[Retric]

BS. Per person GDP did not grow 30+ fold.

A hunter gather lifestyle from 10,000 years ago takes ~0.5-5$/day in food assuming everything else [ed: produced 10,000 years ago] has zero value. US Per capita GDP = ~125$ / day. Actual growth per year is on the order of 0.04% / year

PS: Remember meat more than 1$/lb. For much of human history per capita GDP by todays measurements was actually dropping.

[jp555]

> assuming everything else has zero value

Ah, so if you ignore almost everything, you have a point. Like, for example 99% of the people on the planet. Because there is no way a hunter-gatherer system could support our population.

Not to mention I for one think not dying of the common cold has quite a lot of value.

[Retric]

No, I am dramatically understating the value of the average person from 10,000 years ago not the other way around.

Child care for example has actual value which is part of current US GDP. A bow, tent, or clothing constructed using methods from 10,000 years ago has real world value today. But, I am calling all that 0 and just looking at food.

Also, this is per capita GDP, having more people does not mean peoples standards of living automatically increases.

PS: The common cold was not an issue back then as the population was to low to spread it around. In fact a large chunk of diseases only showed up as population density increased.

[adamc]

True of communicable diseases to a great extent, but not, for example, diseases of aging or birth defects.

[VLM]

WRT your PS about meat prices, I did some engineering back of envelope estimates with a million grams per ton and a ton of post-green revolution rice costing about three hundred bucks in 1990 (or so google says) and about 4 calories per gram of carbs, the world GDP "always" being $300 per person before the industrial revolution, and ended up with something around ten thousand calories of rice per person per day. Some googling indicates the green revolution plus industrialization plus factory farms has temporarily quintupled grain production per acre, well, absolute best case anyway. So assuming world productivity was solely focused on rice ag (cheapest calories there is... right?) then every human on the planet consumed 2000 calories per day of rice and absolutely nothing else happened. That sounds very unlikely. I'm not entirely sure people can live long term off absolutely nothing but heavy manual labor and 2000 calories or less of rice per day, for vitamin and mineral deficiency reasons if nothing else.

Generally when you're doing data analysis and some textbook curve pops out, that's a very strong indication you've screwed up your data, not that you've actually discovered anything. Far more likely despite attempts at short term correction the value of a supposedly fixed standard 1990 international dollar inflated exponentially over the past century or so, on a long enough scale. Once that correction is made, the data could be re-run to gather actual, useful results. Or rather than using inflation adjusted counters, just pick a valuable commodity like gold. Supposedly an ounce of gold has represented a year of labor from the dawn of trade up to the invention of steam powered mine pumps. A graph vs gold price might be useful. Or a hybrid of gold/oil for more recent stats.

[beefman]

Parent comment says GDP, not GDP per person.