One theory is that hunting and gathering stopped because the human population exceeded what could be supported by mega fauna, and early peoples had no choice but to settle down and defend what resources they could gather.
It likely started with semi permanent settlements, simple fortifications that could be returned to year over year, and when it became too difficult to leave again, or when they found themselves unable to return to a location they were expecting to, they settled down permanently.
But you really can’t go out and hunt when you can’t leave. So they started to depend on agriculture, and what livestock they’d been able to keep with them.
Right. And then there’s the fact that agriculture is a trap in that once you adopt it you can never go back and anyone nearby who doesn’t adopt it as well will eventually be outcompeted and disappear as a people, or they will be driven into ever more remote and inhospitable environments. None of this requires anything like foresight or intention either.
I would argue the opposite; that semi-agricultural societies --pre-columbian California is a good example-- had no way of knowing where an increasing reliance on predictable harvests would eventually take them.
I find it so funny that these plastic and credit score are a problem since like 50 years but somehow farming and civilization would be responsible for it. Like capitalism is the only outcome for civilization. It’s scary how people are conditioned with this.
Some people believe technological advancement only has one single path. Innovation can only occur as a fixed formula where defined conditions must be met. For example, industrialization can only occur if coal and oil exists.
It’s a very arrogant stance which assumes we know everything about the nature of the universe and what is, is all there could ever be.
So if you spend months preparing a harvest, you’d be cool with someone turning up in the night and taking the crops after you’ve done all the hard work? After all the land wouldn’t being to you.
So do you think it’s fair for a group of people to raid a farm and pick what they haven’t contributed to growing as long as they take just enough to feed themselves, piggybacking off the work of the farmer? Why should the farmer agree to this?
Edit: rewrote the question to satisfy people who think asking questions about is somehow combative.
Sounds like you’re purposely twisting the person you’re responding to’s words to make them sound bad. It just ends up making you sound combative and doesnt further your arguement
Its not pertinent questions if you invent a scenario that the person you have questioned have not said they support. Do you think its fair to blame someone for something they did if a person put a loaded gun to their head and told them to do it? (See? My question has NOTHING to do with anything you’ve stated previously)
I invented a hypothetical scenario for a thought experiment yes. I don’t think it’s implausible as a scenario in a communal situation. If there is no private farmland property there is nothing to stop people just straight up taking things and abusing the goodwill of the farmer.
Except raiders by their VERY NATURE will raid regardless of whether the property is owned or not. Dude keeps up bringing up fairness as a key point to what he’s saying, and you keep inventing INHERENTLY UNFAIR scenarios that dont apply to what the person you are responding to is saying. Fairness = those who contribute more get more, those who contribute less get less
I’ve already admitted the word raid was the incorrect one. I was just questioning the idea that farmers should produce food for no compensation and that anybody should be free to work their land.
“raid” implies non-consent, so no, that’s not fair.
It’s also not fair for a farmer to find some prime farmland, build a fence around it and say no one else can touch it, and then keep everything it produces to himself, and then call everyone who wasn’t able to claim good land but still wants to eat a thief.
Why does he get rights to the land just because he said it’s his? That leads to feudalism.
“Civilization” is about finding balance to what’s fair.
It’s unfair for people to want something for nothing.
That extends to people wanting food, and also to the farmer claiming land.
Some arrangement where the farmer gets to keep his crops, but can’t exclude people from also working the land, with some sort of communal oversight to make sure the land is being worked well seems fair.
I agree the word raid was the wrong word to use there
They don’t just find land and build a fence around it though in the modern era, that’s extremely reductionist. They pay for the privilege to work the land. Society as a whole agree the land is his because of this.
How do you parse how much belongs to the farmer and how much belongs to the community? I would argue we already have an arrangement like that. Who oversees this and what do they get out of if?
Most importantly where is the incentive to maximise yield if people are just growing personal crops? What if you want to eat but don’t want to work the land?
You’re moving your goalposts at this point. The original point was literally about people claiming land in a primitive extraction system.
In the modern era people also don’t just walk up and demand bushels of barely from farmers, so ignoring the entirety of a comment to reply with how changing the context makes it irrelevant is just a bad faith discussion tactic.
Yes, a modern economic system is hard to develop inside of a single comment. I hope we can at least agree that feudalism is bad, despite it respecting the Lord’s property rights, and also that no one is okay with letting the Saxon horde take all our grain.
And, to jump straight to your questions about the modern day: I would propose a system where the vast majority of the engines of production would be worker owned, allowing them to select their own management as primary shareholders.
By merit of existing in society people would be entitled to food, shelter, medicine, a means to better themselves, and the basic dignites of modern life (clothing, the ability to have children, the ability to do more than sit in the floor and stare at the wall).
Beyond what’s needed to provide these basics, the excess value produced would be given to those that produced it in the form of “currency”, which can be exchanged for “goods” and “services”.
I’m aware that’s not how the modern world works,but evidently there are many in this thread who thinks that’s how it should work. I don’t think I’m engaging in bad faith whatsoever, I’m trying to actively address your points.
Why should workers own the means of production? What is incentivising them to even create the means of production without profit motive?
If workers own the means of production, what would stop them from deciding they’d rather sell said means to a capitalist for a profit?
Does every worker have an equal ownership? Does someone who has been working there for 10 years have the same rights as someone who is new? How do you decide this and who is overseeing this? What mechanisms exist to stop the primary shareholders from just assuming control and deciding to pay wages to people instead?
Who said anything about getting rid of profits? I directly mentioned that they would go to the workers. That’s what would give them incentive to do more than just live.
People go to work, people get paid, people spend their money on luxury goods like they do today. People are also entitled to the basics of life if they fall on hard times.
The capitalist can’t buy the means of production, because that’s not how ownership would work. He could get a job there, pay everyone to quit, and then as the only worker he would be entitled to everything that he made. Or he could convince the shareholders that he would be the best person to run the place, and become a worker that way.
Why should the Lord get to tell the serfs what to do, and take all their excess food just because he stabbed the old lord? Aren’t you in favor of the farmers getting to keep the food that they grew, without having to share with freeloaders?
I have no idea how the specifics of compensation would work. There are different models taken by different worker owned businesses, so there’s no single answer. Like with any business, the shareholders tend to elect a board to make most high level decisions, which includes ultimate responsibility for deciding compensation structure, which ownership levels for new workers would fall under.
This isn’t talking Soviet communism. This is basic democratic socialism with a hint of a spite towards the investor class who makes their living taking excess value from people who actually do stuff.
But the crucial thing is, people are already allowed to form co-operatives, there is nothing stopping you doing it for example. But outside of a select few niche industries they are generally less efficient and get outcompeted by traditional top down companies.
Being less efficient and being outcompeted are not synonymous.
We live in a system that overtly rewards and encourages people to organize things such that they’re rewarded for extracting excess value from workers and syphoning it to themselves and their investors.
Of course companies that do that are rewarded, because it’s designed that way.
That doesn’t make it more efficient, and it certainly doesn’t make it right.
Also, you’re failing to consider state owned enterprises, which is particularly popular in socialist democracies.
You’ve also entirely failed to explain why contributing money to an enterprise should entitle you to live off others work indefinitely.
Why does investment entitle people to live off said thing? That’s because there are agreements between the parties involved. If I want to start a business and need seed money I willingly enter a contract with investors just as they willingly risk their investment capital.
Of course they are more efficient, nobody sets up co operatives. If they were a more efficient way of running a business more people would do it.
You have an ideological disagreement with private ownership is how im interpretting your stance unless im misunderstanding. However. The idea of these communal structures society wide has died long ago because it simply can’t work inside the framework of how human beings are biologically wired. We are tribal primates, feudal hierarchical structures continue to be proven as inevitable despite all of our best efforts. Even with communism some of the earliest writings out of Russia one of the immediate concerns brought about by Russian revolutionaries was the concern that the class hierarchy in communism begins with the inception of the revolutionary class (those who are organizing and leading the revolution) and without fail thats what happened in every communist state. The revolutionaries took over and the first thing to happen is establishment of class hierarchy just like what happens in capitalist society. Collective agriculture in Russia and in China and in central america and in north korea lead to millions starved to death.
capitalism is a fucked up system. Rife with exploitation and amorality. But its also the system that has lifted the most people globally out of abject poverty than anything else in human history. It has raised life expectancies higher than ever before seen. It has lowered infant mortality by ridiculous levels. The number of people dying in war is lower than ever.
You have a government that in its constitution says right in the headline is “to provide for the general welfare” of its citizens. If you want to talk about more fair levels of distribution of essential resources then you utilize your government to negotiate buying food from the farmer and instituting a distribution mechanism for the people. Same reason why in my opinion I believe medicare needs to beable to negotiate with drug companies over prices. There needs to be a middle ground.
Yes, you have misinterpreted my position. I’m not opposed to private property. I love having stuff. Stuff is some of my favorite things to have, truth be told.
I’m opposed to hoarding, and I’m opposed to exploitation.
If the farmer wants to farm the land and sell the food, I’m all for that. If the land owner wants to have the farmer farm the land, then take all the money from the farmer selling it, keep most of it and pay the farmer just enough to get by, I think that instead the farmer should get that money.
When your contribution to the process is “I have stuff, so you should give me more”, then I question why you’re needed for the system to function.
Do you have anything to contribute? I’m trying to have an actual discussion about policy.
I think the profit incentive is important in maximising yield, do you have anything to add to this as to why I may be wrong? Or are you just going to signal me as an other so that others just switch off and get defensive.
I think it’s kind of ironic that some claim to want the world to see things from their point of view but then immediately attack those who question their views or try to understand. This just suggests to me you’re more about signalling to your in group than growth in ideas and discussion.
There is a lot to discuss. I’m discussing about why I think communal style living/economics don’t scale well. You think it does, there are reasons we both have our opinions and maybe we could actually learn from each other rather than you viewing me as someone to be defeated.
Of course discussion is needed. How else do you expand your mind and thoughts without discussing things? I don’t take your views as being inherently true in much the same way you don’t take mine, that’s healthy and normal.
Inequality, poverty, starvation, suffering, war… C’mon, man. These are issues that don’t need to exist, but do so in order to keep certain people in power. It’s all part of the machine.
You don’t need to discuss whether the sky appears blue because we know how sunlight interacts with our atmosphere. The same is true for this issue.
I would argue the primary cause of all of these problems is that we live in a world of finite resources. I think all of those things would still be problems under any political system we tried to implement. If there was plenty of resources for everyone we would just multiply until that wasn’t the case any more.
I reject the notion that we could rid the world of these things, the entirety of human history provides empirical evidence that backs me up on this. I think it’s fantastical to think we could rid the world of these things, all we can do is try to reduce the impact as best we can in the limited ways that we can as individuals and as a society.
We produce more than enough food to feed everyone. Even if you say something like logistics is an issue, we could still feed everyone in the developed nations at least, but we don’t. That’s a choice.
Climate change is much more of a practical issue than starvation and poverty. We already have solutions for starvation as I said.
We don’t have solutions for starvation at all on a global scale and we do try to feed everyone in developed nations that’s why countries have welfare. I agree the welfare safety net should be stronger generally, but I don’t think people starving to death is a widespread issue in developed nations. The homeless are much more likely to die due to lack of shelter or drug issues.
That’s what I am trying to tell you. There are no logistical problems we don’t have the capacity to solve, it’s simply not profitable to do so. Feeding the poor who can’t pay you isn’t profitable so it doesn’t get done.
Geopolitical, as in a combination of political, cultural and geographical.
I don’t think noting the problem is partially political is enough to say it’s easily solveable.
I think we’re coming at this from a different philosophy, you see politics as something that is easily changeable, I see it as a product of environmental and cultural positions. Changing the entire world’s politics is a nigh on impossible task.
You see geopolitics as a variable, I see it as a constraint on the actual variables.
You’re conflating ownership of the means of production with ownership of the fruits of one’s labor. The land itself can’t be owned, but things you have produced can be.
Well, utilizing a little thing called “context clues” you can see that I’m very clearly not talking about the person I’m responding to. I’m talking about the person claiming private ownership would be better.
My point, is the hypocrisy. But I get it, over half of America reads below a 6th grade level. Ya’ll need help getting there.
Yes, but as long as the “better” community doesn’t interfere and doesn’t try to take advantage of the less good communities I don’t see a problem. And of course doesn’t steal them their area and resources. Or does’t try to expand in ways that they accumulate more goods and resources than they need and can consume
Is this a genuine question wanting to find an answer? Only their consciousness can really prevent them or a “law enforcement” that we should first find a way to be uncorrupted. Is this realistic nowadays? Of course not, but we were talking hypothetically I think
What should happen is that the people who haven’t sowed the crops could do some work in order to earn access to the crops. Then we could create some kind of system whereby people get rewarded for the work they provide with an abstract token. We could call this money and people could exchange it for goods and services.
Yeah so what? The problem is the disproportionate accumulation of resources, goods or money. Which leads to accumulation of more of them, which lead to accumulation of power. There must be a limit on personal concentration of these. Anything above a level that is considered personal should belong to the community. Then there will be no incentive to make people capable of exploiting other people.
There would also be no incentive for anyone to produce anything beyond what they personally need, which would definitely lead to widespread food shortages. The more food that is produced at once the more efficient the labour is per crop, which is exactly why farms boomed in size after the industrial revolution and advent of farming machinery.
They incentive would be the prosperity of the community as long as people stop seeing each other competitive. Personal gain over dead bodies is only cancer.
So you think human beings should change their basic hardwired nature? Obviously humans have a tendency to care for the people closest to them over complete strangers. Humans always will come into conflicts of interest. What you’re asking for is for humanity to basically act perfectly all the time.
Sure, they developed this mentality when surviving could also be competitive. When there was not enough food for all and somehow surviving meant that it will not be for all. Now we prefer to destroy tones of food in favor of economy because if there is extra food this means that the price go down
Or those that are able to farm can do that and provide the food for those that can cook and provide that for those that can build who can provide that for those who can sew etc etc and all that can be shared with those who can’t do anything because at the end of the day a person’s worth should not be determined by what they can provide.
How do we ensure the correct amount of people are doing the correct amount of work? The good thing about markets is that when demand is high and supply is low it suddenly becomes lucrative to do that thing and it attracts people to doing said thing. It becomes self correcting. If you leave people to just do what they most want to do everybody will choose to do what they consider fun rather than what is needed.
Squirrels don’t have jobs. There isn’t some overly complex system in place to keep the raccoons doing a repetitive task to ensure that hollowed or trees are available to them. The spiders don’t own those trees and almost exclusively benefit from the raccoon’s labor.
Human society should absolutely collapse if it can’t exist without all the inequality and suffering.
We aren’t any of those animals though so I don’t see how it’s relevant to the discussion. We have evolved to form societies, and as such we need to work out the best frameworks given our fundamental human nature.
Other animals are in intense life and death competition with each other generally. There is not a single animal I’d rather be than a human. Non human wild animals have excruciatingly tough existences.
You’re right. We aren’t those animals; we’re apes. Still animals though. Animals form communities. They feel emotions. They have problem solving skills. They communicate. They also can deviate from observed behaviors when food and safety are readily available. You don’t think that’s relevant? Hmm… That says a lot.
There are plenty of humans who are in intense life or death competitions with each other. What you mean to say is that you’re happy being male, likely white and have McDonald’s within driving distance.
I think you’ve gone completely off the rails here. You said everyone should be free to just do the job they want. I pointed out that perhaps what people want to do wouldn’t match up with what actually needs to be done. You started banging on about squirrels rather than admit that what I said is actually probably the case.
I’ve never denied humans aren’t in intense competition with each other. I just don’t think it’s relevant to point to squirrels as an example of how humans should work, they clearly are very different from us.
Other animals are in intense life and death competition with each other generally.
Humans on the other hand, travel to the other half of the earth in order to kill other humans because they’re afraid that other humans will destroy their economy in the other side of the earth.
Talk to me more about the superiority of humans over animals. I’m listening
If you can’t provide anything at all please tell me what the value of their life is? They better provide some dam good conversations. Cuz if the people are starving? I’m not wasting food on people that can’t contribute anything.
Wealth inequality trends to increase over time. Without some system that actively redistributes wealth, eventually a few people own everything of value, and ordinary people are obligated to do whatever the lords want in order to gain access to the material resources they need to survive. That’s feudalism.
Can you name me one single time in human history that this wasn’t just the condition of the human race? Every time humans try to institute a wealth redistribution mechanism it becomes corrupted in less than 70 years and it just becomes feudalism again where the people are impoverished and starving and the only people living well are state officials lol
Small scale hunting and gathering societies are universally egalitarian because it’s impossible for any one person to accumulate significant wealth or to control resources. The way members of such societies gain influence therefore is through virtue and personal merit. This is the social system that we evolved to live in over hundreds of thousands of years, and it’s why we still haven’t figured out an equally amenable replacement in the mere ten thousand years since we adopted agriculture.
That said, for better or worse, agriculture is a trap, and once we adopted it, there was never any going back, so we have no choice but to keep trying with what we have.
Small-scale, local farming is where it’s at. Growing a bucket of potatoes on a balcony or helping out at a community garden are small but achievable steps to bring the food closer to us. In addition to sustainability, it promotes knowledge of how to produce our own food and reduces dependence on large-scale monoculture farming.
It’s nice to walk a few paces and pick up an ingredient for dinner with the satisfaction that you nurtured it. But mainly, I just don’t feel like going to the grocery store as much lol.
I do sure wish I had a balcony. I grew peppers and cherry tomatoes on my windowsill a few years in a row but the effort isn’t worth it for an apartment…
I feel ya! We work with what we can and if the space you have isn’t feasible, then that’s okay if it simply doesn’t work out.
That being said, here’s a few options to consider but do what you want. :)
One option is to grow some herbs since those tend to get pricey and they therefore offer the best bang for your buck. Plus they take up little space. Starting from seeds is the most cost effective (only a couple dollars for 1000s of seeds). Sow them in an empty plastic egg carton, nursery pots, or other upcycled plastic container. Then, you can germinate and grow under grow lights. Don’t bother with “grow light” marketed ones. Just the brightest, whitest generic LED bulb will do. If you run it all day, it’ll only cost a couple cents per month. Then, you can harvest fresh herbs year-round! Lamps can be found for cheap and sometimes free on Facebook marketplace.
Another option is finding a community garden in your area.
I think most of the things you say are true, but small local farming isn’t going to solve world hunger. The bigger a farm gets the more efficient it can operate. The progress we made as a species boils down to how much more efficient we can do stuff.
For sure! Industrial-scale farming has been integral to the population growth of our modern society. It doesn’t hurt to alleviate a small amount of pressure from those systems at a local scale in a sustainable way. I mainly just find it fun to grow a few veggies here and there and thought others may be interested. :)
Absolutely, I planted some tomatoes and very spicy peppers. All of them failed (planted in the wrong month I guess). Definitely a learning experience and definitely something I’ll try next summer.
I really hope the plants survive the winter, but I might have to start from seed again
Industrial production of food is not the problem. Capitalism is.
I mean, good for you if you want to play in a garden with plants, but I don’t want to do that. And this kind of production is not enough to feed everyone.
Nobody is claiming an issue with large-scale food production, or that small, local gardens will feed everyone. Also, nobody is telling you what to do.
Rather, that there are benefits to growing even a little bit of your own food should you choose to do so. There’s no need to talk down and I hope you’re alright, because that’s a lotta strawmen.
And that’s ok! Nobody expects to live off of a small garden, nor is it feasible for everybody to grow everything they eat.
It provides many benefits already, such as being a fulfilling activity as you said. It also cuts down on food waste since you can harvest when you eat it and leave it on the plant for a bit longer otherwise. It also reduces trips to the grocery store and reduces emissions of importing food over long distances. Finally, it’s much cheaper if you grow from seed and upcycle plastic containers for planting. Especially if you grow expensive crops like fresh herbs.
Yeah more ad hominem attacks. That’s a really good way to convince someone you’re correct, getting angry and lashing out for the crime of asking questions and trying to foster an open discussion.
Look, you’re acting under the impression that I’m trying to convince you of something when I know you’re not capable of having your opinion changed because you’re sure you’re right. The Internet is full of people like you. You read an article somewhere or mirror others like you who talk about the proper ways to argue, again with the goal of defending your awful takes instead of entertaining learning new info, but the truth is you just like to argue.
Of course I think my current opinions are correct, I wouldn’t hold them otherwise. That doesn’t mean I’m incapable of changing my mind through persuasive argument. Aren’t you also trying to defend your worldview? It’s an excellent tactic for trying to refine to yourself what you actually believe putting your views out there for public scrutiny.
There’s a difference between working for your own and your communities good and working for someone else while not being allowed to keep your (fair share of) product/profit.
That’s not how farming started though. They started farming so that they can feed themselves and their community. It eventually devolved into that, but it’s not how it started.
Early farming would have been communally owned land. But hunter gatherer life was not remotely as relaxed as dudes on yhe Internet would make it seem
I mean an-prim is like the dumbest ideology ever unless you actually think 50+% infant mortality and everyone who needs glasses being unable to survive is cool.
I think both of you are not considering two major aspects:
Farming can feed more people on a given fertile area than hunting and gathering can.
Farming is area exclusive, e.g. there is a set amount of people farming in one area and considering this area to be theirs, excluding everyone else from usage.
It is very much possible, that in terms of providing food for the existing population both are equally viable. But with farming you could create larger more densely packed populations, which in turn provided means to exclude others by force. So while hunting and gathering was not necessarily a bad way of life, it did not allow for imperialism and was subsequently diminished by the imperialists.
And they existed about 2000-1000 years ago. Humans started settling and farming as far back as 10.000-12.000 years ago.
Of course by then populations have increased tremendously. But in the spirit of the meme that probably wasn’t the best overall course of action, was it?
We can ignore all the other nomadic tribes doing just as much evil shit as city dwellers throughout history the moment they have the opportunity and means, sure.
Several mass extinctions have been caused by evolution creating a lifeform that is too successful. The difference between humans and them is that we can recognize we are the problem and consciously adapt.
Some of us, anyways.
Regardless, that adaptation won’t be by abandoning agriculture.
So while hunting and gathering was not necessarily a bad way of life, it did not allow for imperialism and was subsequently diminished by the imperialists.
Have you seen nowadays how they fish? They destroy whole huge areas leaving no fish behind. This is a type of imperialism. The problem is capitalism in its nature
And for that kind of fishing you need large vessels, built in stationary warfts, using stationary ports. The materials are made in stationary complex apparatusses to extract and shape metals from ore and the ore is mined in stationary mines.
All of this is only possible as a result of settling
Sure. So your idea is that people should be mandated to travel and change places every X years? Or what? I don’t get it.
Isn’t the problem the disproportionate accumulation of goods, resources and money? AKA capitalism? I mean theoretically, if you restrict these, you can also settle in one place without taking advantage and destroying everything around it.
The thesis was that people settled because it was superior in terms of supplying the population back then. All i was saying is that at the time that mustnt have been the case. It was more effective in the capitlaist/imperialist/expansionist mindset that is fucking is over now.
Of course with the current 8 billion people living on earth a nomadic lifestyle is not viable. But that is a very different question from the question if it was viable 10.000 years ago, when there were maybe a few hundred thousand to a few million humans on earthin total.
Hunting and gathering wasn’t peace and love. There were wars and resources access problems already. Farming is simply much more efficient. Hunting can only feed people until you reach the natural reproduction of the animals. Same for gathering and plants. Domestication and farming is the process of increasing the volume of food you can have access too. Thus you can feed more people more reliably and with less space.
Human population on earth is directly linked to food access.
I totally agree. Thats why i made the argument “for an existing population”. In order to support a growing population changing to farming was the right choice. But not all populations had the ambition or necessity to grow, as we see with many indigenous people that survived quite well until being met with expanding settler societies.
So hunting and gathering wasnt necessarily an inferior lifestyle in terms of running a stable society. Qnd in the long haul it is very much possible that humanities growth leads to its downfall so severely, that a nomadic lifestyle will reemerge as it tends to be more environmentally sustainable.
We have more food than we know what to do with and people are still starving. Growing your own food provides a reward someone like you not only can’t experience, but if you did you wouldn’t be able to understand it.
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