Affluent Society and the Law of the Jungle

[Bruce McFarling <ecbm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 29 Oct 1997 00:44:14 -0500, Hyman Blumenstock
<hystock@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Is the query then valid, that if it is possible to fulfill
> practical human wants, why are so many people, now an ever
> increasing condition, forced to live without that fulfillment?

        Galbraith asked that question in "The Affluent Society".
The JEI article that I referred to earlier this week mentions
it in passing as well.

>Perhaps the elitist theories of Veblen, Keynes and LaRouche
>have some logical basis, if one considers the history of
>man out of the aboriginal jungle.  Therein lay scarcity,
>wherein the most powerful of the group would grab all he
>could at the expense of the least powerful.

        The biggest problem here is that it doesn't
seem to fit with the evidence on pre-Agrarian societies,
nor with information we have been able to collect on
non-Agrarian societies.[Note *]  What would prevent the
others from running away and hunting and gathering somewhere
else?  Obviously, if there was nowhere to run away *to*,
that option is foreclosed.  This naive progrssivism in which
things, since they were bad in the Agrarian age, must have
been even worse prior to the Agrarian age, may well be logical,
but it seems to be untrue.  Agriculture is hard work compared
to the hunting and gathering that preceded it, and people
took it up because they had to, not because they wanted to.
And with that came all the benefits of civilisation -- for
most people, the privilage of working longer hours for the
benefit of someone else, and being drafted to fight as the
infantry in wars of aggression or defense.

[Note *] Obviously, pre-Agrarian societies is a historical
term, referring to societies that preceded Agrarian societies.
Modern hunter-gatherer societies are only pre-Agrarian if they
are *going to have* preceded Agrarian societies, and I
don't have the working crystal ball required to know that.
Virtually,

Bruce McFarling, Ourimbah, NSW
ecbm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx