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(ASmith1946) wrote in
:

>>Still, the life of a primitive person is nasty brutish and short.
>
> On the contrary, most "primitive" people had/have a relatively
> decent life. Take the San (Bushmen) of southern Africa. They have
> lived in one of the most inhospitable places on the earth for
> almost tens of thousands of years. Today, the men hunt on average
> 6 hours a day. That's it.

Anthropological comparison of household labour between French nuclear
families and Amazon tribes shows that "primitives" perform only as
much labour as is necessary, usually about 2 hours a day for
gathering and cleaning. Hunting takes a bit more time but it removes
the men from the female controlled environment, which is part of its
purpose.

Marx argued that capitalism was not possible if people could not be
constrained to work. This was the problem of most colonies where the
natives could live freely off the land. Private ownership of all
subsistence resources was capitalism's answer. Obviously, if only
two hours a day of not particularly gruelling labour is necessary to
produce subsistence level resources and that these resources are
available without the obligation of binding agreements to work 12
hours to earn 6 hour's worth of wealth, then no one could be
constrained to work for a pittance in unsanitary and unsafe
conditions.

--

"I'm the master of low expectations."

GWB, aboard Air Force One, 04Jun2003