Unemployment

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The capitalist economy that you so despise has led to people being more satisfied now than they have ever been anywhere in human history.

That's a tad reductionist for you, no? Of course at that reductionist level, even Marx himself would not have disagreed.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Time to go off topic:I'd say that the existence of humanity in prehistoric times led to more contentment among the average person than this post-industrial lifestyle. The average prehistoric man actually ate a very healthy and balanced diet, was very tall, had many more hours of leisure time (obviously these were spent differently) and most important he/she had a major purpose. This primordial existence is ideal for humanity and is how it spent the majority of its time on Earth.

Please tell me that this post isn't entirely serious.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I always disliked the attitude of people who enjoy the vast freedoms and benefits that our societies today deliver but claim that others are better off being poor and oppressed. It's a bit of a silly point to tell someone they should go try North Korea and see how they like it, but then again it's even sillier to suggest that things like freedom and food on the table are useless or overrated.

Oh, sure. But Republicanism certainly did not argue in that general direction (unless you're now arguing that to critique Westerndemocapitsocietywhateversky is automatically to love Stalin or something; which would be out of character), even if at least two other people in this thread... sigh.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Sounds like pseudohistory.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There is pretty strong evidence from skeletal archaeology that early farmers were less well-fed than hunter-gatherers, suggesting that although agriculture supported population expansion by allowing a larger total number of people to be fed, it didn't always produce more food per person.

That doesn't sound so surprising, it's more the... er... extensions from that mentioned here that are a little on the strange side (as you say, of course) and which prompted the remark.

Although, just to randomly make things stranger perhaps, there are farmers and there are farmers. Major differences between pastoralists and people that grow crops and so on.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well...it depends on how you define law of nature.

Not really. I think it's fairly obvious that the distribution of different species of squirrel in North Wales is not determined by market forces.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Well, I would argue that something does not have to determine the distribution of different species of squirrel in North Wales in order to be a law of nature.

Market forces obviously only apply to human beings, but then again, so does a lot of things, do they not?

Yes, but then I tend to find attempts to find 'laws' in most aspects of human behavior to be so much laughable pseudo-positivist reductionist bullsh!t. Which is the point of the (admittedly rather silly) example. Which is quite different from saying that markets do not exist and can be freely ignored in all circumstances; that's obviously untrue as well.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

human nature

No such thing, except as an expression (in much the same way that 'common sense' is but a collection of personal prejudices).