

Utopia's scaffolding: What civilization took from us, I think we will get back. - KennethMyers
http://techno-anthropology.blogspot.com/2010/06/utopias-scaffolding.html

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chrismealy
In "Microeconomics: Behavior, Institutions, and Evolution" Sam Bowles notes
that the customs and economics of open source software have more in common
with small-scale societies (99% of human history) than capitalism:

The project that began with the "Fable of the Bees may be of even less
practical relevance in the future. The reason is that the technologies and
social interactions of the modern economy increasingly depart from these
canonical assumptions. Direct noncontractual interactions with positive
feedbacks arise increasingly in modern economies, as information-intensive
team production replaces assembly lines and other technologies more readily
handled by contract, and as difficult to measure services usurp the preeminent
role -- as both outputs and inputs --- once played by measurable quantities
like kilowatts of power and tons of steel. Danny Quah (1996) calls the modern
system of production “the weightless economy.” The key characteristics of the
information-intensive economy are generalized increasing returns, with near
zero marginal costs in many cases, along with the fact that most information
is either not subject to complete and enforceable contracts, or will be
inefficiently allocated if it is. ...

The information-intensive economy of the future may more closely resemble the
economy of the mobile foraging band in human prehistory, rather than the
economy of grain and steel that displaced it. Pursuing good ideas with
practical applications is a costly and uncertain project, much like hunting
large game. Success is rare, but its fruits are immensely valuable. The
private appropriation of the prize is both difficult to accomplish and
socially wasteful, for the foregone benefits to the those excluded from access
to the prize far outweigh the gains to the individual appropriator to be had
by excluding others. A new drug or a new software application is not so
different in this respect from an antelope. Thus it is not surprising that the
system of prestige and norms of sharing in some parts of the modern
information-intensive economy -- those involved in open source software, for
example -- in many ways parallel the culture of the foraging band. (page 500)

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CodeMage
_(3) Less work. People need to work and be useful, but they don't need to
slave away for 40-50 hours a week. Humans evolved to work for about 20 hours a
week, and I think that as soon as automation and society permit it, we'll get
back to that._

That's a very naive view. The prevalent mentality is "If you can make me $2000
by working 20 hours, then you can make me $5000 by working 50 hours. Why
should I settle for $2000 a week if I can get $5000 a week?"

How do you envision technology changing that mentality?

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KennethMyers
I think that the value of money has diminishing returns, so that more than
$60K per annum doesn't make you more happy
([http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_exper...](http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_experience_vs_memory.html).

If automation and efficiency could bring most people to the point where they
could hit this point of diminishing returns at 20 hours a week, I think we'd
find more (though not all) people opting for that kind of life.

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reitzensteinm
You're expecting people to behave rationally. I expect them to work 50 hours a
week and buy an Aston.

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mquander
"People" are not a homogeneous blob. I'll work 20 and live cheaply, thanks. If
other people work 50 and wind up comparatively wealthy, that's fine.

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sprout
Generally I think we've evolved a lot more than orthodox thinking gives us
credit for since the agricultural revolution. We still have some vestiges of
our hunter-gatherer roots, but most of us have had ancestors cultivating crops
for millennia.

As for life in the metropolis, we're a little less well adapted to us.

~~~
KennethMyers
You may be right. Most anthropologists see technological/memetic evolution as
largely supplanting genetic evolution after the sedentary shift (so that we,
say, invent glasses rather than getting better eyes), but I often wonder
myself how much we've changed in the last 10,000 years or so.

And I agree that the city is (speaking emotively and not scientifically here)
especially brutal. And yet strangely inescapable. I've adopted Emerson's
strategy of living in the countryside in the orbit of a great city, and
descending on it from time to time.

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mike_organon
Similarly, there's the paleo diet which claims (based on science) that hunter-
gatherer food (meat and plants) is more healthy than agricultural food
(grains, sugar, grain-fed meat, and processed food). Fortunately, we can
choose to take back our healthy food, even living in a city.

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tjmaxal
If hunter gather society was so perfect why did we ever change?

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hugh3
Hunter-gatherer lifestyles aren't something we need to theorise about... as
recently as a couple of hundred years ago people were living "unspoiled" pre-
agricultural lifestyles in Australia and to a lesser extent South America.
It's so easy to think that such a thing sounds idyllic when you're clothed,
bathed, have a secure food/water supply, all your teeth, are not currently
dying of any diseases, and are not subject to the whims of some village
strongman who will kill you if you step out of line.

Personally I believe that a portion of the Australian outback (and any other
country with room for it) should be set aside for people who want to live
hunter-gatherer lifestyles. The primary purpose would be to stop the
Australian Aborigines from complaining about the whole European-settlement
thing (as in _"fine, you want to go back to the way things were before? Here
ya go!"_ ) but it would be open to anyone of any race who felt like living
there. Only two conditions:

a) Nothing goes in except the people who want to live there, who can take
nothing except a loincloth and one day's food supply.

b) Nobody comes out _except_ by giving two months' notice (this stops people
from being able to leave to get medical treatment).

We could start with a few thousand acres and let it grow if it actually
becomes popular.

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protomyth
Your point relies on the fact that their was no technology advances that would
have been made between colonization and now. On the North American continent
there was serious trade up and down which would have helped. I don't know
anyone here (on a reservation) that really wants to go back, they just want
the paper the government signed to be honored.

On point (a), really?!? Is that what the natives there wore? That sounds
rather unkind of you.

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hugh3
In Australia at least, technology was pretty stagnant for 40,000 years, so
it's unlikely that an extra 200 years of isolation would have produced much
innovation. The American context is quite different, as several quite advanced
civilizations flourished there at various times.

Of course anyone going onto my hypothetical reservation would take with them a
lot of _knowledge_ unavailable to the true stone age folks, but not much can
be done about that.

As for clothing, a loincloth would be on the modest side:

<http://www.gondwananet.com/aboriginal-clothing.html>

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hernan7
"whose writings you should get to know if you haven't already" -- can you
really write that with a straight face?

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KennethMyers
Hernan7, you're right. I'm going to change that right now. Like most people's
blogs, mine is mostly read by friends. In my case, we're all book nerds who
get together and talk on themes like these. But in a public context that does
look like an idiotic, pompous thing to write.

~~~
hernan7
Hi Kenneth, thanks for taking my comment as intended. The rest of the article
is much better :-)

~~~
KennethMyers
God I love civil dialogue. Please, nobody ever tell the rest of the internet
about Hacker News.

