4 ms·

The whole idea of a state of nature being "nasty, brutish and short" has long been debunked by many anthropologists. The original affluence theory derived from

• Turing_Machine 10y ago
  "asserts that early man worked like 15-20 hrs a week." I'm pretty sure you could afford a bare subsistence level diet today, with no heat, running water, electricity, modern medical care, etc. (i.e, a !Kung-level lifestyle) by working less than 15 hours per week. And you wouldn't have to put up with Guinea worms, either. Let's see... rice costs about $1.00/pound, and has about 600 calories per pound. Let's be really generous and say 3,000 calories per day. So $5/day for raw calories. Add in $0.89/head for iceberg lettuce (for fiber), $3.00 for a chicken breast (protein) and a few cents for a multivitamin pill and you're looking at around $9.00/day. Maybe an hour and a half at minimum wage, or roughly 10 hours per week. Would this be a healthy diet? No. Would it be an enjoyable diet? No. But you could survive on it for quite a long time.