| > Here's some robustness for you: our ancestors have been depending on their respective families since humans were a species It's apples-to-oranges to compare a biological definition of robustness at the species level over eons to the definition we use to evaluate the current condition of people in modern societies. They are completely different metrics, operating over different timescales, and measuring totally different phenomena. Your usage measures the survival of humans as a species on biological time scales. The version of robustness that is relevant to the article is the chance of destitution or suffering faced by the typical member of a modern society, given modern society's standards for measuring those. Wild animal species experience extremely high mortality rates compared to humans, due to a number of factors, including predation, disease, displacement, and environmental changes. The whole experiment of human "civilization", from animal domestication, to agriculture, to the development of technology and the societal structures needed to support all of those, has been about protecting us from the risks nature poses to our existence. > Whereas the oldest extant government are only several hundred years old. And many aren't even as old as my grandparents. Whether it's an extant government is irrelevant. Governments come and go, but their function doesn't remain unfulfilled for long. We know that governments of some kind or another have existed since at least 3000BC, and importantly, that these governments had mechanisms for redistribution of their society's productivity (regardless of the direction of that redistribution). EDIT: fixed the fallacy name |