Farming fed more people.
More people = more warriors.
So the hunter-gatherers were conquered by the farmers.
Farming was the nuclear bomb of the bronze age.
Either you had it, or you were ruled by those who did.Not Bronze Age, late Neolithic age.
And then they killed 95% of men.
Depends on the area, really.
I suggest you read The Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow. Suffice to say, the actual history of the invention of farming was anything but this nuclear explosion type event. This model was created as a hypothetical, scholars trying to imagine how it actually happened. The real archaeological and ethnographic record paints a very, very different picture.
And penicillin. I’ll gladly take the microplastics and credit scores if that’s the price to pay.
Modern dental care isn’t half bad either
Fun fact, the take up of agriculture actually made people’s oral getting significantly worse than that of hunter/gatherers.
My oral is on point, pal.
Idk I find it pretty barbaric we still use drills to cut out issues then stick metal or clay to it. Tooth regrowth is on the horizon though!
Unless you are American
Even in America we have novacaine
Ironically we don’t see much evidence of infectious disease in hunter gatherers. Now of course this only talks about those diseases we see evidence of in bones, but until we started keeping livestock and living in large close groups there doesn’t seem to have been much.
Obviously there still was disease. You’re never going to be able to find evidence of an infected wound or pneumonia in the skeletal remains, but the big killers like smallpox, measels, leprosy, etc. don’t develop until later.
Of course for those humans in environments that supported mosquitos malaria was still a huge problem.
According to The Dawn of Everything, there is evidence of multiple instances where societies developed agriculture and then discarded it.
Well yeah, because it really sucked. Early agrarians were much less healthy, suffering from malnutrition and diseases that hunter-gatherers did not.
People persisted though. And over ten thousand years they eventually won out. Turns out that being able to store enough food to last all winter is a huge long term advantage. Specialization was an even greater advantage (that also took millennia to develop).
And the issue with trying to put the genie back in the bottle is that if one group left that money on the table another group would come along and pick it up.
“We had a good harvest this year. Way too much for us to use. I wonder if our neighbors would be willing to part with some of their excess pelts if we gave them…”
NEW ACHIEVEMENT
Commerce
You have something I want, and I have something you want. A fairly simple exchange can’t possibly get out of hand, right? RIGHT?!Reward
Capitalism will ensure you never live a peaceful life. Not that you had a peaceful life before. Let’s just say your descendants will be forced into labor if they simply want to have shelter.Capitalism will ensure you never live a peaceful life.
Isn’t a big allure of capitalism the kind-of comfort trap of desiring modern amenities enough to voluntarily engage with the industrial system?
Also, any proper Marxist is going to tell you that capitalism is a fundamental stepping stone to post-scarcity utopian communism. Capitalist mode of production generates the surpluses necessary for the kind of leisure enjoyed by a professional managerial class that ultimately forms a socialist bureaucracy. You don’t get your libraries and your hospitals and your trains without a pivot to capitalism.
Also, anyone who has done the proper deep wilderness style campaign can tell you that its anything but peaceful. You’re exposed to the elemental whims, your livelihood is predicated on ecological changes beyond your comprehension much less control, and you lack some really fundamental human achievements like modern language, art, and music. Hell, you might not even enjoy the benefit of simple machines like the screw or the wheel.
And that’s not even the really attractive achievements. Ask anyone with advanced tetanus or glaucoma how many years of restaurant work they’d be willing to endure for medical relief.
Unlike in the good old days where shelter was labor free.
I mean, find a nice piece of land, build your shelter, no one bothers you about property tax or reports you to the HOA. Maybe a land ownership dispute, but even if you lose, as long as you live past that, you can setup somewhere else.
Well you’re forgetting being born, having to endure growing up if you got lucky, hoping you maybe got sold to a higher family. At that point you might as well just stay in your luxury of kings for the common folk.
Where are you going to gather the lumber from? Are you going to build the tools too? Smelt your iron? Pan for it first? Whered you get a pan?
Notice how you said ‘as long as you can live’ when that’s not a huge concern right now. Spoiled is spoiled, but dense is something else.
Capitalism doesn’t free us from any of that, community does. It’s standing on the shoulders of giants and advancing our understanding of the world that saves infants and puts food on tables. Not people who own the tools skimming off the top from the people that do the work
Capitalism =/= Money
Money is the only fair way to compensate your time. That is the metric that is used because if actual work gets compensated it skews riches to able bodied, young, etc.
The systems in place are bad, but complete abandon is too. That is why talking of reform in the public forum is pertinent. Destruction without creation is just wicked.
If you talk about giants, what did the bible add in value to humans? Im curious as to your insight, genuinely.
The not getting mauled by wildlife and having medical professionals able to come to my house if I break my leg is kinda nice tho.
Credit scores are beneficial for everyone except people who don’t pay their debts.
There is a subsection of people in those that “don’t pay their debts” that can be described as “can’t pay their debts,” usually facilitated by the system.
That’s not relevant.
Whether you don’t pay your debts by choice or not, the fact remains that not paying them demonstrates that you are risky to lend to. It makes perfect sense for people to not want to lend you more money if you didn’t pay back what you borrowed before.
Downvote all you like, but that’s the fact of the matter. Getting rid of credit scores will change nothing for people who don’t repay their debts, but it will harm those who do, because good borrowers won’t be able to prove that they have a history of repaying their debts, and will therefore be treated as greater risks than they actually are.
