On 4/08/2014 12:59, Kelly St. Clair wrote:
> On 8/3/2014 5:48 PM, Rupert Boleyn wrote:
>
>> immobile people tied down by possessions and crops they
>> can't up and leave can be forced to pay taxes, to provide labour, and
>> this allows specialisation, and once you've started down that road you
>> can't really go back.
>>
>> It takes a very long time before farmers are, on an individual level,
>> better off than hunter-gatherers, though a small segment of the
>> population has it pretty good from even the earliest days.
>
> And I, for one, am willing to make that tradeoff - even though I'm not
> even the top segment (though I may be close, depending on where you
> start drawing the curve).  Hunter-gatherers make up stories about the
> moon; specialists *go* to it.
>
I wouldn't want to be a hunter-gatherer either. We're well past the
point where everyone can be better off than that. However, our ancestors
suffered quite a bit to get us here.