October 10, 2024

Agriculture: Good or Bad?

This is an interesting re-print of a nearly 20 year old opinion piece printed in Discover.

I’m curious as to other opinions about it.

The concept that social parasites, all too common in modern-day America, originated with agricultural society caught my attention because it has the ring of truth about it. This is not to say that hunter-gathers didn’t have a social hierarchy, they did, but rather that once a population settles into a location from which an individual’s relocation is difficult or impossible the tendency for non-merit-based dominance becomes much more normal than in a non-nomadic society.

Thoughts?

marc

Marc is a software developer, writer, and part-time political know-it-all who currently resides in Texas in the good ol' U.S.A.

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