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"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.

"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."

"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.

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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.'"

"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."

"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.

"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."

"[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."

"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."

"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."

This is not helping me UNDERSTAND the conservative perspective. It just seems like desperation and ostriching.

"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?

"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?