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Why must we pay to live on our own planet?
The question may seem childish to some, but I want you all to really think about this. Why must we pay to live on our own planet?
Why did we make an economic system that is completely decoupled from the laws of nature, when we know that we live on a finite planet?
Why do we work for money that we then have to use to get access to resources we need, when the resources is already here?
And why do some people inherit land and claim it their private property, making other people pay or wok for having access to their property, even when everybody is born on the same planet and there is more than enough room for everybody?
Again, why must we pay to live on our own planet?
samantha grey
For some reasons now since we are paying for our existence here, maybe then we should make the most out of it. Live well but take part in conserving our planet too. We got only one planet anyway, so we better save it or else. Teach your kids the proper ways. Be guided! Use Maddie & Matt's Happy Earth.
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Ken brown 30+
On many levels and aspects of myself i agree with you but when i open my eye's in the morning it's not the current reality, one day we will put aside these things that indenture us and our children, maybe it will be them that get fed up and seek a different path than what we have now, maybe we need to start giving 1% of our weekly food for the house to be given to those who are in need. To give without expectation is in itself a form of currency for the heart.
Ronald Vallecer
Arkady Grudzinsky 50+
http://www.ted.com/talks/rachel_botsman_the_currency_of_the_new_economy_is_trust.html
Arkady Grudzinsky 50+
I'm not an expert on this, but there seems to be a disconnect between the concept of ownership and necessity of money. Any thoughts?
chen xin
we use money to achieve ownership e.g we spend money on house and then it belongs to me .the company will write our name on the contry .then we have it .
also i think we can have a ownership of money .like the Forbes ranking says 'who have aproperty of some money .
john allan
In my earlier post I talked about the 'hunter/gatherer' times when ownership meant
what you could carry. Anthropologists and historians tell us that it all changed when farming started.
To do farming you have to 'own' the land, you have to settle and defend the crop, and the seed for next year, and if you are successful and develop a surplus you can then trade/lend/ barter and the whole commerce thing kicks off. From this a 'division of labour' develops and you have the basis of contemporary society. From this stems social systems and hierarchy.
This is where money comes in. It is the Political leader who determines and controls the currency (first known was in what is now called China). Notice whose name or image was pressed into most of the coins.
The money was always under State Control and largely used to pay for goods and services to maintain the State and wage war. The peasant was given a coin for the chicken, then, when he wanted a chicken again he exchanged the coin for a chicken (or equivalent).
This is the connection between State, Money, and ownership.
Extension 1 :- Tax. The state decided to demand some coins back from the peasants so they could pay the soldiers etc they needed to wage increasingly expensive wars.
Extension 2 :- Paper money and promissory notes.
Paper money (known as Fiat money by experts) enables the State to operate in a constant state of Debt (I promise to pay the bearer printed on in the UK)
Promissory Notes = beginning of stocks and shares - nominally related to Paper money, but this is no longer tied to Gold Reserves or any kind of 'Reality'.
The theoretical money can be exchanged for goods/services and property, of course, but only whilst the State prevails and survives. State fails and all bets are off !
Why does the state survive? Vested interest !
Some of us are doing very nicely thank you very much.
The above is not the truth but aid to discussion. Enjoy
John Smith 30+
Arkady Grudzinsky 50+
Ronald Vallecer
I for one am very proud to be part of a specie that has made it this far. Sure, the systems that exist now are not perfect, but we humans have an amazing track record of breaking records. Another way of answering your question is, we pay because we adhere to a system that allows compensation for service and goods. We adhere to a monetary system because transactions occuring in this system is a lot easier to account for than any other system. It is still the best system for transaction in the corporate level. Certain products and services require massively intricate and complicated systems of human cooperation, where compensation in the form of a monetary value is the only way to maintain accounting. Governments cannot run on favours, i.e. see corruption! Contracts needs numbers or they will always be disputed. Like I said, we can and should do a lot of things just because they are the right thing to do, and I believe that exists in the status quo, what we should move forward to is progress.
Colleen Steen 500+
My perception of the land I "own" on paper, is that I am occupying this space while I am here on earth. I participate in the human created economic system because I am human. If the resources are "already here", as you say, then there is no need to pay to get those resources. I, for example, grow much of my own food on the land I occupy, and many people have that opportunity to "get access to resources we need", as you say. Most people I know in this region grow much of their own food. Many people in this area barter for goods and services....these are choices we can all make as we travel this life experience.
My perception is not that I "pay" to live on this planet, but rather, I use the economic system that is in place, work with nature, which provides some resources I need (food) and work in harmony with others to obtain services and goods when needed. It is always a choice as to how we use the systems that are in place, which we created as humans:>)
Ken brown 30+
It is been with us since the beginning, from shells to credit.
Ronald Vallecer
Ken brown 30+
In many ways what you just posted is close to what my post was suppose to convey but i prefer what you just said Ronald.
Mats Kaarbö 10+
Ken brown 30+
Mats Kaarbö 10+
Sure, you're absolutely right. I was just indirectly extrapolating, which I often tend to do. I also want people to think critically about established systems and the notion of what's right, hence starting this conversation.
Miguel Brinlee
Krisztián Pintér 200+
Andres Aullet 10+
Childish or not, it is indeed a valid question.
It reminded me of a conversation we had here on TED some time ago. Here goes a link in case you are interested in taking a look, maybe some of the answers overlap with the ones here?
http://www.ted.com/conversations/7712/private_property_should_every.html
cheers
Mats Kaarbö 10+
Thank you for the link. I will look into the conversation. It raises some interesting questions about property that I'll look forward to read about.
Cheers.
john allan
We were once all nomadic 'hunter-gathers' - hunting and gathering and no doubt sometimes stealing what other groups had hunted and gathered.
The Old Testament is full of tribes warring and enslaving each other....is this what you propose ?
Mats Kaarbö 10+
Simply put, the laws of nature and the boundaries that comes with that.
"We were once all nomadic 'hunter-gathers' - hunting and gathering and no doubt sometimes stealing what other groups had hunted and gathered.
The Old Testament is full of tribes warring and enslaving each other....is this what you propose ?"
I would not propose reverting back to a hunting and gathering society at all, but instead utilize technology to create abundance for all, eliminating the need for money. We have abundance of resources, but we need technology to distribute it to everybody.
What about you? What would you propose?
Peter Law 30+
:-)
edward long 100+
Iulian Sociale Ingegnere
You already made a mind exercise that told us how you see the life if you lose the thing called money........Think about .....
edward long 100+
Iulian Sociale Ingegnere
Mitch SMith 50+
IT all depends on your understanding of the word "pay".
Consider - if you want fruit from a tree, you must pay the effort of picking it.
After eating it, you must pay the earth with your excretion.
Certainly, if all required for our needs were in abundance, then there would be no need for money.
But in times of scarcity, - when there are not enough beans for all, then the beans get counted.
And when the beans are not enough to sustain all, then some will die so that some will live.
Then, what of the one who hides the beans to make them scarce?
This is the flaw of money. Do not pay the hoarder - rob him.
Iulian Sociale Ingegnere
Mitch SMith 50+
I, Mitch SMith have limits.
Some of them I chose, some were thust upon me.
And they change in each instant according to the best path forward.
Please expand on your arguement - I have said nothing about killing? You seem to have something to say - I'd like to understand you, but your language is not well defined. Try - subject-->verb--> object. We have 2000 characters in these posts, so your language can be more specific.
Iulian Sociale Ingegnere
Mitch SMith 50+
But to me, the words "spirituality" and God" are without meaning. They might mean something to you, but have no basis of communication - in the context of communication they are noise because there is no definition to share.
I am sure you know what you are saying, but these words ("god/spirituality") actively prevent anyone from being able to share your understanding. Perhaps you can find alternative words?
In times of scarcity - some die. I cannot see any way around that. It would be silly for all to die if there is food for some.
One needs not be the strongest to win such a competition - one needs only be stronger than the weakest.
If the weak ones do not starve, they will become food for the predators.
But now - show me this scarcity?
You show me where it is, and I will show where someone is hiding the beans.
If the miser is strong, the robber must be stronger.
Iulian Sociale Ingegnere
Mitch SMith 50+
If, however, there is scarcity because some are hiding the food, then it is injustice - death will be caused by the thief of food.
If we accept money as our token of trade - it will move the food with it.
But look - you cannot counterfeit food - it is either food or not.
If you hide it, it will decay.
Money is not food, and yet, we let it stand between us and our food.
In this we consent to our hunger.
We should stop doing that.
Pay unto Caesar? Well - is Caesar worth paying? If not, abandon his coin.
Iulian Sociale Ingegnere
Mitch SMith 50+
Yes - I see scarcity as the action of bean-hiders.
Where i live there is no scarcity at all.
However, I do see the earth being ripped up and made toxic.
I do not live in a place where people do not have enough food.
And yet, i am told these places exist.
I do remember when my family did not have enough food for a short time, but i remember how the community made sure that we got enough - as soon as they knew we were in need.
I do not believe in "mother nature" as most people do. I believe in observable dynamics.
I observe that the universe and all that is observable to our weak eyes is a continuum of "self" from the particles to the atoms, to the viruses, the bacteria, the animals and these apes called humans.
In fact - anything that is a pattern that self-sustains has a self.
I observe that selves exist only in relation to other selves.
I observe that self organising entities seek to join with others at different degrees of symbiosis.
I observe the birth of greater selves with each new union through symbiosis.
I observe that nothing is whithout change and that the expansion of entropy drives the arabesque dance of self along an infinite fractal plane of time-space generating more and more complexity with more and more self-ness and greater spans of entropic modulation both forwads and backwards in the time vector itself.
We fool ourselves that we are made, and yet we are nothing but the process of making, and will never be made. We fool ourselves that history repeats, and yet it cannot. We fool ourselves that by looking back we will find all answers, but there are no answers in the wreckage of entropy - only in the forward fractal dance of time.
The old ones talk of the great wheel, but when you look at it - it is an expanding spiral - and it is chaos - the coils can be close as 1/infinity, and yet, the deviation cannot be known.
Maya rides the storm - but the storm is time - and maya will never catch it.
Iulian Sociale Ingegnere
Mitch SMith 50+
Yes thought about ...
I am not so interested in finding any meaning of life - what good is that?
I am curious about what makes things happen. There is joy in that.
My children will remember my descriptions - viruses, fractals etc - but not so much. They will remember most how I love them, how i listen to them, how i answered their questions with truth and how i stepped aside for them to find their own truth. They will remember how i did not inflict them with the lies of my fathers. And then they will forget all that - it's not important to remember - only to act in truth.
What use is power to me? What use is power but to force lies on children?
Lost? I think not my friend.
It matters not if you accept my beliefs, or I accept yours - it only matters to share them.
It matters to compare beliefs and be willing to listen.
I know who I am. I know where I came from.
It is my joy that there are others.
It is a joy that I meet them - as i meet you now.
Iulian Sociale Ingegnere
Mitch SMith 50+
You do not have to agree. You also do not know my father.
You talk in vacuum and have ears closed.
It has been fun - but no value past this.
Fare well friend.
Iulian Sociale Ingegnere
so long friend :)
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Mitch SMith 50+
Steve Pinker identifies 3 modes of human interaction:
Dominance, reciprocity and communality.
Money is very good at regulating reciprocity.
It is hopeless at regulating dominance and communality.
In fact, the term "dominance" is not well fitted to humans. I would suggest that the true term in humans is "leadership" because it assumes that responsibility goes before power - dominance assumes force of violence with no responsibility.
The trick of a "natural": curency is to exclude bean-counting from leadership and communality.
This might be done by having a different value exchange system for each.
As it stands, the circulation of money in the realms of leadership and communality lead to concentrations of power and wealth respectively.
If money were confined exclusively to direct inter-personal reciprocation, it would work extremely well.
Anything deemed to be community capital would require voluntary labour and materails donation from the community. Leadership would, likewise be supported by voluntary donation to the leader.
For such a system to exist, it would take a fundamental shift of custom.
It's not impossible - communality was supported by voluntary contribution in the past - teh trick is to bring it to a scale that retains the larger communities we inhabit at present. Either that, or downscale the size of cities.
Arkady Grudzinsky 50+
I wouldn't say, "dominance" is not fitted for humans. "Dominance" and "leadership" are different things. Leadership is based on voluntary submission, dominance seems to imply involuntary submission. Both have place in human relationships. You cannot get rid of dominance altogether in a cop-criminal situation, for example.
I have to digest how this model relates to money and how to exclude money from dominance relationships, e.g. employer-employee relationship (they seem to be excluded from communality already).
However, economy based on voluntary contribution is, definitely, a good idea. I have some experience volunteering and it feels good compared to employment on multiple levels: a) they will never lay you off; b) there is a sense of personal responsibility that boosts the quality of work - nobody compels me to do the work, so I do my best just out of respect to myself. Compulsory communal services and contributions, however, usually, do not work. E.g. Soviet economy, social security, and many others.
Mitch SMith 50+
As you have observed, for anyone who has not experienced voluntary community, it is difficult to imagine the difference!
I will add that the practice of adversarial systems in government and law comes from the Greeks - the concept is primative.
It is true that dominance was the most effective method for assembling a nation of strangers. Humans have the capacity for more sophistication than that.
I, like the Greeks, observe behaviour in animals - I observe their harmony, and I observe their bloody fights. But, unlike the Greeks, I do not presume to be the same species as cattle, birds, snakes or lions.
This is where I suggest the shift in custom - the reliance on the primative adversarial system was convenient - it might now be obsolete.
Also - thank you for the correction - it's great to get insight into the origin of ideas!
I will now look closer at Alan Fiske - we are blessed by giants, but it is hard to discern the difference between a giant and a dwarf who has climbed on the shoulders of a giant ;)
I have seen Pinker's disertation a few times - always good to see it again!.
I regard him as a giant building on the works of giants - he seems to know how to discern.
(Edit: "cops" are a fairly recent invention. The dichotemy is entirely artificial - both cops and criminals are defined by laws - the adversarial nature of those laws induces the polarity. The continuum is only complete when you add the farmer and the sheep. It then becomes farmer/sheep/wolf/sheepdog - the farmer makes the laws. The fiction upon which those laws are based is the assumption that the farmer "owns" the farm. A strong wolf has no fear of the farmer because he can jump the fences easily - he has no fear of the sheepdogs, because they are just wolves pretending to work for the farmer - both dogs and wolves eat sheep. A farmer can only own anything by dividing all to a weaker state than himself.)
Arkady Grudzinsky 50+
Money aren't evil. It's how we use it. There is spiritual side to money. I wish, we had to pay a quarter or a dime for these lunches or snacks. The process of getting money out of my pocket (or anticipation of it) gives me time to think "do I really need this stuff?" When stuff is free, we just stretch our hand and put it in our mouth.
Iulian Sociale Ingegnere
Arkady Grudzinsky 50+
Guns can be a tool of violence, power, and control. Guns can also be a tool of preventing violence and aggression or can be used for sports and recreation. Same things can even be said about sex. It can be a source of joy and expression of love or it can be a tool to enslave and oppress other people.
Of course, it is wrong to point at you with "tools", guns or money, because of your opinions. What I mean is that the "evil" is not the tool. The "evil" is in the ideas, intentions, and attitudes that make people do these things. I even refuse to say that the people who do that are "evil", because, from my experience, very few people control their own beliefs.
Iulian Sociale Ingegnere
Arkady Grudzinsky 50+
Iulian Sociale Ingegnere
Arkady Grudzinsky 50+
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0Ze9dWFULo
peter lindsay 30+
Rick Ryan 10+
Pack up everything you own, move to one of those plentiful unowned geographic locations with all those unlimited resources you speak of (and no laws other than the laws of NATURE), and have at it. If you are capable of self-survival and living off the land, you will survive. If not....oh well.
chen xin
while i thnk what you say is out of reality .why would we do that .we spend hundreds of thousands of time to come to now .it is not a easy way .are you kidding me ?
what i suggest is to care more about our nature .with the mordernism .we lost so much of our nature .we become sullen and unhappy .should we continue ? we need some work to change this .we need
to let people become more happy with life .that what i want to change .not going back to acient and working without wearing clothes.
Feyisayo Anjorin 50+
John Smith 30+
Because once upon a time all land and water was communally owned, but then, over time, every government and king wanted more funds in the short term (for war or personal enrichment) and decided to sell the land and the water to private interests.
Krisztián Pintér 200+
mankind can live natural life, as it did, 100 thousand years ago. it means 30 years life expectancy, 20% child survival, famines, aggression and struggle.
civilization makes possible to have these conversations from a warm room, eating chips or whatever. we need to allocate time to activities. we have limited time, which increases with technology (the trick is that machines take some of the tasks, this appears as extra work time). but whatever happens, time has to be scheduled. decisions have to be made about what we do. that is the price. the price of one hour of fishing is the one hour of anything else we could do instead. we divide labor. we exchange work hours with each other, so we can do what we do best, and let others do the other stuff. exchange is a way to enhance our wellbeing. but rates have to be negotiated. that is, again, price. that is why we need to pay.
these concepts are not new. these concepts are 100-200-300 years old. so i must correct myself. i don't want you to think. first i want you to learn. learn the material at hand, because there is no reason to reinvent the wheel.
chen xin
while do you like to be locked in a room and always sit in front of the computer and watch the screen all day long .i thnk at least it is not healthy for us and for our develop,you know one of our,inherent quality is to enbrace nature .it is far away with the road that we should develop to .there is a experiment that people who live with a nature way is mmuch better for their health and can live a long life ,
those who live a life full of walls and man-made things like tv and some other ,facilities .dont have a healthy mental .
so i said we should reconsider how to develop ?
with the civilization .we got stuck .we can not eat well and ,frequently we got sick .and our physique is decreasing ,it brings us many problem .i didnt say that we should develop with the civilization .i say we should reconsider how to develop .should we reduce our working time and do more exercise ,should we have a better invironment and live the nature .maybe we are too wild about civilization and regard of our nature .there need a balance between it
looking forward to a better society ,
Krisztián Pintér 200+
nature is hunting, and being hunted. nature is dying from disease. nature is eating edible grass instead of wheat. nature is enduring the cold, and hoping the spring to come before we run out of stored food.
and again, this has NOTHING to do with whether we pay or not. you pay for more "natural" ways as well. often you pay more.
John Smith 30+
mankind can live natural life, as it did, 100 thousand years ago. it means 30 years life expectancy, 20% child survival, famines, aggression and struggle."
Care to explain why communal ownership of land would be incompatible with "civilization"? Also, the only things keeping living standards higher than the prehistoric standard (or the standard from the advent of agriculture up until the 19th century, which was worse than the prehistoric one) are hygiene, food, water and environmental standards and modern medicine. This is why it's a crime against humanity to not have affordable health care for all (even the unemployed) orregulatory standards and why libertarianism is so f-ing evil.
John Frum 30+
It has been tried. Several times. Failed each time. Civilization comes about with specialization of task -- pot maker, farmer, trapper, etc. People decide on exchange rates for their goods and services. People who are better at their specialization get to trade in larger volumes, and are compensated more. This competition motivates people to improve themselves. Everyone wants certain resources, but acquiring most of them requires time and energy. (Why do you think no one pays for air?) So, the people who can afford it get to have more of it.
"it's a crime against humanity to not have affordable health care for all"
If wishes were horses...
"and why libertarianism is so f-ing evil"
Guess who is riding the aforementioned horses!
Krisztián Pintér 200+
hygiene, food, medicine and such things are fruits of civilization, not its enablers.
John Smith 30+
What does ownership of land have to do with this? Does renting instead of owning land prevent you from being a good carpenter, scientist or entrepeneur?
"(Why do you think no one pays for air?)"
Isn't that something I should be asking you, not the other way around?
The world is fine with communal ownership of air, so why would it be any different with communal ownership of land and water (most of the oceans are actually communally owned, and so is a portion of the land)?
"because it is incompatible with reality. communal ownership leads to no progress and degradation."
You mean some people are better at owning land than others? That there is land v 2.0 that's better than land v1.0, that water gets periodic upgrades depending on the owner? Tell me where I can find the factories that produce better land and water for me to buy...
"hygiene, food, medicine and such things are fruits of civilization, not its enablers."
No one was starving before "civilization" came along, agriculture just allows a higher population density (but the food will be less diverse /of lower quality which, has to be compensated for with modern medicine).
My main point was that a civilization that does not grant all of its citizens health care is worse than a prehistoric society, it's basically no different from an alien race landing on Earth in 10.000 b.c. and using humans as slaves: the humans get all the stress and work requirements of a civilization but not the increased standard of living.
John Frum 30+
My answer to the question was right there, in the previous sentence; that's why I added that question. Resource! Wikipedia: "Resources have three main characteristics: utility, limited availability, and potential for depletion or consumption."
Air (at least on the surface) is practically unlimited, and easy to acquire. So it is not even considered as a resource in most uses.
"Does renting instead of owning land prevent you from being a good carpenter, scientist or entrepeneur?"
Though I have worked mostly for huge multinationals, the buildings I worked in were not owned, but rented, by the companies I worked for. Rented from whom? Why did its ownership have to be private? Answer: Land is a very limited resource.
"The world is fine with communal ownership of air"
Air is not communally owned. Air does not have an owner. For something to be communally owned, some people have to get together and declare themselves to be a community, and that community has to claim ownership of it. One does not claim ownership by just declaring "this land now belongs to the people of Burma". If it were that easy, all the planets, their moons, and stars would have been "claimed" by many communities already. To claim ownership, one has to utilize a resource and/or also protect against other people claiming ownership of the same resource.
"You mean some people are better at owning land than others?"
Most certainly! Different bits of land are associated with their own resources too. That makes one bit of land unsuitable for one task, and optimal for another task.
John Smith 30+
How does it follow that limited resources have to be in private hands? What would change for your multinationals if they rented from the government instead of a real-estate investment fund? By communal ownership I mean that the land is owned by the government and the rent money businesses and people pay for it is distributed among the citizens, either through a social dividend or some progressive structure. There would still be a free market for land because people would just bid for renting rights, just as they would if the land was owned by real estate companies.
Krisztián Pintér 200+
exactly. some people can make more out of the same land. nobody really knows what to do with a piece of property. we need to try and look. that is the trial and error of the market place. error is a necessary feedback. this is absent in communal ownership.
"No one was starving before "civilization" came along,"
many was starving from time to time. hunger was a natural part of life for many millennia. civilization gradually reduced it to a moderate degree of malnutrition and occasional famines, and later eliminated hunger altogether. it was a long process.
"My main point was that a civilization that does not grant all of its citizens health care is worse than a prehistoric society"
it is a personal preference, but probably you have that opinion only because you have never tried a prehistoric society. my personal preference is that whatever good something would be or we imagine would be does not justify forcing it onto those that does not want it. community health care is good as long as everyone agrees to it.
John Smith 30+
Everything you mention here is about development of the land, not ownership of the land. If all land was owned by the government and businesses could bid for renting rights on a land exchange you'd get the exact same free market for development, except the rent money would be divided across all citizens instead of a handful of real-estate moguls who never developed land to begin with.
"civilization gradually reduced it to a moderate degree of malnutrition and occasional famines, and later eliminated hunger altogether. it was a long process."
Hunter-gatherers had to work less to get better nutrition, better life adult life expectancy, more freedom and less epidemics than in any civilization after them, except modern welfare states. Furthermore people never knew modern medicine would be invented and it still isn't available to all. Sedentary civilization wasn't motivated by noble efforts to improve living standards, the real motivation was this: 1000 overworked vitamin defficient diabetics with bad hearts would still overpower 100 fit hunter gatherers in combat, assuring more booty (both literal and figurative) for the chiefs and priests who led their tribes to a sedentary lifestyle.
"community health care is good as long as everyone agrees to it."
Bankers and executives making obscene amounts of money and subsequently claiming a disproportionate share of resources, is good as long as everyone agrees to it... But I'll be sure to notify all the viruses and harmful bacteria out there and ask them to please only choose victims in such a way that those with communal health care don'y end up paying for the scroungers anyway (google herd immunity).
John Frum 30+
Krisztián and I already covered that part. 1. Bit of land can be very different from each other. 2. It takes smarts to figure out good uses for bits of land. 3. Relative success and failures are a good indicator of whether or not a bit of land is being used in a relatively optimal way, and that acts as feedback for what works and what doesn't. I'll add a few more points. 4. Government departments are very bad at handling failure -- look at what they did to GM and all these Big Money companies. 5. Government departments are just happy to "get by" -- as long as there is no crisis at hand, they tend to do nothing. (Read Akio Morita's "Made in Japan", especially the bits of what he saw in USSR.). 6. Governments easily fall into corruption and nepotism. (I can add a few more points if you still have questions.)
"Everything you mention here is about development of the land, not ownership of the land."
If people own something, they take good care of it. Look at forestry. If corporations can OWN a bit of forest for logging, they make sure that their investment (money or effort) remains like the goose that lays the golden eggs. If they can't own it, they milk the resource dry, and then go to the government, begging for new resources to exploit.
"Hunter-gatherers had to work less to get better nutrition, better life adult life expectancy"
This is completely untrue. Care to provide citations to real research?
"epidemics"
Yes and no... epidemics spread fastest in dense populations.
Sorry... I have to go now.
John Smith 30+
The government doesn't have to concern itself with the details: they lease the land to the highest bidder who has to develop the land himself.
"If people own something, they take good care of it. Look at forestry. If corporations can OWN a bit of forest for logging, they make sure that their investment (money or effort) remains like the goose that lays the golden eggs. If they can't own it, they milk the resource dry, and then go to the government, begging for new resources to exploit."
This would actually be a good argument, if it were true... Most logging and mining companies don't own the land they work on and never have, the few that do aren't better stewards than the rest. Also, with private ownership it's very attractive to flatten everything to sell it to a developer or engage in real estate speculation, both very harmful practices.
"This is completely untrue. Care to provide citations to real research?"
You can start here, and it's not some hypothetical, it's srill true of hunter-gatherer societies today http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society
Would I give up my life for that of a hunter-gatherer? No, but that's only because I live in a 21st century Northern European welfare state where I get to share in the riches of my society (including modern medicine). If I were a drone in the Romney/Ryan state-ideal in the near future or just any peasant/worker living in any agricultural society between 8000 b.c. and 1920, I would be worse off than a hunter-gatherer.
John Frum 30+
I'll find a research paper on reforestation later. In the mean time, http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_tragedy_of_the_commons.html.
About hunter-gatherer societies: it is quite likely that they ate a larger variety of foods than people in industrialized societies. Industrial societies had to discover the importance of micronutrients like minerals and vitamins through science. With hunter-gathers it was there by default. However, 1. that lifestyle cannot sustain the population of 7 billion that we have now. and 2. modern industrial societies have better life-expectancies http://condensedscience.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/life-expectancy-in-hunter-gatherers-and-other-groups/. Also refer to the PDF that this article links to. Sahlins' work about two such tribes does seem to indicate they had to work less. But then how much do we have to work if all that it takes to keep us happy is food? Another way of looking at it: What is your current income, and how much of that goes to just feeding you? Exclude the cost of "luxury" feeding, like at restaurants and bars.
You just LOVE Straw Man arguments, don't you? Please tell me the difference between a Romney drone and an Obama drone. They both seem the same to me. And these 'drones' live longer than hunter-gatherers too.
chen xin
why must we live with money .
ans should go back to the original life ,juat as animans when we are hungry we hunt and when we are hot we just jump into the river and have a bath ,i think that is a question needed to be disscuss ,
what it brings us with the civilization.did we live a much happinees life ,and you know with the developmen of the society .we human beings burden a huge pressure and .many even killed themself .and how can we live a lifetowards a better direction ,and reduce the pain of our mental health ,
many times i think of the scenes that i am hunting with seveal people and we dance around the fire and we eat the big piece of meat .wouldn't that be much more happier?
it is time for us to reconsider what it brings us with the civilization.how can we develope into the right diretion.