3 ms·

I think you mean better than early North American settlers. Agriculture is quite old, and integral to the birth of Civilization. Not really clear what the dispa

I think you mean better than early North American settlers. Agriculture is quite old, and integral to the birth of Civilization. Not really clear what the disparity might have been at the onset, though it might have been a hybrid system. It seems that even some indigenous societies in the Americas experimented with agriculture. > You're ignoring the amount of stress and mental disorders skyrocketing in modern societies. That might say something about developments in technology, or wealth inequality - not so much society revolving around agriculture.

bmitc 5y ago
No, I meant all the way back to the birth of agriculture. See Against the Grain by James C. Scott.
- slothtrop 5y ago
  A bit skeptical since he wrote Seeing Like A State but I'll put it on my list.
  - bmitc 5y ago
    What were your issues with Seeing Like a State? I haven't read it myself yet, so I'm curious.
- UglyToad 5y ago
  To give a +1 here, I think Against the Grain makes a nice companion to Debt from what I assume are separate ends of the left-right spectrum within libertarianism, or at least I guess so from Against the Grain having a positive review from the Cato Institute on the cover. They both construct convincing narratives from looking at the history that deconstruct the "just so" stories of economists. From AtG you see how most of 'civilization' throughout history has been experienced by most people as slavery and warfare and living standards actually improved, or at least didn't become much worse, for many with things like the fall of Rome. Debt is fascinating because it shows just how new and novel the current inescapable logic of capitalism actually is. Adam Smith's fanciful notion of a fully formed civilization of shopkeepers who adopt coinage to streamline barter is shown to be complete nonsense and with it the foundations of much of "assumed" thought about how people and markets organise themselves.

bmitc 5y ago

No, I meant all the way back to the birth of agriculture. See Against the Grain by James C. Scott.

slothtrop 5y ago
A bit skeptical since he wrote Seeing Like A State but I'll put it on my list.
- bmitc 5y ago
  What were your issues with Seeing Like a State? I haven't read it myself yet, so I'm curious.
UglyToad 5y ago
To give a +1 here, I think Against the Grain makes a nice companion to Debt from what I assume are separate ends of the left-right spectrum within libertarianism, or at least I guess so from Against the Grain having a positive review from the Cato Institute on the cover. They both construct convincing narratives from looking at the history that deconstruct the "just so" stories of economists. From AtG you see how most of 'civilization' throughout history has been experienced by most people as slavery and warfare and living standards actually improved, or at least didn't become much worse, for many with things like the fall of Rome. Debt is fascinating because it shows just how new and novel the current inescapable logic of capitalism actually is. Adam Smith's fanciful notion of a fully formed civilization of shopkeepers who adopt coinage to streamline barter is shown to be complete nonsense and with it the foundations of much of "assumed" thought about how people and markets organise themselves.