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Enthusiastic Reader
Enthusiastic Reader is on page 27 of 336 of Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World
"nine notorious vagrants had finally been brought in from the streets. The cost? Some {$66k] a year, including the social workers' wages. In other words, not only did the project help thirteen people, it also cut costs considerably."

Project involved giving each person about $4k with no strings attached; support available but not required.
Oct 12, 2020 07:44AM Add a comment
Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World

Enthusiastic Reader
Enthusiastic Reader is on page 25 of 336 of Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World
"Between the police expenses, court costs, and social services, these thirteen troublemakers have racked up a bill estimated at $650,000 or more. Per year."
Oct 12, 2020 07:41AM Add a comment
Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World

Enthusiastic Reader
Enthusiastic Reader is on page 32 of 320 of Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen
"Because farming required much larger, more complex forms of social organization, it enabled farming civilizations to easily overwhelm small dispersed populations of established hunter-gatherers."

Is it possible to have surplus & complex society w/o hierarchy?

Independent parallel development seems to suggest otherwise.
Sep 10, 2020 10:18AM Add a comment
Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen

Enthusiastic Reader
Enthusiastic Reader is on page 32 of 320 of Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen
"Agriculture was much more productive than hunting and gathering and enabled populations to grow rapidly. It also created occasional surpluses, and with surpluses came hierarchies and systems of tribute. And hierarchies and tributes, in turn, nurtured an urge to gather more resources, to expand and conquer."
Sep 10, 2020 10:16AM Add a comment
Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen

Enthusiastic Reader
Enthusiastic Reader is on page 32 of 320 of Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen
"By becoming farmers, our ancestors changed from foragers to producers and from hunters to makers, a process that ultimately paved the way for our transition from being the cleverest mammal to the most dominant species of any kind at any point in our planet's history."
Sep 10, 2020 10:15AM Add a comment
Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen

Enthusiastic Reader
Enthusiastic Reader is on page 29 of 320 of Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen
"In many ways the secret of their success, and the endurance of their way of life, was based on their having reached a form of dynamic equilibrium with the broader environment, a balance between its relative stability and harshness. The evolutionary success of Khoisan, in other words, was based not on their ability to continuously colonize new lands, expand and grow into new spaces, or develop new technologies."
Sep 10, 2020 10:12AM Add a comment
Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen

Enthusiastic Reader
Enthusiastic Reader is on page 16 of 320 of Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen
"much of our contemporary economic and cultural behavior—including the conviction that work gives structure and meaning to our lives, defines who we are, and ultimately empowers us to master our own destinies—is a legacy from our transition from hunting and gathering to farming."
Sep 10, 2020 10:05AM Add a comment
Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen

Enthusiastic Reader
Enthusiastic Reader is on page 16 of 320 of Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen
"What was also special about primitive affluence was that it suggested that Keynes's 'economic problem' was not a 'permanent condition' of the human species but instead that it was a relatively recent phenomenon when viewed against the broader scope of human history."
Sep 10, 2020 10:03AM Add a comment
Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen

Enthusiastic Reader
Enthusiastic Reader is on page 16 of 320 of Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen
"What was special about the Bushman data was that it showed that they coped easily with relative scarcity and that they had mastered the art of not obsessing about whether the grass was greener on the other side, which—given that they lived in one of the world's oldest deserts—almost certainly was the case."
Sep 10, 2020 10:02AM Add a comment
Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen

Enthusiastic Reader
Enthusiastic Reader is on page 13 of 320 of Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen
"Time magazine published a special feature...

'Imagine a society in which the work week seldom exceeds 19 hours, material wealth is considered a burden, and no one is much richer than anyone else,' enthused the writer. 'Unemployment is high there, sometimes reaching 40%... because [they believe] that only the able-bodied should work, and then no more than necessary... The people are... happy and secure.'"
Sep 10, 2020 07:58AM Add a comment
Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen

Enthusiastic Reader
Enthusiastic Reader is on page 11 of 320 of Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen
"Here, it seemed, was a people unconcerned with material wealthy, living in harmony with their natural environments, who were also egalitarian, uncomplicated, and fundamentally free."
Sep 10, 2020 05:49AM Add a comment
Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen

Enthusiastic Reader
Enthusiastic Reader is on page 11 of 320 of Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen
"A good case can be made that hunters and gatherers work less than we do, Sahlins explained, "and that, rather than a continuous travail, the food quest is intermittent, leisure abundant, and there is a greater amount of sleep in the daytime per capita per year than in any other condition of society."

Y'all. THEY TAKE MORE NAPS THAN ANYONE ELSE.
Sep 10, 2020 05:46AM Add a comment
Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen

Enthusiastic Reader
Enthusiastic Reader is on page 10 of 320 of Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen
"He revealed that Ju/'hoansi spent only fifteen hours a week securing their nutritional requirements and only a further fifteen to twenty hours per week on domestic activities that could loosely be described as "work." Given that in 1966 the forty-hour week had only recently been introduced... and that the average adult... [also spent] time on a long list of domestic chores... these figures appeared extraordinary."
Sep 10, 2020 05:40AM Add a comment
Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen

Enthusiastic Reader
Enthusiastic Reader is on page 7 of 320 of Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen
"[Keynes] was scathing about those who sought wealth for wealth's sake. As far as he was concerned, the abandonment of avarice was key to ensuring the realizations of this economic Utopia. "The love of money as a possession... will be recognized for what it is," he opined: "a somewhat disgusting morbidity."
Sep 10, 2020 05:35AM Add a comment
Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen

Enthusiastic Reader
Enthusiastic Reader is on page 6 of 320 of Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen
"Keynes was right about improvements in technology and productivity... The US Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us that labor productivity in the United States saw a fourfold increase between 1945 and 2005. But Keynes was wrong about the fifteen-hour week."
Sep 09, 2020 11:40AM Add a comment
Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen

Enthusiastic Reader
Enthusiastic Reader is on page 6 of 320 of Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen
"The future to which Keynes's wings flew him was an economic Canaan: a promised land in which technological innovation, improvements in productivity, and long-term capital growth had ushered in an age of 'economic bliss.' An era in which we are all able to satisfy our material needs by working no more than fifteen hours a week and in which we are liberated to focus on more profound joys than money."
Sep 09, 2020 11:38AM Add a comment
Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing World of the Bushmen

Enthusiastic Reader
Enthusiastic Reader is on page 126 of 242 of Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right
This is not helping me UNDERSTAND the conservative perspective. It just seems like desperation and ostriching.
Sep 06, 2020 03:55PM Add a comment
Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right

Enthusiastic Reader
Enthusiastic Reader is on page 92 of 242 of Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right
"from 2007 to 2015, as mentioned, Governor Bobby Jindal drew $1.6 BILLION from schools and hospitals to give TO companies as 'incentives.'"

WHY IS THIS OKAY? WHY DO FOLKS LOOK DOWN ON HANDOUTS TO HUMAN BEINGS BUT CHEER FOR THEM WHEN THEY'RE DOLED OUT TO CORPORATIONS THAT APPARENTLY COULDN'T MANAGE A PROFIT WITHOUT THEM?
Sep 06, 2020 06:55AM Add a comment
Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right

Enthusiastic Reader
Enthusiastic Reader is on page 91 of 242 of Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right
"Meanwhile the city government of Lake Charles launched its own Ozone Advance Program, which focused exclusively on what private citizens could do."

WHY ARE PRIVATE CITIZENS RESPONSIBLE FOR CHANGING **THEIR** BEHAVIOR TO CLEAN UP THE MESSES THAT CORPORATIONS CREATE?
Sep 06, 2020 06:51AM Add a comment
Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right

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