Hi all, At 08:36 AM 10/6/2002 Sunday , you wrote: >Keith Hudson > >> Since hunter-gatherer days, time has always been worth something -- >whether >> in money, kind or as so many days labour per quarter on the lord of the >> manor's plot. But I can't comment on Weber. Haven't got him on my shelves. > >As much as I relish the Far Side-ish image of a stocky caveman punching a >time clock as he picks up his club, I don't really think we're talking about >the *same thing* when we talk about wage labour and hunting-gathering. But >what does it mean to say "time has always been worth something?" Benjamin >Franklin was talking about a clear and constant quantitative measure: if 1 >day = 10 shillings, 1/2 day = 5 shillings. Surely, Keith, you are not >suggesting that for hunter-gatherers, if 1 week = 1 mastadon, 2 weeks = 2 >mastadons? > >It seems to me that had it been possible for hunter-gatherers to think in >such a way (and I deny vehemently that it would have been possible), there >would have been no impetus for the development of agriculture. >
I beg to disagree. If 1 days equals 1 mastadon then as the population grows as it did, soon the population of hunters exceeds the population of mastadons. This leads to the rapid collapse of the mastadon society. If this happens to most of the prey species (as is occurring today with the fisheries, homo populations either migrate to unpopulated areas or take up agriculture. Or wars and famines reduce the homo populations back to sustainable levels. All of these effects are occuring today and are be the drivers of future social trends. Food is not the only resource subject to 'population' dynamics. Energy seems to be subject to similar economic principles. So does water, air etc. The biggest experiment is occuring in China and we should know within a decade or so how it will work itself out. The fact that China does not have enough resources to support its current population will probably turn out to be the reason that the Chinese do not take over the world. The US would have the same problem if they continued to let their population grow unbounded. Who will be the leaders that will be willing to tell our fecund population that we have run out of good land to expand into? And that we had all better figure out how to get along with only replacement child bearing rates? Dennis Paull Half Moon Bay, CA
