Reply #18: Well, your figure is a little off, but you've got the right idea! [View All]

... a hunter-gatherer adult only does what can be described as live-maintaining 'work' about 8-10 hours per week? That's some progress!

I think it was more in the neighborhood of 4-6 hours per day, on average. In any case, you're correct in noting the lack of "progress" that we've made on this issue.

And while these hunter-gatherers may not have had easy lives -- disease and injury were not treatable by means of modern medicine -- the lives they had were in many ways RICHER than ours. They gained immense pleasure from the deep interaction they had with each other. They were never concerned about "things" the way we are. They were generally HAPPIER than we are -- actually much more so.

At the heart of this is actually classic Marxism, although I wouldn't hasten to connect it as such. What Marx really proposed was not that the workers should get "their piece of the pie" as much as that they should equally share in the gains of productivity. In doing so, they could work 4 hours per day instead of 8 -- thus giving them more time to spend with their families, enriching themselves in the arts, communining with nature, and so on. In short, they could spend more time building a much richer society.

The only reason that class warfare came into this at all was that since the time that men began to live in towns and cities, there developed divisions in wealth and class. And it had always been the interest of those at the top to ensure that all the benefits of technology, productivity, etc. flowed to THEM rather than being used to enrich SOCIETY.