Another way of looking at the cost of food

[GliderGuider]

I'm starting to play with a new idea. It's not fully formed yet, but I thought I'd toss its bare bones out here and let people gnaw on it if they wish.

The idea is this: "To a first approximation, the ultimate goal of all human activity is the acquisition of food."

In a hunter-gatherer society that statement would be obvious. However, all the layers of complexity and abstraction we have added to the human experience in the last 10,000 years have obscured a fact that seems fundamental - if we don't eat, we don't live. Therefore everything we do is directed at some level degree towards ensuring that our internal lights stay on.

In one sense this is an exercise in pushing system boundaries out as far as possible. In another way, it's a simple recognition that all human endeavour rests on the physiological base of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Eating is not optional. All else is.

If we accept that premise, it follows that we can create a measure of the "cost of food" by comparing a measure of overall human activity to the number of calories we consume to perform it.

If the measure of activity is GDP (currently ~$60 trillion per year), the average human caloric intake is 2500 kcal/day and there are 6.9 billion people in the world, then every dollar of world GDP pays for about 100 kcal of intake. this means that it takes a $25 share of the global GDP to feed a person. People who don't contribute $9,000 per year to the world economy are having their eating subsidized in complex, labyrinthine, heavily abstracted ways by those who contribute more.

No judgement is intended here. People who live on $500 a year are just as much human beings as those who make $500,000.
This is also not a look at actual food production, or the inequities/iniquities of food distribution failures.
It's just a different look at how much activity it takes to keep all 7 billion of us walking around.

I'd welcome any thoughts you might have.

[HereSince1628]

1. Human activity is about survivial which is about water, food, and shelter

In a capitalist world, water, food and shelter would be controlled by capitalists and used to create economic asymmetries...
which result in local shortages of water, food and shelter that are the 1st approximation to basic human indignity.

[quakerboy]

2. perhaps I am missing something

But it seems as though you are making the jump that all things measured in total GDP are focused at food production. I think that its easy to see that the amount of money that would equal out to 2500kcal/day is not the same number as total world GDP.

At the same time, I wonder how you measure contribution. If the work a person does nets them 2500 kcal/day, then by this it would seem that the work they are contributing their 9k.

I dunno. To me your thought process is interesting, but seems a bit disjointed and not overly useful in comprehending the situation.

[GliderGuider]

3. No, you're not missing anything. There wasn't much there to miss...

You were right - I don't think it's useful either. Not all interesting ideas are good ones, and this one is going back in the junk drawer...:-(

[quakerboy]

8. If I came across overly negative, I appologize

The way I read your post, it was a technically curious idea who's only possible application would be libertarian judgmentalism at the best.

If I understood correctly, you might convert that thought somehow into thinking about measuring actual productivity. Going back to the numbers, your $25/day, it would be interesting to try to quantify that value out in comparison to peoples actual production of food or things that contribute to production of food. And then see exactly who is really doing their share towards our existance, vs who is vastly overpaid(and who vastly overpays for food)

[GliderGuider]

12. As I say below, money is a lousy mechanism for measuring productive activity

It has been contaminated by the inclusion of non-productive activities, and introduces a lot of distortions based on our cultural value systems. It's hard to come up with anything that's more directly related to the sum total of human activity, though.

The question about the "actual production of food" introduces the whole issue of setting the boundaries of the system. Are we to consider only direct agriculture, or the food system as a whole? If we consider the whole food system, do we consider (for example) the shelter and transportation costs of the factory workers who buiild farm machinery, the wages of the miners who extract the metal that is used to make the trucks that transport the food, the refrigerator technicians who keep it from spoiling in warehouses, the salary of finance guy who creates the insurance contracts for the ships that send food between continents, the airport workers who keep the runway lights on so food-laden planes can operate, etc. etc. etc.

At some point the system boundaries expand to include virtually all human activity, because once the money stops moving it's all used to buy food and shelter at some point.

[txlibdem]

4. Thanks for the "food for thought" - if you don't mind the tiny pun

I think your OP has come close to the truth when combined with post #1.

Once a person has solved the problem of regularly obtaining food then the next item on Maslow's Hierarchy becomes the focus of our energies. It is natural and proper for humans to want all of their basic needs to be met: healthy and nutritious food, clean and safe drinking water, safe and comfortable shelter, etc. What Capitalism has done is put the human race on a giant hamster wheel by their theft of resources that belong to all of us and then creating artificial scarcity for their own profit, and to our detriment; we will never get off the hamster wheel until we end Capitalism and it's henchman, money and monetary systems.

[GliderGuider]

13. Yes

I think the problems you describe have been around a lot longer than capitalism, though. Consider the wealth consolidation that happens under feudalism and monarchies of all sorts. Even socialist economies aren't immune from the theft of resources and artificial scarcities. In fact no socioeconomic system I know of is immune to it. I trace it back to the inherently centralizing nature of power hierarchies. When such a system is the backbone of a society, wealth and power always flows to the power elite. What we see as the theft of resources they see as protecting their rightful property, what we see as "artificial scarcity they see as the proper operation of the system. We relate it to capitalism because that's the system that has its foot on our necks. If we lived under a different system I suspect our view wouldn't be all that different.

[txlibdem]

16. There's some debate on exactly when the roots of Capitalism began

Karl Marx says it was in the 15th century and called it "the pre-history of Capitalism." Others claim that it was mercantilism in the 16th century (aka Merchant Capitalism) that would eventually evolve into what we call Capitalism today.

I believe in a broader definition of the social cancer that we now call Capitalism. My opinion is that this cancer began when the first coin was struck, separating a worker's labor from the product of his or her labor and translating X amount of labor into Y number of coins. And who set the value of the labor and coins? The ruling class, of course. Taking this view, we can trace the problem back thousands of years.

Truth: money is the root of all evil.

[GliderGuider]

17. "Money is the root of all evil"

You won't get any argument from me on that. Have you seen the video Money as Debt? It illuminates the simultaneous origin of debt and money very well.

From a slightly broader perspective, humanity's capacity for abstraction (of which money is one good example) is a double-edged sword that is both powerful and dangerous. It's powerful in that it enables more complex relationships with the real world, but dangerous in that any abstraction always alienates us from the real world to some degree.

Money alienates because it converts all real activity into numbers. When I receive a dollar from someone I have now way of knowing what sort of activity it represents - did they sweep floors to earn it, write a poem, grow some potatoes, teach a child to read, manage a hedge fund or clip a coupon? When I receive the dollar it tells me nothing about the person giving it to me (or about its provenance), so it is inherently alienating. The perception of value is transferred from the original activity to the money itself, and that's deadly.

[txlibdem]

18. Money enables the wealthy to exist as leaches, draining the lifes blood from the population

Hedge fund managers, bank fraudsters, stock speculators, these people reap huge benefits from the existence (the abstraction) of money but provide zero benefit to society -- and it can be argued that they bring significant harm to society when their collective greed turns to the pile of bullshit that it was all built upon from the start. Like the "mortgage backed securities."

/edited to add: End money ASAP. End inequity ASAP. Or face the consequences later.

[GliderGuider]

19. Ending money

I'd love to. I'd also like to end all power hierarchies, poverty and war. Since we can't realistically do any of that, we are faced with their consequences (not later, but NOW).

Since we can't easily or quickly change the mechanisms humanity uses to organize itself, we need to change the way individuals see their relationships with each other, other life and the planet itself. Perhaps if we encourage a few more individuals to mature in their attitudes we will have a greater chance of more positive values infecting the body politic down the road.

ETA: One thing that might speed the process of chage along is a rupture of some of the corporate-political-economic-social organizational systems that keep us bound to our traditional ways of doing things. How that might happen is anybody's guess, but the stresses that have been accumulating around the world (e.g a combination of global recession, soaring oil and food prices and the knock-on effects of Fukushima) may offer an opportunity or two in the short to medium term.

[txlibdem]

20. TPTB, the stresses that have been accumulating around the world

Do the powers that be see or care at all about the hardships they are causing? I doubt it. But the rupture of the current system of things is coming... sooner than the wealthy pullers of the current strings will want.

It is at that time that a large number of people need to know what they want to work toward, rebuild things the right way. Ending money and corporate power have to be at the top of the priority list.

[Terry in Austin]

26. I'd hang the blame on interest

Interest is the "money for nothing" that allows capitalists to have an income without productive activity.

Traditionally, charging any interest at all was considered usury, and was taboo in Christendom until, well, about the 15th century when the general secularization of European society known as the Renaissance got under way.

I'd also suggest that the charging of interest is the defining practice of capitalism.

[kristopher]

28. Defining terms +

The concept you are working with is 'the time value of money'.

Without going into a discussion about the merits of that concept, I'd first ask you if you find validity for other positions in archaic religious belief?

[Terry in Austin]

30. Dogma of one kind or another

'the time value of money' happens to be capitalist dogma.

You've already gone into a discussion of the merits of the practice, apparently, and found it favorable.

Don't think for a minute that religious belief, archaic or otherwise, has any capacity for validating anything here. Ultimately, the only thing that validates any proposition is your own acceptance of it.

It's simple -- I offer a proposition, you decline it, and we both come away knowing how you stand on capitalism, or at least on the practice of charging interest.

[kristopher]

31. That is reasonable, but I'm left wondering if you actually understand the concept ...

...of the time value of money.

Would you mind explaining why you think it is invalid on the merits, rather than with hyperbole? I'm not an economist, but some things just are what they are and the logic behind the practice of interest strikes me as valid.

If you are convinced there is a value component that makes the arguments invalid, I'd be interested in your opinion.

[Terry in Austin]

34. Okay, but assume nothing about me

I can't imagine why it would matter, but it's not really your place to wonder what I understand or don't, is it? But you seem serious enough about engaging on the point, so I'll do the same.

The "time value of money" doctrine is of course easy to understand, but perhaps less so is the question of how it has come to be established as a value -- a process that is intensely political, as is most of what we call "Economics." This is not to dismiss Economics, but to stay mindful that it is indeed "politics in disguise." Political rationalizations work best, of course, when they're simple and plausible.

The point -- and probably an easily-belabored point, I readily admit -- is that lending money at interest seems to me to be the key component of capitalism. If you have a system that doesn't involve the practice, it would be a stretch to classify it as capitalism, that's all.

I find that interesting, in an informal and offhand sort of way, because it appears to be a potential single point of failure, and it's oddly comforting to think that The Beast should be that vulnerable. (If you'll pardon the Biblical reference -- it's just literature to me).

Valid or not, capitalism is probably going to be with us for quite some time, and I don't have any illusions that we could ever shame it into stopping.

I'm sure it will be with us as long as there are people who care to exploit its more parasitic aspects and justify doing so with fine-sounding concepts like the "time value of money" or any of the other terminology that is used to rationalize gaining an income without doing any productive work -- always at the expense of those who are. In another age, it might have been "divine right of kings" -- the term would have sounded just as plausible and served much the same purpose.

I don't consider that any sort of logic can validate exploitation, and in my opinion the practice of lending at interest is inherently exploitative. What I definitely would consider invalid is treating an essentially moral question as one of logic only.

Again, that just happens to be my own value; yours may vary; both are arbitrary.

[GliderGuider]

37. Is it reasonable to think of interest as the rent on money?

IMO, the problem with interest is that it's being applied to the wrong thing. It's being applied to the abstraction of value rather than the underlying object or activity that represents the actual value. This mistake permits events like the Tulip Mania, where the underlying value (the tulip bulbs themselves) and the abstract representation of that value (their market price) were fundamentally disconnected. We end up treating money as though it were a "thing" in itself, when in fact it's not.

I don't know how one would go about assigning a time value to the underlying objects or activities. Perhaps the land-rent mavens of the Georgist school might have something to say about that.

[Terry in Austin]

44. Nailed it -- the reification of money

It's that disconnect that gives rise to "stupid money tricks" like interest. And derivatives, and even gambling, for that matter.

Your point also ties in nicely with the whole idea of three kinds of income: wages, profits and rents. And capitalists -- those who lend money at interest -- are arguably the most dominant rent-seeking class.

I do like Henry George, and I'd say there's good reason his stuff damn near outsold the Bible for a while there. Now, it's mostly a signpost on the road not taken from the Progressive era. (Good ideas have a way of coming back around, though -- maybe we're about due!)

I'm reminded that we could do worse than to revisit his ideas whenever people in my (very urban) neighborhood gripe about gentrification and crazy house prices. Land tax as George laid it out would go a long way in safeguarding against those tendencies.

More to the point, he shows a way to the next logical step, which is to admit that the very idea of anyone "owning land" is absurd -- if anything, the land belongs to the public, and policy should reflect the fact. That way, the money we pay to occupy a piece of it is rent (tax) paid to the public, rather than to some private rent-seeker whose only claim to ownership, tracing all the way back through its history of transfers of title, is sheer "right of conquest." That's ultimately how land is "acquired," after all.

BTW, it's the same situation when you "own" a home. I often refer (mostly jokingly) to the monthly mortgage payment as "paying the rent." In the sense that you mention, it is truly rent -- rent on the money that bought the house, rather than rent on the house directly.

[kristopher]

43. Thank you.

You've identified capitalism properly I think - it is indeed an outgrowth of the way we attach more value to a bird in the hand than we do two in the bush.

Another way to view what I think you are concerned with is the difference between an egalitarian culture and ones that have a vertically oriented hierarchy; would that be a safe interpretation?

Presuming that it is, then the knowledge we have about past and existing cultures tells us that money isn't the crux of the issue since the shift from egalitarianism occurred when we moved from a hunter-gatherer means of production to one based on agriculture. Here's why: No matter how good a hunter is, in that endeavor the element of chance always looms large so the role of provider for the group is one that rotates regularly. One day you might have all the fat to dole out, but the next you are the one holding your hand out for a share of what someone else has. Sharing and interdependency is seen in later cultures, but it is far less pure than what it was with hunter-gatherers.

When agriculture developed, people started developing more divergent skills. The "Big Man" system of agricultural intensification is probably the best example of how power accumulates as a result of many of the forces behind capitalism. You might enjoy reading about that if you haven't because it can give a great deal of insight into why the values you are concerned about have developed. I can recommend a couple of books that deal with this that are entertaining and excellent if you think it, in fact, what is at the core of your concerns.

[Terry in Austin]

45. You're welcome.

I'm glad you're in accord with the basic insight about capitalism as an inherently hierarchical political system, even though it's typically regarded as simply an economic one. There's that "politics in disguise" aspect again. Your observations about the roots of it lying in the nature of agrarian settlement patterns seem to be fairly widely accepted -- I certainly do.

And yes, my friend, I do indeed enjoy reading. If you have some specific titles to recommend, chances are good that some would be new to me -- I'd be interested in hearing about them!

[kristopher]

46. ...

If I said or implied "roots lie in" or anything like that, it was a mistake on my part. What I was pointing to was an early, pre-money example of the division of labor, specialization, and distribution of resources; which is the part of the picture that allows accumulation of wealth. In the case of the "Big Man" cultures for example, they often ended up being extremely poor.

Marvin Harris is probably the most important cultural analyst since Marx.

Short and sweet:
http://www.amazon.com/Cows-Pigs-Wars-Witches-Riddles/dp/0679724680
Product Description
This book challenges those who argue that we can change the world by changing the way people think. Harris shows that no matter how bizarre a people's behavior may seem, it always stems from concrete social and economic conditions

Longer with more discussion:
http://www.amazon.com/Cannibals-Kings-Cultures-Marvin-Harris/dp/067972849X
Product Description
In this brilliant and profound study the distinguished American anthropologist Marvin Harris shows how the endless varieties of cultural behavior -- often so puzzling at first glance -- can be explained as adaptations to particular ecological conditions. His aim is to account for the evolution of cultural forms as Darwin accounted for the evolution of biological forms: to show how cultures adopt their characteristic forms in response to changing ecological modes.

" magisterial interpretation of the rise and fall of human cultures and societies."
-- Robert Lekachman, Washington Post Book World

"Its persuasive arguments asserting the primacy of cultural rather than genetic or psychological factors in human life deserve the widest possible audience."
-- Gloria Levitas The New Leader

" original and...urgent theory about the nature of man and at the reason that human cultures take so many diverse shapes."
-- The New Yorker

"Lively and controversial."
-- I. Bernard Cohen, front page, The New York Times Book Review



Theoretical basis of above, very information dense:
http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Materialism-Struggle-Science-Culture/dp/0759101353

Product Description
Cultural Materialism, published in 1979, was Marvin Harris's first full-length explication of the theory with which his work has been associated. While Harris has developed and modified some of his ideas over the past two decades, generations of professors have looked to this volume as the essential starting point for explaining the science of culture to students. Now available again after a hiatus, this edition of Cultural Materialism contains the complete text of the original book plus a new introduction by Orna and Allen Johnson that updates his ideas and examines the impact that the book and theory have had on anthropological theorizing.


Let me add that when you use the word "Economics" the way you capitalize it leads me to believe that you are using it to mean a way of thinking about culture, not as a reference to the analytic tools which that field of study offers. That way of thinking is what pushed Harris out of the mainstream of academic and public attention. Be careful about conflating the tools with the worldview, though, because the analytic tools used in small "e" economics are extremely valuable to anyone hoping to explain the way humans interact with the world around them. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

[Terry in Austin]

47. Good man, Harris

He came out with Rise about the same time I was finishing up my anthropology degree (Capital "A"?), and he was getting a lot of favorable response for helping move the field past "the feet of the natives are large" style of ethnographic description.

As my emphasis was on linguistic and information-theory models of analysis (Levi-Strauss, Gregory Bateson, et al), I was very interested in how Harris developed ideas like "emic" vs. "etic" descriptions first offered by Sapir and Pike, going back to straight-out linguists like Saussure. I was able to make good use of it in a couple of papers. It was a little ironic that Harris put more of a moral spin on the distinction, as it was originally an attempt to impart some methodological rigor to a science that was still very close to being a humanity.

Not that there's anything wrong with a moral spin; for one thing, methodologically it was another step in grappling with the problem of informant data -- how to reconcile the view of a culture "from the inside" (emic) versus "from the outside" (etic), while others were approaching the same problem with the "participant-observer" style of field work.

I haven't checked out Harris's more recent stuff, but you've gotten my attention -- it sounds like he's well along in developing the information-theoretic models that started with Sapir-Whorf principles and a lot of the cultural evolution school. I've always thought that this was a very productive line of inquiry. It looks like there might even be a dash of what Jared Diamond is doing on a popular level -- I don't know, we shall see if it's a fair comparison.

I take your point about not conflating Economics with the study of economic behavior -- one masquerades as the other all too often. I just don't agree that the tools have as much value as they are often represented to have, and might actually offer, were it not for the insistence by its practitioners on its having such a role in policy. I take the view that to the extent it's normative, to that same extent it's not good science.

As ever, YMMV.

[kristopher]

51. A moral spin?

I never got that from his writings. What prompts the statement?

[Terry in Austin]

54. Just an impression

I can't think of why you would, necessarily.

Don't get the wrong idea: "moral" is not a slam. Probably a hasty choice of usage on my part, but it's more in the sense of "custom," or from within the mores of a particular culture, not in the sense of "this is good/this is bad."

The emic/etic discussion was a fine enough point in the first place, and I certainly don't think that it matters enough to represent any challenge to Harris's standing. For making the more important points about Harris and cultural materialism, though, I'll thank you... as well as the mention of Marx as anything but a demon!

[kristopher]

56. If...

...you haven't thought about Harris for a while, or if you didn't delve too deeply into his writings, this outline of cultural materialism could be interesting.

http://www.indiana.edu/~wanthro/theory_pages/Materialism.htm

[Terry in Austin]

57. Appreciate the concern

If you've delved deeply into his writings, then I'm confident in knowing that there is a Harris disciple to whom I can come with any questions I might have. The link looks pretty handy, actually.

[GliderGuider]

66. This thread has prompted me to re-open my copy of "Cultural Materialism"

I bought it a few years ago specifically to prove you were wrong about infrastructure driving beliefs. I was quite strident in my rejection of the notion at that time, as I recall. I was trying to prove my conclusions, and in the process I fell straight into the trap of emic cultural idealism.

I'm now far enough into my re-examination to say I was utterly wrong, and Harris is every bit the genius you claim. The theory provides a very coherent foundation from which to understand the incomprehensible, like why lecturing people on environmental morality is so ineffective at changing their behaviour, and why different historical cultures have had such radically different sets of beliefs and values. I'm waiting for the section in which he says he discusses neuro-psychology, a subject that has become core to my own world-view, because I'm now expecting that he'll shed some penetrating light on that as well.

Thanks for encouraging me to get the book in the first place. I've even ordered three of his other books as a consequence.

[Humansletstalkok]

5. Totally non-human view of humans

"To a first approximation, the ultimate goal of all human activity is the acquisition of food."

No. If I had to choose one "goal," I'd say the goal of all human activity is "play."

That is also the goal of many dogs, and some other animals.

Obtaining food is a means to getting the energy to play. Play includes loving, cuddling, having sex, making beautiful artifacts and sounds, dancing and telling stories, creating a more beautiful living environment, adorning themselves, collecting, taming and playing with animals, modifying their bodies, and expressing themselves. That's where all the value that doesn't go into food is in your calculation.

When people have enough food they don't stop doing things or try to stuff themselves with ever more food. They turn their attention to "higher" pursuits -- play, love, art, sex, music. Not the other way around.

In every civilization, the highest goal of the elites was to play.

No one who has achieved sufficient food and is engaging in this other activities decides, ya know, let me close this book, turn off the tv, stop listening to music, put away my partner from my bed so I can scrounge around and find ever more food.

"if we don't eat, we don't live"

And if we don't get mental stimulation (eg a prisoner in a dark cell in solitary) we are likely to go so barking mad that we stop eating. People will starve themselves to death under the right circumstances; they will never stop playing.

Your post is a reductive, unrealistic view of humanity. At any rate, you have no evidence for thinking you know how people prioritize their activities. The very poorest people on the planet will throw a party and dance and have a festival and tell stories if they get enough calories to do so, and often even if they don't.

[kristopher]

6. Not necessarily.

"Your post is a reductive, unrealistic view of humanity."

While I don't think the OP is following the most fruitful line of inquiry, the pursuit of energy (food) is the primary function of life; it is the most universal motivational force that exists. To research ideas oriented around that premise is not reductionism in my view; in fact, it is what underpins most of our understanding about the nature and role of infrastructure to social order.

[GliderGuider]

7. While I'm very sympathetic to the idea of play, it's not a requirement for life.

Humans are a biological species like all others. Without fuel, they all stop moving. Humans can live without play, but we cannot play if we don't eat first. Yes, people will starve themselves to death when they are depressed, and we do other things besides eat when we're full. But examine someone who is involuntarily starving and look at how much interest they have in literature, television or even sex.

Eating isn't something biological organisms (even humans) "prioritize". It's the bedrock requirement for continued existence.

[cprise]

10. That's funny, b/c your priorities seem to be "dollars before food"

That is the subtext of your original post.

Have a nice day.

[cprise]

9. I don't think so.

People that are getting paid/spending a pittance for doing menial jobs are the ones who materially subsidize the wealthier consumers, not the other way around.

You are making a false correlation between GDP and food production. I would say that most GDP activity today has little or nothing to do with supporting agriculture, so the relationship between the two is somewhat lopsided. Then there are currency and market disparities that have people earning wildly different amounts for producing the same kcals depending on where they live. Finally, you make an "overall" comparison then briskly move to singling out some people for not producing enough (...dollars, that is).

Money is often an inaccurate measure of the world, especially in this age. That is why monied interests are are increasingly pitting themselves against science, to try and maintain a business hierarchy and set of priorities that is physically unsustainable.

Is that what you wanted to know, or would you like to try screwing with our heads some more?

[GliderGuider]

11. I know money is an inaccurate measure

But if we want to measure overall human activity, it's about all we have. I'd love it if there was some other objective measure, because the abstraction of activity into money introduces a lot of distorting cultural assumptions about the relative value of various activities.

Regarding your objection to GDP activities not supporting agriculture, what you're bumping against is a system-boundary issue. I understand that most of us see most human activity as having little to do with food, but I'm inviting you to set aside that assumption for a moment to see if it changes your thinking about what we are doing, and why. IMO, the reason we measure everything in terms of money goes back to the earliest days of agriculture, 8,000 years ago. When one person (or group of people) took over the responsibility for producing food for the whole tribe or village, there had to be some way of figuring out how much food each non-farmer was entitled to. In order to do that, the productive activities of the non-farmers had to be equated in value to a variety of foodstuffs. Initially barter was the norm, but as the number of specialized non-food-related activities grew, a more formal mechanism was required. So the abstraction of money was developed to provide a common basis for comparison (a medium of exchange).

This standard initially equated the value of each non-food activity to the value of some amount of food, but it only took a nanosecond for people to realize that they could now compare the values of two non-food-related activities directly. At that point the economy lost the obvious connection to food that it had when only barter was used for exchange. The elaboration of the non-food-related aspect of the economy has tended to obscure the underlying truth that all economic activities are intended, once the money stops moving, to buy food and shelter for the economic actors.

As a result, I think it's quite legitimate to compare the aggregate of our productive activity to the aggregate of our food consumption. I just wish there was a better measure than GDP.

One man's shift in perspective is another man's head-screwing I guess. Feel free to ignore it if it bothers you.

[cprise]

14. You are pushing a market-fundamentalist view in a science focused forum.

<quote>As a result, I think it's quite legitimate to compare the aggregate of our productive activity to the aggregate of our food consumption.</quote>
That's not what you did and you know it. You called it an "overall" (aggregate) comparison while singling out a demographic that you thought had too low a contribution to GDP to be pulling their own weight at the dinner table.


Now, its up to you whether you want to tackle my criticisms (without being evasive or mealy-mouthed) but if you don't then I have to question your motive for posting such talking points in the first place.

[GliderGuider]

15. I actually singled out two income demographics - one very high and one very low.

You are interpreting my comment as a criticism of the low-income demographic, and I can see how you came to that conclusion through my use of the word "subsidize", but I didn't intend it as such. One of my ongoing difficulties is my tendency to over-aggregate in my search for common underlying influences. I've done that in the past with population and energy, now I may be doing it with food and money. The human experience is discontinuous and highly variable across space and time. While I believe it's important to look at the reasons for that variability, I'm more interested in probing the underlying drivers that remain the same. Those drivers tend to be physical (such as food and energy) and the aspects of behaviour that spring from our evolved neuropsychology. That orientation sometimes brings my views into conflict with those of people who are more focussed on policy issues, especially from a social-justice perspective.

I didn't intend any diss on poor people. I was simply pointing out that:

- everyone needs to eat 2500 or so calories a day to survive;
- all human activity has physical survival as its goal;
- in our culture food costs money;
- in our culture money is used as the measure of human activity;
- some people are rich and some are poor, but we all still eat 2500 calories a day.

The fact that some people are richer than Croesus while others are poorer than church-mice is a great iniquity. I've examined the roots of that problem in other writings, and have come to the conclusion that it's the inevitable outcome of using power hierarchies as the organizing principle of our civilization. Hierarchies invariably pump power and wealth away from the masses and towards the power elite. As long as we retain hierarchies as our cultural skeleton, changes to policy and legislation can only partially control the problem. My preference is to attack the notion of hierarchy itself, rather than its symptoms. I know that's quixotic (not to mention somewhat anarchistic), but it's my position at the moment.

[cprise]

22. Anarchists who have a blind spot for money-system heirarchies

are usually called libertarians here.

You may come from a background and recent economic history that are different, but in the West we are learning that describing essential physical processes primarily in dollar terms is extreme folly. In fact, forums like this exist so that people can more effectively discuss the world in physical terms like quads, equiv. tons of CO2, genetic diversity, precipitation, insolation, population, etc. without the cultural imperatives of money obfuscating that wealth of scientific information which is available.

[GliderGuider]

23. OK, give me a nice straight-forward metric that measures all human activity.

I don't know how much time you spend on this board, but I have a fair bit of experience with describing the world in terms of biophysical stocks and flows. There just isn't one I've found that comes close to capturing the totality of human activity. That's why I had to fall back on GDP - for all its flaws money is a universally recognized and relatively standardized abstraction of human activity. If you can suggest an alternative I'll eagerly consider it.

[cprise]

24. NO.

You can't reduce human activity or the environment down to a single variable, GDP least of all.

[GliderGuider]

25. If you take that approach, you can't measure anything, not even subatomic particles

Measuring the indefinite or the complex may or may not be useful, but we accept that it can be done - so long as one keeps the error bars in mind. For a system as complex as human activity the imprecision is necessarily large, but that doesn't mean we can't use some abstraction of it in a thought experiment. It's like the I=PAT equation. We've had very little luck in actually calculating anything with it, but it's quite a useful concept when we're thinking about human ecological impact.

My underlying message was that despite all appearances to the contrary, the vast majority of human activity is directed towards securing food and shelter. Do you disagree with that premise?

[cprise]

33. nt

Measuring the indefinite or the complex may or may not be useful, but we accept that it can be done - so long as one keeps the error bars in mind.

Excellent. Didn't I already give you a list of suggested metrics that are more suited to this forum?

I am not against measurement. I'm against using money as a master, reductionist measurement. Can you acknowledge this aspect of my posts directly, or do we have to keep dancing around your deliberate misinterpretation?

My underlying message was that despite all appearances to the contrary, the vast majority of human activity is directed towards securing food and shelter. Do you disagree with that premise?

I honestly don't know, though I'd say "not" WRT industrialized countries. If it is true on the whole, trying to use GDP to show it can only distort our understanding and give poor people the short end of the stick.

Note that my guess was right according to the report you linked: Less than half of GDP goes to supporting agriculture -- much less it seems. Meanwhile food and shelter together account for 45%, which you distort into meaning "the vast majority" by re-purposing the non-agricultural part of the total to the agricultural part.

[GliderGuider]

36. Interesting comments

You suggested some metrics, but none of them expressed the whole of human activity. Money, for all its faults, is the one construct that is accepted by virtually everyone as ostensibly measuring the value of any human activity imaginable. I know you don't think it's appropriate, but that is, after all, just your opinion. Most of the other 6.9 billion people on the planet disagree with you. I'm looking to explore the question of human impact in terms that everyone will have some connection to.

To determine whether the "other 45%" is essential to securing food and shelter, there is a very quick thought experiment you can perform. Imagine a world in which none of the activity that generates that other 45% of GDP occurs. What happens to our ability to eat and shelter ourselves? I claim that if all that activity were to cease, we would not be able to feed and shelter ourselves for a variety of reasons - primarily the loss of income and the loss of activities necessary to indirectly support the food and housing industries. How much of that 45% we could lose before the effects became intolerable is an open question, but there's no doubt in my mind that losing all of it would be catastrophic.

On the question of reductionism, I would claim that it is your approach that is actually reductionist. I say this because it exhibits the typical qualities of reductionism: an ability to understand the operation of the components of a system in great detail, while missing the big, holistic picture completely. Fortunately both the world and this DU forum are large enough to permit both the reductiomnist and holistic approaches to operate side by side without prejudice.

[cprise]

49. Even when it comes to money, you distort figures

...and then denigrate a response that points out the falsehood as just an opinion.

The figures you're using are the TOTAL for all spending within the sampling period. No thought experiment is going to dig you out of that error.

We already know that food is a prerequisite for human life. That doesn't mean that the rest of our activities wholly depend on the monetary aspect (that which shows in GDP) of food production.

Most of the other 6.9 billion people on the planet disagree with you.

I think most of humanity (esp. people outside the developed West) know something about the spread of Western agriculture and the results with vast numbers of rural people quitting farming and moving into the cities. But in any case, I am humbled that they have renounced science and chosen to speak through you and your multinational bankers' world view instead of venues like the World Social Forum and people like Vandana Shiva.

[GliderGuider]

50. I think we're talking past each other

I've tried several times in good faith to address your comments. I don't think we'll make much further progress on this one.

I hope you have a pleasant weekend.

[kristopher]

29. A thought

Your question is imprecise and vague.

For example an obvious answer might be aggregate breaths/minute, heartbeats/min or calories/minute; but that doesn't give you any insight about what you really want to know does it?

Aren't you really concerned with the interaction between humans and the environment? Don't you actually hope to find a way to conceptualize the "impact" of that into a singe, easy to appreciate mental image so that you can communicate to others the way your perception of that impact is altering you at a fundamental level?


Watching you grapple with these questions over the years I get the impression that is the underlying theme when you write of seeking an answer to environmental problems by altering people's behavior...

Why not spend a bit of time here barnstorming some questions around that or whatever might be a more accurate description of your goal, and THEN try to work out whether that question has an answer?

[GliderGuider]

38. Most of my response is below

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=293994&mesg_id=295258

To clarify my thrust a bit more, I'm not actually looking for a way to conceptualize human impact. I'm looking for a variety of ways to conceptualize it, so that more people with different backgrounds and world views might get a glimpse of it. In the process I'm using my explorations as a learning tool, and learning as much from my mistakes as from the successes.

My underlying concern is the same as many of us on this forum. I think that humans are damaging the natural world, unnecessarily and potentially beyond recognition, to the detriment of species that share the planet but cannot influence our behaviour. I think that if more people recognized this, especially with the understanding that anything we do to the natural world we also do to ourselves, we might choose to change our behaviour in ways both large and small. Much progress has been made on this front, but as long as there is activity like mountaintop removal mining, deforestation and ocean acidification going on, we still need a lot more outreach.

[chillspike]

32. I have a sense of it but

If you don't mind, as briefly as possible so I don't disturb the flow of this thread, what are you trying to do?

[GliderGuider]

35. Good question.

As kristopher alludes to above, for a number of years now I've been working to come up with different ways to explore the impact human activity is having on the planet. I'm looking for ideas that might help people see past the obvious human-centric value of our activity and understand its consequences to other life. In the process I've been trying to deepen my own understanding of what's going on. This leads me to explore a wide variety of approaches to the question - some more useful, some less so.

[chillspike]

39. Okay thanks

Fascinating thread. I had the faint sense that you were trying to find out if a monetary value should be put on work (human activity unrelated to the actually acquisition of food). I was going to say that presupposes that producers and gathers of food are owned anything for their production by others. I would maintain they are not and should freely share whatever EXTRA resources they don't need for their basic comfort with other members of their species. My point being, in a group species, resources are obtained to advance the group regardless of who did and didn't collect or produce them. (Not all lions hunt but all usually get a share of the spoils.) The work done, and by whom, to procure the resources is irrelevant. As a group species, our individual efforts advance the group as a whole. If you had an inherent right to the totally of what you were able to collect or transform for consumption then, if you were able to collect every resource, you could justifiably deny access and use of it to every one else. But the fact is, there are other beings on this planet and no one will ever have a rational right to all of a resource no matter how much they've worked for it and how little everyone else has. So your work, your effort is irrelevant to your right to daily sustenance.

Competition only occurs when one side does not recognize the others right to that daily sustenance. Notice, once we recognized the sustenance needs of a certain species of wolf, we were able to make it our friend and live peaceably together without competition.


Additionally, can anyone really earn any resource that is either forcibly taken from another species or freely given up to us by the earth? I have earned as much right to the nutrition provided by an antelope I have killed than I have to the same from a person I killed. I didn't earn that. I stole it. I can't ever earn that. It was never mine.

Of course, this may not pertain to your research.

[GliderGuider]

41. Interesting points.

I'm definitely not trying to put monetary value on human activity - we've already done that for the last 5,000 years, and I think it's gotten us into a world of trouble.

I completely agree with the idea that we do not own natural resources. Is food a "natural resource"? I would say that if it's the result of foraging (hunting and gathering) the answer is yes. If it's the result of agriculture, the answer is not so clear - if I worked to produce enough food to feed 1,000 people, what is the value of my work? do I have a right to that value, since I created it? what are the limits on what I may do with it?

"From each according to their abilities, to each according to their need" works a lot better in a tribe or village of 200 than it does in a country of 50 million. I'm not sure what the answer is, short of devolution to smaller more autonomous communities.

[chillspike]

48. I would say no you don't have a right to all your work

Just enough to sustain your life comfortably. Why? Because number 1, it's not your resources and never was and, number 2, the energy required to hunt, to forage, to process agriculture was obtained from other species who did the work to sustain themselves which now sustains you. So if the very energy we use to acquire sustenance is taken from others, how can we say we created it? The cow we ate yesterday picked the berries we ate today, not us. We are all interconnected, exchanging energy and returning it to whence it came when it's our time. The only thing anyone owes you is the energy they took from you that ended your life.
Looking forward to your thoughts.

[GliderGuider]

53. What do I own, then? And how is the value I add to the world recognized?

Let's take it back to absolute basics. If the resources and exosomatic energy I use in my work is not mine (which I agree with), and the land I live on work on or farm is not mine (which I also agree with), and my time is worth the same as anyone else's (time being what it is), and money has been taken out of the equation to prevent the centralization of power, then the only thing left to be valued is my skill.

Here's a scenario:

Let's say my neighbour is an excellent baker, the woman across the street looks after other families' children, someone else is a carpenter who builds mediocre houses and the family at the end of the road raises high-quality wheat on some land the village all agreed they could use. I am a single poet with a garden sufficient for my own needs. People like my work, but I have no need of a house, I have no children that need minding, I don't grind my own flour, and the only service I use in this cartoon village is the baker. By contrast, the family down the road who grow wheat give most of their crop to the baker (and get baked goods in return), and also use the baby-sitter (to let them apply their skills to farming), the carpenter (to repair the crappy house he built them in the first place), and they ask for some of my poetry to read their kids to sleep with. In fact everybody in town except the baker reads my poetry and asks me to recite at parties.

How is my poetry to be valued next to the work of the family that grows wheat? Or the crappy carpenter? Or the baby-sitter? The number of services each of us uses is different, the number of clients each of us service is different, the quality of our labour is variable. The carpenter is not creative, while I am. I produce intangible goods, the farmer and the carpenter produce tangible results. How do I barter with someone like the baker who doesn't like poetry but has the bread I need? The more specialized and varied labour becomes, the harder it is to live without an abstract concept like money to bridge the gaps. In the end, everybody in the village has to be fed, keep the rain off their heads and have a bit of fun.

Perhaps the answer is to use money, but to agree that it shall have no time value (it's not worth more tomorrow than it is today, so no interest or demurrage can be applied). It simply stores the value of the actual work that the money represents. Each of us could apply to the village council to have our work valued at a specified rate, and when we spend money it buys only the services or work that the council decides in embodied in the output of each person. Would that work?

One obvious characteristic of such a system is that it would not support much growth - at least not growth in the current sense that is leveraged by the arrogation of natural resources. Would that be a good thing or a bad thing? Another characteristic is that such a system ought to reduce the value distinctions between people that come from wealth disparities.

I'm just playing with concepts here, using some of the ideas raised in this thread. Any and all thoughts are welcome.

[chillspike]

58. Why do you have to place a value on your poetry?

After you've eliminated money, why do you still feel a value has to be placed on anything?

To me, as long as all resources are freely shared and everyone is being fed, all the excess energy anyone devotes to any productive activity is just icing whose product can also be freely distributed amonst the group. There's no need to measure work for work. No bartering is going on. There are no clients. In an enlightened society, everyone knows everyone must be equally fed no matter where the resources come from. The act of feeding ourselves, which all able bodied members of the tribe would engage in, is bound to produce an excess of resources that are not immediately needed. That excess resource is the part of the spoils that is not the hunter or gatherers'. They have no right to it because they don't need it. If you are already fed, there is no need to put a price on your excess effort you made to acquire extra resources. You do it for the good of the community because you feel strong and able to do it without losing too much energy. One of the tenants of the Native Americans was not to take more than you need. One can hypothesize this was because more than you needed was not rightfully yours. It is the property of the other beings on the earth that do presently need sustenance. Obviously, this would also serve the ecosystem by keeping the gears of the food chain functioning since you will eventually receive that which you leave for others.

The tradition among the native Americans of Polatch illustrates such an attitude towards value well, I think. Excess resources could be freely given away without fear or asking a price for them.

At the end of every transference of energy in the form of consuming a resource, you own exactly what you started with and no more. Enough to sustain your life until the next transference of energy. You do not add any value to the world, you just transfer it.

At least, that's my take.

[GliderGuider]

59. Hmmm. It seems I still haven't gotten my head around the idea of gift economies.

The notion of hierarchy is apparently so deeply ingrained in my worldview that when I read your comment I felt like a fish being asked to see the water. Even as I rail against hierarchies I still automatically assume that "greater" and "lesser" talents must be arranged on a value scale in order for people to be happy. As you point out, that's manifestly not true. This defines one of the big differences between the "Takers" and the "Leavers" as Daniel Quinn defines them.

That was quite a startling experience. Thank you for making it so clear!

On edit: The more I sit with this experience, the more profound it becomes. I just talked about it with my fiance, who is way ahead of me on this stuff. She got it instantly, and mentioned William Morris' "News from Nowhere". She also said that one main piece of psychological growth needs to be accomplished to make it possible. That piece involves overcoming our urge to judge each other. She calls it "getting rid if the tyranny of should".

Thanks again. You've given me a great gift tonight.

[chillspike]

60. I didn't expect to be that much help

Coming into the thread I implicitly accepted everyone had a better handle on what was being discussed than I. And I still don't consider myself a qualified academic as, from the level of your discussion, I would guess that you and some in this thread are. But if anything I've contributed works for you and can be formally proven true, I'm glad I was able to share. From the level of your discussion, I'm sure you can take any truths I've inadvertedly shared much further than I can.

I hope I wasn't just being presumptuous that I could enlighten you or anyone on anything. If I was batshit crazy or extremely limited in my grasp, it would be okay if you told me so.

Regardless, I really found this thread enjoyable.

I'm going to look up Daniel Quinn, as I'm not familiar with him.

[GliderGuider]

61. On the Internet no one can tell I'm just a dog :-)

This is entirely a journey of personal discovery for me. I'm not an academic, but I have a tendency to be pedantic enough to be mistaken for one at first glance ;-)

I'm in a permanent ongoing process of figuring out WTF is really going on in the world, and how I might best respond to it. Each of us carries a piece of the puzzle, and I find that discussions like this can give people a chance to put that piece out where others like me can learn from it. That's one of the reasons I try to offer controversial opinions as starting points - they make people think "Oh yeah? Not f'ing likely - here's how it really works!" And before they know it they've put another piece of the puzzle out in the public eye. Just like you did.

Daniel Quinn is a novelist who wrote a odd and interesting little book called "Ishmael". It uses the plot device of a telepathic gorilla guru to talk about what's going on: where modern culture originated, how it became what it is, the essential contrasts Quinn sees between modern industrial civilization (composed of people he calls "Takers") and hunter-gatherer societies (composed of "Leavers"). If you can suspend your disbelief in intelligent telepathic gorillas, I think you'd enjoy it.

[chillspike]

62. I checked out Quinn's Wiki bio & website

Looks very interesting. I'll have to check out his work.

It's good to see all the people online such as yourself working together to figure it all out for the betterment of our future. As much as we all usually struggle with forming and agreeing on solid answers, I think we've all become wise to the failures of the current system. The charge is being led from all different directions. Here's another: http://www.iamthedoc.com/thefilm/. We're all starting to read each others minds about how to see things and what to do about them. It's bound to all fuse and solidify into one big push back against the status quo. I sense (and hope) our collective impatience with the current system will reach a critical mass soon.

There's certainly more to figure out in regards to a gift economy. Like how are troublemakers or those who introduce a negative value to a group handled? Those who are deliberately destructive and also selfish. My own theory is their treatment should ultimately depend on the difference between a compliant and helpful member of a group species and a member who behaves as if they belong to a solitary species, i.e. fights over territory, hoards food, etc. Solitary species are solitary because they are more competitive over resources within their own species. And thus, in a healthy group species, such competitive members would be shunned and soon find themselves alone. In group species, competitiveness has been overcome or significantly reduced. That's why they are able to exist as a group or herd or pride or whatever. The more you can cooperate within your own species, the stronger that species will become, as seen in the most cooperative and strongest species yet, humans. I think competitiveness will one day be determined to be inversely proportional to a species' survival success.

[chillspike]

52. Btw

I do agree with you that the ultimate goal of all humans is the acquisition of food.

[kristopher]

40. So you are trying to transform people into altruist?

You wrote, "I'm looking for ideas that might help people see past the obvious human-centric value of our activity and understand its consequences to other life."

That's a tall order on its face. What causes the differences between altruist and those with ego-centric values in the first place?

[GliderGuider]

42. Ah, you're cutting closer to the bone now.

I think that human values are a mix of altruism and selfishness, cooperation and competition, egalitarianism and hierarchy, autonomy and membership, reductionism and holism. I think that for the last five to ten thousand years the values of competition, hierarchy, autonomy, reductionism and selfishness have been ascendant. I think those values have prompted human activity that has been harmful to the planet and ultimately to ourselves. I suspect that promoting a more altruistic, cooperative, egalitarian, holistic and interconnected set of attitudes will probably make a positive difference to the world at large and human societies in particular.

The origin of those traits is up for debate, but there's no question that they are either supported or repressed by cultural forces. While nature plays a role at the evolutionary level, there's enough evidence that humans are "naturally" capable of either set of values to let us conclude that nurture wins the day when it comes to the values that get cultural expression.

I'm definitely trying to shift us out of "Column A" and more into "Column B".

[tama]

72. Here

πάντων χρημάτων μέτρον άνθρωπος - Protagoras"

Human is the measure of all things.

[GliderGuider]

21. A slightly closer look shows that the world spends over 50% of its GDP on food and shelter.

From this source comes the revelation that the world spends about 25% of its GDP (in its final expression as household income) on food. Shelter looks like it takes another 30% or so. I'd speculate that much of the 45% remainder is spent on activities aimed at getting the first 55% (cars to drive to work, clothes to wear at work, the education needed to become a worker etc.) And in the end even that 45% eventually becomes someone else's food and shelter.

For all the complexification of modern civilization over the last 10,000 years, the vast majority of human productive activity still appears to be aimed at fulfilling what Maslow describes as first-level needs. The only human activities that don't cost money are the same ones that didn't cost much for hunter-gatherers either - creative pursuits like music, art, dance and storytelling.

For those who would object to this portrayal, ask yourselves how much time and money you set aside for pursuits related to self-actualization. Do you have four or five hours a day you can devote to art or contemplating the larger questions of life? If you are lucky enough to have such a luxury, is it possible that someone (or some large group of someones) is implicitly subsidizing that activity?

[XemaSab]

27. As a biologist I have to subscribe to the Darwinian view:

It's all about having kids who themselves survive to reproduce.

[cprise]

55. But what is Darwin's contribution to the GDP?

Without knowing that, people will not be able to understand natural selection.
:crazy:

[Nederland]

63. The basic premise is wrong

Your basic premise that all human activity has physical survival as its goal is incorrect. It is more accurate to say that all human activity has the goal of passing on its genes to the next generation.

[GliderGuider]

64. Yes, Dr. Dawkins - but what's required for the organism to accomplish that?

The human organisms must survive to the age required to reproduce and train their whelps to survive in turn, yes? And to do that, food and shelter are needed, right?

I don't see how your observation invalidates the thrust of my speculation...

[GliderGuider]

65. To clarify the need for food and shelter as the infrastructure for reproduction

In order to propagate the species in its current biological form, humans must initially live for about 18 years to achieve personal reproductive age, then spend another 8 years or so in child-bearing, then devote another 18 years to raising their youngest child to reproductive maturity, then survive an additional 8 years or so to assist their youngest child in its own child-bearing activities (for example by making up for any food and/or shelter shortfall their offspring might encounter due to time spent in child-rearing). That makes about 50 to 55 years in total - essentially a complete human lifetime. During that time food and shelter are a constant requirement.

Whether we say the ultimate goal of human activity is reproduction or the acquisition of food and shelter, the two are essentially synonymous from the perspective of human productive activity.

[Nederland]

67. Well, first the organism has to attract a mate

I would just note that my starting premise fits observed human behavior better, and helps explain some of the insane excesses of industrial society that your starting premise doesn't. You observe that reproducing the species requires food and shelter, but this is obvious. The real question is why to humans feel the need to go so far beyond these simple basics. In a society that has made supplying the basic necessities trivially easy, an individual has to do much more than prove he or she can provide for any potential offspring in order to attract a mate. As a result we don't just feed ourselves, we go to elaborate restaurants filled with people that create and serve us exotic dishes that don't even taste very good. We don't just build shelter for ourselves, we build huge monstrosities filled thousands of square feet dedicated to storing useless items. We don't just cloth ourselves, we spend an inordinate amount of time choosing how to cloth ourselves and throw out perfectly functional items simply because they've gone out of style. Dawkins would no doubt point out that all of this ridiculous activity serves the purpose of convincing a potential mate that we are successful individuals whose genes are a good bet.

Beyond explaining its excesses, my starting premise also explains some other curious behaviors of modern society. Given that the first world produces so much more food than it needs to survive, why doesn't it ship even more of its surplus to feed the poor starving people of Africa? Well, Dawkins would point out that not only do we have a desire to reproduce our own genes, we also have an urge to ensure the survival of genes most similar to our own. This is why we will make sacrifices to help out a nephew or niece that we would not make for some stranger. It also explains why we seem to pay far more attention to the news story of a missing pretty young white girl than millions of starving brown people in Africa. We are programmed at a genetic level to help those that looks most like ourselves.

Simply put, if you are looking for an explanation of why a country's GDP is dedicated to the activities it is, my starting premise is a much better fit. My starting premise explains why we have an economy that produces million dollar sports cars, your doesn't.

[GliderGuider]

68. How much of human activity doesn't end up as food and shelter?

I agree that our high level of energy throughput (especially in the industrialized West) has allowed us to develop cultural embellishments that are very energy-dependent. We don't tattoo our faces with ashes and sharpened bones, instead we buy season tickets to sports games. However, what you see as "insane excesses" I see differently - to me they seem more like normal cultural display activities that have been complicated and extended because of the cheap energy we have available. I firmly believe that even the construction of "huge monstrosities" in the final analysis comes down to food and shelter - if not for the inhabitants of said monstrosities, then for the legion of workers who build and maintain them. You may disagree with the cultural values that are expressed by the building of monstrosities (as I do) but that doesn't mean they somehow exist outside the overall human food/shelter system or even in the end take energy away from it.

I also agree that the concept of inclusive fitness implies that we will altruistically help "our own" before we help an "other". Yet we are not simply genetic automata either. We have some ability, at least on an individual basis, to override both our genetic and cultural programming. We may not be able to go so far afield as deciding to become Aztec warrior-priests complete with ritual cannibalism in downtown Pittsburgh, but we do have some leeway. This seems to apply more to individuals though. The larger the group becomes, the more the normative influences of culture and the constraints of our physical environment combine to keep our behaviour and beliefs "close to home".

I expect my newfound enthusiasm for Harris will lead me to a more coherent response in due course :-)

BTW, I also think moral judgments are not terribly helpful when it comes to figuring out what's going on, and why. They help in figuring out which parts of a system one might prefer to change, but in my recent experience, starting from a sense of revulsion seriously hampers one's objectivity.

[Nederland]

69. In first world economies, quite a lot

Million dollar sports cars, ten million dollar museums, hundred million dollar movies. The vast bulk of economic activity in a first world economy has nothing to do with food or shelter. The fact that the creation of sports cars, planes and movies allows the people that create those things to eat is not as relevant as you claim. The truth of a first world economy is that it could easily provide adequate food and shelter for everyone with a trivial amount of labor. And yet no first world economy does this--they all produce lots of extra stuff on top of the food and shelter people need to survive.

Your premise is that "the ultimate goal of all human activity is the acquisition of food". If this were true, people would acquire the food they need to survive and then kick back and relax. The fact that very few people do this is evidence that your premise is wrong. People want more than just food and shelter. Food is not the ultimate goal of all human activity. Food is merely what enables people to live long enough to get what they really want--which is to see their genes carried on.

[chillspike]

70. I think glider has it right

With some caveats. Maybe, in a HEALTHY psychology an individuals' primary goal is to feed their physical body. But perhaps in the UNHEALTHY individual a myriad of extracurricular activites are given a high degree of our energy in order to feed something else: the ego. But in a strange twists, it's possible these unhealthy psychologies engage in these behaviors - buying big cars, building huge houses, getting a degree, finding a job, saving money, even pursuing a mate - because ultimately they subconsciously believe it will lead to more success in life and therefore more food? So all this consumerism and wasted energy becomes the very long road to what we were able to just take from nature directly for free or with a little effort. I mean, we once picked our food off trees for free. Now we need to get a job to work 8 hours a day so we can get the money so we can go to the store and pay for the food we used to get directly from nature with no money and no job? And we call that progress? In that sense, the OP is definitely on to something. Instead of focusing our energy on the activities directly responsible for our continued survival, our energies have become corrupted and diffused amongst many other "display" activities primarily used to attract a mate and prove preselection to future mates. We've pushed ourselves further and further away from direct contact with our source of resources so now we have to go through an endless line of "middlemen", tacking more and more prerequisitte conditions and hoops on our ultimate goal of just feeding, sheltering and keeping ourselves warm and maybe a little mobile. This is what has spurred all this materialism and wasteful consumerism. If we didn't think we had to "display" like peacocks and praire chickens to be attractive, we wouldn't engage in so much wastefulness.

[txlibdem]

73. Peacocks - nailed it!

In a society where money exists, obfuscating exactly what you did to gain the money, the Darwinian imperative is always going to be to get more money. And once you've gathered more money, your lizard brain tells you that you need to get more money, then more after that.

In actuality, money increases the number and severity of psychopaths because it reinforces negative behavior. We've been selectively breeding for psychopaths for thousands of years now.

[GliderGuider]

71. The items you refer to are all intermediate economic steps, not final ones.

Take the ten million dollar museum. Where does the ten million dollars go? It doesn't end up as gold bars in somebody's vault. It becomes architecture design fees (which go to an architecture firm to pay employee salaries), material costs (which go to pay the operating expenses of the material suppliers, including employee salaries), to construction companies (to pay employee wages), to maintenance and custodial services (to pay wages), to curators (for wages), for acquisitions (which goes to pay the seller's living expenses). Any of that money that is used by the supplier businesses along the way goes to pay their own overhead (which includes wages) and some business expansion. Even money that winds up in the bank is loaned out and re-enters the economy.

About half of the US GDP is composed of individual earnings, most of which goes to pay for food, shelter and the necessities to keep working. The majority of the rest of it goes to operating the businesses that pay those wages, becoming the indirect support I talked about about. The only time money stops moving is when it is turned into untapped equity in real property (like family homes) or waste (landfill, runoff, toilet waste and CO2).

I agree that if people had direct access to the food and shelter they needed to survive, we'd see a lot more people choosing to stop working when they were full and the roof didn't leak. Hunter-gatherers worked less than 20 hours per week, after all. The problem is that H-G can't support the population densities we now have, so we have turned to industrial food systems. Those systems are much less energy-efficient than the previous combination of horticulture and H-G. The lower energy efficiency combined with the growing number of people not engaged in the production of food (just its consumption), gave rise to the baroque economy we need to provide direct and indirect support for the production, distribution and consumption of food.

The fact that we get some museums and sports cars as intermediate steps in the production and distribution of food and shelter is a cultural artifact, not evidence that humanity as a whole is doing a lot besides working to gain the means of subsistence, then eating, sleeping, "telling stories" and making more humanity. Since I as a person don't care what my genes want (they have their own, rather opaque, agenda) I work for what I want - which tends to be personal survival first, foremost and always. The fact that this suits the agenda of my genes is of no consequence to me.

Because I have reified the notion of my Self, I want to see that Self continue. To do that my Self needs a body, and my body needs food and shelter. Pretty much every productive activity I undertake is directed towards ensuring that food and shelter will continue to be available to house this thing I call Me.

[Nederland]

74. There are no "final" economic steps

Money is constantly moving and never stops. Even your example of when it stops is false. You claim money stops moving when it is turned into untapped equity in real estate or waste. How do you figure this? If I buy a piece of property that money goes to the seller who in turn goes and does something with it. If I have waste that needs to be disposed of I inevitably pay someone to take care of it and the money moves on.

More importantly, I don't think I see your bigger point. What exactly are you trying to capture in looking at where money "ends up"? It seems to me that the real metric here is what percentage of your income goes to buying food. In first world economies, that number has been steadily falling for decades. Discounting the cost of labor when eating out, the average American spends around 17% of their income on food. Does it really make sense to say that "the ultimate goal of all human activity is the acquisition of food" when 83% of my money goes to something else?

[GliderGuider]

77. I clarify what I’m trying to do in post 76.

It turns out I was looking for a way to link a cultural structure (economics) with a biological fundamental (the need for energy). In retrospect I think that’s probably too big a leap to take.

The exercise lost its value due to the radically different systems at work on the two levels. It’s one thing to say that “All organisms need energy to live;” and “One of the goals of our culture is to ensure enough energy for its people;” and “Our culture denominates human activity in units of money.” Drawing conclusions about the linkages between those statements without clearly defining the goal of the analysis is a recipe for the confusion that inevitably ensued.

I’m not sorry I tried, though - the discussion has been wide-ranging and extremely positive. Thanks for your persistence.

[kristopher]

75. I just reread your OP.

I think I can express your concept more clearly. Perhaps that will help.

You seem to be trying to see human culture (in its totality) through the same lens that a biologist would view a species that operates on the principle of organized cooperation such as (off the top of my head) ants, bees or perhaps to some degree, coral.

Let's start with defining life itself as an energetic, chemical process. If we accept that, the next stipulation is that the primary function of the phenomenon we call "life" is the pursuit and use of energy. This leads to a possible conclusion that all other activities are relegated to second order priorities that exist only as needed to ensure that this 'fire of life' continues to burn.

That premise declares that even procreation is needed only because the machine for enabling the chemical process becomes defective.

Now, does that translate into an idea that informs our understanding of humans and human activity?

First answer that; *then* concentrate on establishing what (if anything) needs to be quantified to help apply the concept above to the paradigm you've established about human activity.

Some words I think (for no particular reason) that might aid the discussion would be: minimum essential to survival, surplus, intensification, cooperative behavior, and sustainability.

[GliderGuider]

76. Thanks - that does bring clarity to the idea

People who are devoted to purely cultural interpretations of human behaviour may object to classing us with ants and coral, but I strongly believe that in order to understand the situation, we need to look at it on all levels – from our chemical makeup to our most abstract expressions of art, science and philosophy.

I am trying to dive below the visible surface that is composed of cultural phenomena and investigate its roots. I used to want to do this to “prove” we were all doomed by our evolutionary biology. Now I do it because I suspect there’s information down there that may prove to be crucial. The exploration might provide deeper understanding of how we got into this worsening ecological situation, and might provide some positive guidance as we move into what looks like a period of accelerating change.

As I said, I see the situation in terms of levels. At the lowest level the one thing that is common to all humans is their biological need for energy - a need we share with all life, as you point out. In this you neatly articulated the core premise of my OP. Our basic requirement for energy remains unchanged no matter what physical, mental and cultural elaborations are built in top of it. Any time the energy supply to the organism fails, all else ceases.

Progressing up from the basic requirement for energy, we come to the physical structure of the organism. In humans this starts with the binocular vision, upright stance and opposable thumbs that define our physical competency. Then we have our large brain relative to our body mass. More important than pure size, though, is the structure of our brain – both in terms of the algorithmic processing power of the neocortex and the unconscious influences of the older parts of the brain. I’ve adopted the triune brain model as a descriptive framework for the unconscious neuro-psychological influences that are common to us all – especially our simultaneous tendencies towards cooperation and competition, egalitarianism and hierarchy, selfishness and altruism, autonomy and herding instincts.

Above that, of course, is the wonderfully varied cultural expression of those paradoxical traits – the level at which most of us operate every day, that we feel most fully expresses what it means to be human.

At each level it’s possible to ask both horizontal and vertical questions.

Horizontal questions are variants of “How does this level operate?” In other words, how does culture work in and of itself, how does our physical organism and its brain function, how do living forms find and use energy?

Vertical questions are along the lines of “How did this level arise from lower, supporting levels, and what does its structure imply for the levels above and/or below it?”

Take the OP’s orientation towards our food supply for example. Hw does the organism’s need for food combine with: the ecological opportunities for food available in the immediate environment; the ability of our neocortex to understand and control how food becomes available; our innate selfishness (making sure that I have enough food to survive) and altruism (making sure my group has enough food to survive); and the cultural expressions that develop around food as a result.

In reverse: how does the existing culture support and modify individual behavior regarding altruism and selfishness; how does that balance contribute to the technological choices we make about food production and distribution; and how do those choices affect the amount and type of food energy available to us?

I tend to be more interested in the vertical questions than the horizontal ones. That has led me into some mistakes because of my insufficient understanding of the level I was looking at – a classic being my failure to appreciate how cultural superstructure arises from infrastructure. Harris’ view makes it clear that the same tiered approach I use for the human system as a whole can be used within its cultural component, with the same sorts of horizontal and vertical questions to be asked at each level.

The whole thing becomes a very complex system, and it’s hard to ask clear questions about it - questions that don’t immediately devolve into simply a discussion of the horizontal issues at any given level. Still, I’m convinced that unless we expand our understanding of the whole human edifice as a system, we risk missing important factors that will determine the success or failure of our actions as we try to address the problems that are cropping up.
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Edited to add: As I said in post #77 above, the exercise in the OP lost its value due to the radically different systems at work on the two levels. It’s one thing to say that “All organisms need energy to live;” and “One of the goals of our culture is to ensure enough energy for its people;” and “Our culture denominates human activity in units of money.” Drawing conclusions about the linkages between those statements without clearly defining the goal of the analysis is a recipe for the confusion that inevitably ensued. Fortunately, it turned out to be a good discussion nonetheless.

[Nederland]

78. I like this better too (nt)

[Terry in Austin]

79. Hope you post your expanded version of this as an OP here

Just read it elsewhere -- always appreciate the way you get to the root of things!

:thumbsup: