[tr3ndyBEAR]

In 1966, anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, in the famous "Man the Hunter" symposium coined the term "the original affluent" society which he ascribed to the hunter-gatherer peoples. His argument largely rested on studies conducted on the !Kung people of Southern Africa which found that the !Kung only needed to work about 15-20 hours a week to meet their daily needs. When compared to the 40 hour workweeks that (some) industrial nations enjoy (and have fought to achieve), they do indeed seem affluent

However, a mistake in this analysis was quickly pointed out. That 15-20 hours figure only represented the time necessary to gather food. It ignored the time necessary to gather firewood, take care of children, prepare food, etc.

So Sahlins went back to his analysis and took those factors into account. When taking those factors into account, the !Kung (and most San peoples that have maintained their traditional foraging societies) worked 40 hours to meet all their basic needs. However, when looking at the time spent by Western peoples outside of formal work doing informal work (laundry, cooking, etc), their workweek shot up to 80 hours.

In the end, the San (and likely most foraging societies) worked half as much as us, enjoyed great health [1], and even had better food security [2] (contrary to common assumptions about foraging societies).

The questions this opens up, in my view, are: 1) If our society is so much more efficient now than societies were before civilization, why is it that we have to work so much harder to meet our basic needs? 2) If it's not the majority benefiting from this increased efficiency, who is? 3) Is our industrial society more efficient after all?

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30511505 [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3917328/

edit: 15-20 hours a week not a day

[McWobbleston]

In regards to number 2, it's those who do not need to sell their labor and instead purchase others. There is a power imbalance in the negotiation between those who sell labor and those who employ where those who sell their labor typically need employment to survive, but employers can survive without working. Because of this, those who employ are more likely able to set the terms where an employee produces more value than they personally need at a wage lower than the true value of the work. On a macro scale this means most of us are pushed towards working more than necessary at a lower pay while others accumulate the surplus

[JamesBarney]

1) You can 100% meet your basic needs(in the !Kung sense) working 15-20 hrs/week.

I imagine most Kung live with their family, don't have healthcare, no climate control, walk everywhere. Clothing, food and a place to live is not that expensive. A part time service job would give you about ~$700/month, which is more than enough to meet these basic needs. You could rent a room for as little as $200, live on $35/week on food, and easily be clothed $20/month.

2) We benefit by having more stuff, not working less.

3) It is definitely more efficient. You couldn't support anywhere near the world's population based on !Kung style hunting/gathering.

[ClumsyPilot]

You are missing the forest for the trees, they were not surviving, they were living.

Do those $35 a week get you a healthy meal? Or will you eventually develop malnutrition? I live in a mid-sized city in UK, and back in my student days I rented a room for ~$300. It had rats, mould, and a leaking roof.

Those people raised a family while working 20 hrs/week. Are you going to feed and house your kids with that part-time service job?

Maybe you can, but that's not the point. After 4,000 of progress, the difference should be so vast, that the two experiences are totally incomparable.

Since those barbaric days productivity went up over 10,000%, I should be able to survive working 2 hours a year!

[jlawson]

I think you're not really appreciating what a tribal lifestyle is actually like.

Live in a rural area.

No education except what you can do yourself. No travel. No books. No movies. No music except what you can make yourself. No shoes.

No food that didn't grow within a few miles of you. You will eat the same 12 things your whole life. No spices, no seasoning, probably no salt either. No cooking oil.

No refrigerator or freezer.

Healthcare is whatever you can assemble at home. Dental problem? Sharp rock. Cancer? Goodbye. Infection? Goodbye. Same for your kids. Be sure to have extras to replace the ones who die.

Wash your clothes by hand, if at all.

No shampoo. No soap.

No bed. You sleep on skins.

No AC, ever. No thermostat. No heat but fire and body heat.

No birth control.

No retirement - work until death.

No police. Someone threatening you? I hope your family can back you up. You will be called upon to do violence. There will be no morality in it, only advantage.

---

You could easily - easily! - work 15 hours a week and live at this consumption level (in fact, far beyond). And, eating better than a !Kung would be extremely simple on $5 per day.

[ClumsyPilot]

You are missing my point again - even a medieval peasant had a bed, shoes, etc.

How much has the productivity improved since then? 3,000%? I should be able to survive working 2 hours a week.

Suppose I forgo everything invented since then, even the ac you are finding comically important, it's still impossible.

Of course medicine, a fridge and soap are important, but that's not where my income is going.

[tr3ndyBEAR]

This shows a really deep misunderstanding of tribal lifestyles.

> Live in a rural area.

The only reason this might be true is because colonizers killed off or enslaved all the people who lived in places you can grow food. That's why the only places the San maintain their ways of life are mountains and deserts. But originally they lived in all sorts of ecosystems

> No education except what you can do yourself.

They have education... they educate themselves and even if not they can still send their kids to western schools. Also, why wouldn't they be able to get books?

> No travel

A foraging society travels every day. Native americans traveled great distances between seasons. During winter and fall many peoples lived in large urban centers (cities). Some of these cities were larger than European cities. People got around and you got to experience much more cultural diversity than the average industrial citizen does today

> No music except what you can make yourself

indigenous music... exists. And its often a central part of their culture. Music used to be more plentiful than it is today. In large part because they had so much more leisure time

> No shoes.

I don't know where you got this one from

> No food that didn't grow within a few miles of you

Like I said earlier, indigenous peoples absolutely did interact with other peoples and trade has always been a thing even before agriculture. Many peoples had large portions of their calories coming from trading

> You will eat the same 12 things your whole life. No spices, no seasoning, probably no salt either. No cooking oil.

Indigenous peoples had a much more varied diet than modern western people do. They knew hundreds of plants, fish, birds, reptiles, and even bugs. Part of the reason they enjoy better food security than their industrial counterparts is because of how varied their diet is. If their hunt is unsuccessful, if the sweet potato harvest was small this season, if their staple foods burned down, etc then they had a ton of backup foods and things we consider delicacies today. From acorn flour to lizards to even ants. And they also used spices extensively in tropical areas because it keeps food better preserved and safer

> Healthcare is whatever you can assemble at home. Dental problem? Sharp rock. Cancer? Goodbye. Infection? Goodbye. Same for your kids. Be sure to have extras to replace the ones who die.

I don't know where to start with this one. For one, hunter gatherers enjoyed much better dental health than their agricultural counterparts [1]. They also had many medicines and techniques for oral health that modern science is still learning from. For example the miswaks (a chewing stick) that's still widely used in Muslim parts of the world was found to be more effective than brushing your teeth [2] and has been recommended by the WHO.

> No shampoo. No soap.

No need! Your skins microbiome is essential to your health. Studies have found it to be really lacking diversity in Western populations compared to non-western populations. Two studies that censused populations of hunter gatherers both found zero cases of any level of acne [3]. One of 1200 Kitavans, and one of 115 Ache over 843 days. Both peoples across the globe from each other yet no instances of acne. This seems to be true for many of the skin diseases we face

Also it's not true that they had no soap. Indigenous peoples know which plants have saponins and other anti-microbial properties and use them as needed

> No bed. You sleep on skins.

lol

> No AC, ever. No thermostat. No heat but fire and body heat.

Precisely why hunter-gatherers are the ultimate eco-friendly society lol. But seriously tho, they constructed their shelters in ways that make a natural sort of AC system (the way that termites build their mounds and the way that modern western architects are trying to replicate). They have many other solutions to cold as well. Not to mention the human body adapts in a lot of ways to different climates (have you ever seen a Russian swim in a sub-zero lake?).

> No retirement - work until death.

Like I said, they work much less. In most societies the elders are well respected and play other important roles. As multiple studies have found, the biggest predictor of how long you'll live is your social network/community. Being able to grow old in a community of people you're extremely close with is something I wish our society still allowed us to do

> No police. Someone threatening you? I hope your family can back you up. You will be called upon to do violence. There will be no morality in it, only advantage.

This is a western bias of how, not only human nature, but nature itself works. Cooperation is a powerful force that is constant throughout nature. It is selected for in everything from slime molds to ants to naked mole rats. Darwin wasn't even a Darwinist. He recognized the importance that cooperation plays in evolution. The idea that competition is the driving force in evolution is one that runs deep in our evolutionary biology because for most of it's history, evolutionary biology in America was done by white Southern landowners. It wasn't until a Northerner got in that theories of group selection and kin selection started to be looked at. Now even game theory recognizes the importance of cooperation for survival

> You could easily - easily! - work 15 hours a week and live at this consumption level (in fact, far beyond). And, eating better than a !Kung would be extremely simple on $5 per day.

Good luck affording 100% organic, wild caught, no pesticides, etc food. Did you know that since 1914, the mineral content of our vegetables has decreased by over 90% [4]?

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2013/02/24/1726888... [2] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/000163500429398 [3] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamadermatology/fullarticle... [4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6163803/

[jlawson]

Wait so you think neolithic tribal people didn't live in rural areas? As in, you think they lived in cities?

I feel I need to cover the first point because it's so bonkers there's not much point going into the rest, which seem equally insane and/or reflexively contrarian.

I think you're picking nits and playing word games and pretending disagreement when there is none (i.e. only music you make yourself is what indigenous music is, when I say no travel I obviously mean in the modern sense; not in that you literally can't walk some distance, etc).

But in the end you're attacking all this because you're dedicated to a view of tribal life as pure and uncorrupted by modernity. This links to a secular-religious far left concept that human life is naturally free, full, rich, clean, and equal, and all bad things are caused by society. You can't even accept that there are bad aspects to it - it's the natural nirvana that's been lost. And you're dedicated to believing that heaven is possible because it fills a hole in your soul. You'd do better beliving in a religious heaven instead of a prehistoric one - both are nonsense but the religious version at least doesn't demand so many absurd beliefs about physical facts. In the end people like you do a lot of harm because you actually resist and attempt to reverse the advances that save people from their dismal, short lives without modern civilization. God forbid our society is ever taken over by a faction who believe that our society is the root of all evil.

[derp_dee_derp]

good points all around and I agree. lets get rid of all the technology we've developed as a species over the last few thousand years because its obvious that it has all been a big step backwards and life was better in the stone age.

[hnick]

> only needed to work about 15-20 hours a day to meet their daily needs

Just replying in case anyone misses it while skimming, that's meant to be 15-20 hours per week not per day.

[tr3ndyBEAR]

Thanks for catching that