4 ms·

No, we are not talking about "survival". If an alien were to observe that of the 3 tribes one spent 50 hrs working, the other 30 hrs and 20 hrs respectively, he

by zohebv 16y ago

No, we are not talking about "survival". If an alien were to observe that of the 3 tribes one spent 50 hrs working, the other 30 hrs and 20 hrs respectively, he will conclude that it is the tribes working 50 hrs that have a tough time surviving. The other tribes weren't hanging on for dear life, otherwise they would have worked much harder. They have plenty to eat and hence plenty of leisure time. Also, I dispute that buying lots of junk is unnecessary for a decent life in industrialized societies. We are socially competitive animals and if someone were to just focus on "survival", he would end up being a social outcast pretty soon and his mating prospects would have shrunk considerably. Being lazy and having low-income is a pejorative description in industrialized tribes. But Western society has such huge income gaps that no matter where you are in the income spectrum, it looks like there are thousands of people above you living the good life, right up until Bill Gates. In contrast, in a hunter-gatherer society, the most accomplished guy might be the chief and the competitive pressure on each tribal is much lower. Hence, the possibility of a 20 hour work week. TLDR, I dispute that technological advances will reduce work. As long as there are huge income gaps, we will have people relentlessly working long hours every day to obtain a better position in society. It is an instinct built into our genes.

nostrademons 16y ago
Grandparent's point is that you haven't held everything constant. Hunter-gatherer types don't have a home. If you are willing to go homeless, you can live for $15-20/day in most cities. That's less than 20-30 hours of work/week in most places. Hunter-gatherer bands also have a total mating pool measured in the half dozens. If you restrict yourself to fellow homeless people, you're likely to meet a similar number of women, all of whom have roughly the same social standing. The problem is not that there are no mates available, it's that there are no mates that you want available. Your point that people tend to measure themselves relative to people around them is true but orthogonal. If you hold living standards constant, you can achieve them with a lot less work today than you could at hunter-gatherer tech levels. It's only because living standards are not constant that people have a tough time earning a living.
- olalonde 16y ago
  Actually, in Quebec (not sure about other provinces and the US), you can live comfortably (if we compare with hunter-gatherers) without working at all through welfare.
  - zach 16y ago
    And then you can spend far more than twenty hours a week hunting and gathering in online games. Plus ça change...
- mitcheme 16y ago
  It would be so much more useful to hold happiness or quality of life constant instead. I really don't think it's a meaningful improvement to have ten times as much material wealth if that goes along with a fifteenfold increase in the amount of material wealth you think you "need", especially if that goes along with increased workload, stress, responsibility, etc., and decreased leisure time, time with family, health, etc. To most westerners it seems obvious that a nice house and your pick of hundreds of mates will make you happier, but that's just because it's how we grew up. If we packed it up and tried to go hunter-gatherer tomorrow, we would fail miserably and be miserable doing it -- but that's what exactly happens when hunter-gatherer societies and agricultural societies suddenly go western. Either way it takes several generations to adjust, so the fact that you wouldn't feel comfortable living as a hunter-gatherer, now that you've already been raised in this culture, doesn't have anything at all to do with which lifestyle is better. Even your "objective" measurement made a value judgment that meshes with industrial, not hunter-gatherer, societies. Of course an industrial society will do better by industrial standards. Being a hunter-gatherer born in a stable hunter-gatherer society is not at all the same as being a homeless person in the industrialized world. For the most part hunter-gatherers in a hunter-gatherer society aren't ostracized or looked down on by everyone they know, criminalized/shamed for living (finding "acceptable" opportunities to sleep, eat, piss, etc, are much more difficult for a homeless person), or surrounded by messages that a person's worth is measured by whether they own the right things. Being able to comfortably meet biological needs, having meaningful social connections, retaining dignity and self-respect -- these things mean a lot.'N!ai, the Story of a !Kung Woman' is an interesting documentary about a woman whose life took a dramatic turn for the worse after the introduction of western culture, even though she probably ended up being the richest person in her tribe. AFAICT more technology has nearly always led to us taking up different kinds of work to fill up that time, not more leisure. When modern household appliances were introduced, the result was higher standards for housekeeping. Women in the 70's spent slightly more time doing housework than women in the 20's did despite all the new "conveniences". Were houses in the 20's disgustingly filthy? No. Did the increase in cleanliness make society as a whole happier or better off? I doubt it. If anything, I suspect the obsession with cleanliness has just contributed to increased rates in allergies, weaker immune systems, etc. Technically, access to these appliances are considered a standard of living increase, but all it really did was make us pickier about what an "acceptable" living is. Now people who can't afford those conveniences have to work harder to keep up or be shamed by others for having a "dirty" house. People comparing themselves to others is very relevant, because those comparisons have a huge impact on happiness and quality of life, and it is generally assumed that a higher standard of living correlates with those things. (If you disagree, can you explain why having a higher standard of living is a good thing? Why is it rising? Why do we even care about it?) If that's a wrong assumption it needs to be challenged because from what I can tell it's basically a cornerstone of western civilization right now.

by zohebv 16y ago

nostrademons 16y ago

Grandparent's point is that you haven't held everything constant. Hunter-gatherer types don't have a home. If you are willing to go homeless, you can live for $15-20/day in most cities. That's less than 20-30 hours of work/week in most places. Hunter-gatherer bands also have a total mating pool measured in the half dozens. If you restrict yourself to fellow homeless people, you're likely to meet a similar number of women, all of whom have roughly the same social standing. The problem is not that there are no mates available, it's that there are no mates that you want available. Your point that people tend to measure themselves relative to people around them is true but orthogonal. If you hold living standards constant, you can achieve them with a lot less work today than you could at hunter-gatherer tech levels. It's only because living standards are not constant that people have a tough time earning a living.

olalonde 16y ago
Actually, in Quebec (not sure about other provinces and the US), you can live comfortably (if we compare with hunter-gatherers) without working at all through welfare.
- zach 16y ago
  And then you can spend far more than twenty hours a week hunting and gathering in online games. Plus ça change...
mitcheme 16y ago
It would be so much more useful to hold happiness or quality of life constant instead. I really don't think it's a meaningful improvement to have ten times as much material wealth if that goes along with a fifteenfold increase in the amount of material wealth you think you "need", especially if that goes along with increased workload, stress, responsibility, etc., and decreased leisure time, time with family, health, etc. To most westerners it seems obvious that a nice house and your pick of hundreds of mates will make you happier, but that's just because it's how we grew up. If we packed it up and tried to go hunter-gatherer tomorrow, we would fail miserably and be miserable doing it -- but that's what exactly happens when hunter-gatherer societies and agricultural societies suddenly go western. Either way it takes several generations to adjust, so the fact that you wouldn't feel comfortable living as a hunter-gatherer, now that you've already been raised in this culture, doesn't have anything at all to do with which lifestyle is better. Even your "objective" measurement made a value judgment that meshes with industrial, not hunter-gatherer, societies. Of course an industrial society will do better by industrial standards. Being a hunter-gatherer born in a stable hunter-gatherer society is not at all the same as being a homeless person in the industrialized world. For the most part hunter-gatherers in a hunter-gatherer society aren't ostracized or looked down on by everyone they know, criminalized/shamed for living (finding "acceptable" opportunities to sleep, eat, piss, etc, are much more difficult for a homeless person), or surrounded by messages that a person's worth is measured by whether they own the right things. Being able to comfortably meet biological needs, having meaningful social connections, retaining dignity and self-respect -- these things mean a lot.'N!ai, the Story of a !Kung Woman' is an interesting documentary about a woman whose life took a dramatic turn for the worse after the introduction of western culture, even though she probably ended up being the richest person in her tribe. AFAICT more technology has nearly always led to us taking up different kinds of work to fill up that time, not more leisure. When modern household appliances were introduced, the result was higher standards for housekeeping. Women in the 70's spent slightly more time doing housework than women in the 20's did despite all the new "conveniences". Were houses in the 20's disgustingly filthy? No. Did the increase in cleanliness make society as a whole happier or better off? I doubt it. If anything, I suspect the obsession with cleanliness has just contributed to increased rates in allergies, weaker immune systems, etc. Technically, access to these appliances are considered a standard of living increase, but all it really did was make us pickier about what an "acceptable" living is. Now people who can't afford those conveniences have to work harder to keep up or be shamed by others for having a "dirty" house. People comparing themselves to others is very relevant, because those comparisons have a huge impact on happiness and quality of life, and it is generally assumed that a higher standard of living correlates with those things. (If you disagree, can you explain why having a higher standard of living is a good thing? Why is it rising? Why do we even care about it?) If that's a wrong assumption it needs to be challenged because from what I can tell it's basically a cornerstone of western civilization right now.