Darwin & a Theory of Affluence

In Dusty Archives, a Theory of Affluence

By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: August 7, 2007
For thousands of years, most people on earth lived in abject poverty, first as hunters and gatherers, then as peasants or laborers. But with the Industrial Revolution, some societies traded this ancient poverty for amazing affluence.

Malthus’s book is well known because it gave Darwin the idea of natural selection. Reading of the struggle for existence that Malthus predicted, Darwin wrote in his autobiography, “It at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. ... Here then I had at last got a theory by which to work.”

“The actual data underlying this stuff is hard to dispute,” Dr. Clark said. “When people see the logic, they say ‘I don’t necessarily believe it, but it’s hard to dismiss.’ ”

I would read the whole thing, it is facinating... but I'm a dork

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Not quite sure if you mean a dork for reading it, or a dork for not reading all of it...

...which I suppose means I'll have to gird my loins and poke my bifocals up on my nose... if I'm coordinated I can do both at once... and start reading.

[bluecuracao]

What was being inherited, in his view, was not greater intelligence — being a hunter in a foraging society requires considerably greater skill than the repetitive actions of an agricultural laborer. Rather, it was “a repertoire of skills and dispositions that were very different from those of the pre-agrarian world.”

Hmmm...

Sounds like Clark may not understand the complexity of developing agriculture (or blew it off, to be controversial). But in terms of a different (not greater) skill set and the disposition of a hunter mentality, I can see what he's getting at.

[Happy Monkey]

Well, you just need a few innovators to create and teach techniques. The hunter vs farmer comparison would apply to people following established techniques.

I don't agree with all of it... just enjoyed it and found it interesting.