A common mistake is to conflate hunter gatherer societies with the primitive agricultural societies that came after them. Hunter gatherers were happy, healthy,

A common mistake is to conflate hunter gatherer societies with the primitive agricultural societies that came after them. Hunter gatherers were happy, healthy, and relatively long lived[1]. Unfortunately, they faced very sharp resource constraints - if you travel around gathering nuts and berries you need a lot of land for a pretty small tribe. Still, it wasn't a bad life. But for whatever reason, some hunter gatherers developed the secret of agriculture. This changed everything - it was so phenomenally productive that for the first time there was a surplus. One person could produce enough food for himself and have some left over. This allowed the creation of an elite (priests, beauracrats, soldiers, scientists) who were not engaged in food production. Unfortunately, it came at a cost: A vastly shortly and unhappier life for pretty much everyone, but especially the non-elite. Let me reiterate: Being a peasant is just about the worst possible existence we have managed to come up with. Modern society has, more or less, only brought adult mortality back up to hunter gatherer levels. (Of course, it's done wonders for child mortality, which was pretty terrible under both hunter gatherer and primitive agriculture.) What the original post is pining for is a return to the hunter gatherer societies, without any specialization. Life expectancy would be MUCH higher than 30 in that scenario. Of course, there's probably only room on this planet for about 0.2% of the current population. Something tells me the 99.8% wouldn't be too happy about any attempts in that direction. :) [1]: Life expectancy data is hard to come by for obvious reasons, but it's seems that for modern hunter gatherers you're looking about 50 years. That's a little misleading, because only about 2/3rds of children made it to 15; of the 15 year olds about 4/5ths made it to 45; of the 45 year olds, mean remaining lifespan was around 20 years. In other words, if you survive childhood, you're likely to see, at least, your 60s, and you've got a decent chance of seeing 80. That's radically different than what we think primitive life was like, because we're thinking of privative agriculture, which was entirely different.