high to wage the war in the first place.

"It’s really just primates showing off. We haven’t evolved past that yet."

Hey. be glad that human women do not have the irresistable urge at the time of optimal ovulation to stick thier bright red but high in the air for servicing by the closest male. That would really disturb a college lecture.

"But then, most people also don’t quite understand how trade works and how it is responsible for increasing their standard of living."

Wonder why this is? It is not like we have a shortage of examples.

Headset, what world do you live in?!? That's just crazy talk. You only say that because The Man has taught you to think that way. :o

All renters are forced to rent in perpetuity! When you buy a house to rent it out, you are making other people your slaves. Only The Man wants you to think of it as an exchange of temporary housing for monetary compensation. That's just so The Man can hold you down. A landlord provides no value, they just force you at gunpoint to hand over your hard-earned money, crushing your happiness. It's all a big con, a way to forcibly separate people from their hard-earned assets in a zero sum game. Landlords are the Devil incarnate. And when they're done eating your soul, they're going to invent more technology and productivity so they can dominate even more renter-slaves via asset accumulation.

That is why homeownership is the American Dream. If you're renting, you're a victim of the system, a silly peon paying the mortgage for The Man while he reaps incredible profits from his ill-gotten gains. Do you want to be a victim? Owning your house is the only way to freedom.

Although, in a way, I suppose that means the only way to defeat The Man is to become The Man.

Except if you're a Hunter-Gatherer. That's the best strategy. Then you think that housing sucks because it allows accumulation of possessions, which apparently drains all compassion out of an otherwise utopian society. Let's face it, if I could escape being a slave-renter in a materialistic society, I'd totally chance getting savagely eaten by a saber-toothed tiger. It's all about carrying your possessions on your back, my friend. No assets, nothing to fight over, right? It's just me, the sun, my loving mate, my adoring kids and the possibility of a drought that kills off the mammoth herd, resulting in my excruciating starvation.

Author's Note: For everyone without a grasp of satire, this post is not really my viewpoint, nor do I think Headset is crazy. I agree with him. Nobody forces renters to rent, nobody forces you to own a computer, nobody forces you to drive a car.

The whole 'forced to rent' thing is a topic in itself -- I would argue that houe prices have been bid up to the point where people can't afford to buy, therefore they are forced to rent. If they can't afford to rent, they get public housing, or live on the street. I use the word 'forced' in that being homeless is not really a tenable outcome, and we are talking about essential human shelter, whereas owning a PC or driving a car are discretionary items.

Randy,

Firstly, sorry if my previous post came across as criticism; it wasn't intended that way.

Anyone can be more efficient on a micro-farm or in a garden.
Yes, my point exactly. In essence, that's Java/Bangladesh/etc. peasant agriculture. I'm not saying it produces a superior society, far from it, but only that is more productive on one particular measure.

nice to see the thoughtful comments stemming from 2 paras of a wiki entry though -- and then being told 'I' was arguing those points. you will have to write to richard leakey and the wiki author to have a debate about the content. i did a subject in anthropology concerning the rise of power in different societal types tho, so i'm pre-read -- you have to do some more thinking when you say that the proposal is that things went from 'HG to capitalism', headset, you are jumping to too many conclusions at once in your reading. further, 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 'kingdom' is one societal type, though, yes, and they tended to be rather despotic societies, but many societal types have co-existed in the world and even in the same region at the same time.

Jimbo,

What are you talking about? Garbage collection IS automated where I live, massively so. One guy drives a big truck down the street and stops outside every house and presses the button for the automated doohickey to do its stuff lifting/emptying/setting back down the wheelie bin.

where is the age of leisure and the 2-day working week we were promised? even Marx saw the benefits of industrialism and felt that machines should make our lives easier, not harder.

The working masses don’t have leisure time, they’re too busy trying to survive or work multiple low wage jobs due to cover rent, childcare, car repairs, medical.

Folks who have so much leisure time to write long opinions here are among the “rich”.”

I really have to wonder how much time you have spent amongst any actual poor people, to make a statement like this. Most of the poor I have known are on public assistance and have nothing but free time. One of my stepbrothers is diagnosed manic-depressive and gets $770/mo to do nothing but take his meds and sit around and watch television. Another one has been in and out of prison more times than I can keep track of and every time I visit him, he is usually watching television, often stoned. I have no idea how he makes his small amount of money, but whatever it is, it does not take much of his time. I won't even start to go down the list of stepsisters, most of whom have children that have kept them on public assistance.

Maybe you are talking about the "working poor" and the illegal immigrants who seem to do most of the really hard work in California. I don't doubt that they have long days and not much free time, especially if they have children.

they found in one national survey that the working poor had the worst sex lives of all, due to their long working days.

DS

The fact that you, of all people, are suggesting that physical stress is equivalent or parallel to psychological stress, I take as either (a) you're just being sarcastic at a level too clever or (b) you're applying some kind of post-modernism to something you know better than to.

The very fact you are citing psychological and emotional stresses -- which no one denies by the way -- yet failing to acknowledge the fact that these are subordinate to physical stresses which have largely been removed for more now than ever before in human history is just dishonest. And you know it. Even those beloved, isolated indigenous tribes you love to refer to were under orders of magnitude more physical stressors than a Western industrialized welfare-recipient is today.

For example, most of their children died either during the process of being born or within 5 years thereafter.

Seriously, if you cannot at least acknowledge the advances of modernity then why bother arguing neo luddism on the Internet at all?

Who's arguing for neo-Luddism? I already typed 2 clever replies to this, but there were 2 power failures that wiped them out each time due to instabilities here after rain... and my UPS overloaded from trying to support a PC and a Mac at the same time... I'm reflecting on typing a 3rd brilliant exposition, this time with the Mac disconnected...

Jimbo,

Most of the poor I have known . . . have nothing but free time.

I'm with you on this one.

I have also had contact with poor people in a rich society, once through disabled sport and once through a nephew's ex-partner who basically used him as a sperm donor so she could get her own flat/pension.

Since the child of this pairing was at the time my mother's only great-grandchild, I was prevailed upon to visit from time to time even after they split up. During these visits I got to know several of the residents of the adjoining flats, all of whom were in similar circumstances.

I once worked out that these single parents could have lived quite comfortably on their benefits, given that they had free healthcare and that they were renting a 2/1 flat for a fixed 25% of their official income. (Plain, I grant you, and not particularly well maintained, but structurally sound and perfectly adequate for a parent and child. Perfectly adequate for a couple and child, in fact.)

However the unfortunate reality is that most of them actually lived in absolute squalor. A lot of this had to do with their lack of life skills, but some was caused by group dynamics and some by excessive tobacco/alcohol/illegal drug consumption which I suspect was partly due to sheer boredom.

Oh, and these people were continuously getting credit card offers.

Infant mortality may well have been higher in societies other than H-G for most of the history of 'civilisation', due to overcrowding and association, and the movement of diseases from domesticated animals to humans (such as 'flu, smallpox and measles. You could even argue bubonic plague needed large populations, trade routes and urbanised settlements where rats could breed and spread disease) especially as domesticated animals used to co-habitate within the same structures as their owners for safe-keeping and convenience. HIV is believed to have spread from baboons due to certain ritual practices. Then there are the human practices that led to the spread of BSE (from feeding animals to animals, not from soil prions) and bird flu.

The other 'diseases of civilisation' include obesity, diabetes and heart disease from eating a surplus of refined carbohydrates, sugars and fats.

People in HG societies tend to be fairly lean and rangy throughought the lifespan, on the other hand, but their physical stresses are no more than an active, healthy person who plays some sport would do in our society. What's the difference between a fit young man throwing a spear or playing squash? Modernity has created a sedentary population who need to artificially construct exercise opportunities and create substitute hunting and gathering activities to avoid disease and overweight. You could read ethnographies of any simple society such as in Africa, Australia, Papua New Guinea or North or South America to see how people live/d in these societies.

There is no doubt that post-HG societies were all about controlling the environment and planning for the future, which allowed for burgeoning populations to be free from the vagaries of the natural environment to a greater extent than previously -- better shelter, warmth, and better control over an animal and plant food supply. A surplus and stability allowed for creativity and further invention.

However, it was only with the hygiene movement of the early 20th century and the development of 'germ theory' that infant mortality really started to come down. My own area of Chippendale here and other areas in inner Sydney were hotbeds of typhoid fever right up until the 20th century. Malnutrition was common right up until after the 2nd world war in the UK. Improved hygiene and nutrition are responsible for more lives being saved than most medical breakthroughs, in potentially fit and healthy populations. Medical science itself has really only come into its own in the last century. Antibiotics are only about 70 years old.

Child labour under terrible conditions was only banned in England in 1867.

So the current affluence and comfort we possess has really been about the last 50 years out of an experiment that has lasted 10,000 years.

You could look at the light-hearted series The Worst Jobs in History to see just how bad things were for people right up through and including Victorian history. Before the invention of the internal combustion engine and hydraulic equipment, train line routes were dug and laid by hand by teams of navvies doing back-breaking work, and one person died for every mile of track laid.

All these observations are fairly incidental, though, as I have perfectly well acknowledged the advances of modernity but you also have to look at the price that has been paid in new disease types, pollution, psychological stress, and so on, and the price that has been paid over generations in getting to where we are. There is also the question of a viable global population size and the sustainability of our current practices with regard to world energy resources, over-foresting and harvesting of resources, and even the creation of greenhouse gases like methane, CFCs and CO2.

The overarching and very simple point I was trying to make though is that there are good features of other societal types that have been somewhat lost under modernity. Marx pointed to Australian Aboriginal societies as a form of 'primitive communism' in his writings, for instance. Marx himself was writing in reaction to the early conditions of the early Industrial Revolution -- the satanic mills and sweatshops, etc, which we've conveniently forgotten all about in late modernity.

Don't Dismiss Our Dismal Savings Rate
By BOB MCTEER

The main fallacy in monetary theory and policy is the confusion of money and wealth. Money is wealth from the individual perspective since individuals can usually exchange it for goods and services. Money -- and financial assets easily converted to money -- may not be wealth for society as a whole if the production of goods and services has not kept pace with claims on it. Early spenders may have some success, but inflation will dilute the buying power of others. The bottom line is that real wealth has to be produced; it can't be printed.
...
A parallel is the farmer who hopes for a good crop year. But, if all or most farmers have a good crop year, the decline in prices may more than offset higher yields. What our farmer really needs is a good crop in a bad crop year. Then he could look for a popular restaurant that isn't crowded.

I realize this is not very sophisticated stuff, but it's on my mind because of the many talking heads I hear dismissing the adverse consequences of our low personal saving rate by saying it ignores capital gains as a source of spending. "Properly measured," they say, saving is not a problem.

Again, that may be true for the few, but not for the many. A penny saved may be a penny earned, but it matters whether it was earned by producing more or by a rise in the price of existing financial assets. A stock or housing market boom creates apparent wealth in the form of capital gains, but trying to convert it to real wealth en masse can make it disappear.
...
The problem goes beyond government entitlement programs. Consider the baby boomers whose IRAs, 401(k)s and personal investments helped drive the stock market to record highs. What happens when cash-in time comes? There will be a mountain of paper claims on output, but will there be an equally tall mountain of output?

The great French economist, Frederic Bastiat, said that "The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else." It's time to get real about producing real wealth, not just financial claims on wealth.

DS asks: where is the age of leisure and the 2-day working week we were promised?

Who promised us a 2-day working week?

People in HG societies tend to be fairly lean and rangy throughought the lifespan, on the other hand, but their physical stresses are no more than an active, healthy person who plays some sport would do in our society. What’s the difference between a fit young man throwing a spear or playing squash?

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.

You could read ethnographies of any simple society such as in Africa, Australia, Papua New Guinea or North or South America to see how people live/d in these societies.

I'm dreadfully curious. If agrarian societies didn't provide access to modern healthcare, shelter, nutrition, safety and stability to modern H-G cultures, what would their life expectancy be? You can debate quality of life, but Randy is right about physical exertion vs. psychological stress. The simple life sounds great until your lifespan is 50 at the outside.

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.

ozajh and Jimbo:

Wasn't talking about the sloths who squandered their opportunity entitlements in favor of government assistance entitlements. I have relatives like that too.

There's a whole world of working poor, too. I think Jimbo at least acknowledged the possibility of it.

If you don't take the time to get to know the person who cleans the toilets in the office building you work in, or the tired 50-ish matriarch who asks you if you'd like fries with that, then you can read "Nickel and Dimed in America".