the concept of "peak Oil " is blarney

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by IamIan

#1>
How far would the innovation you refer to have gotten without Agriculture as a base under it? ... a small band of hunter gather warlike people conquering and enslaving others ... such 'organization' would have greatly struggled to get larger than a hundred people ... compared to billions today thanks to agriculture.

I think you missed my point, which was that large-scale agriculture quite likely wouldn't ever have existed without the social & military organization needed to force people to spend their lives laboring in the fields, and thus that organization is more of a major innovation than agriculture itself. How many people would choose to spend their lives doing field work, when they could get all they needed from hunting & gathering?

[NachtRitter]

A bit more on the original topic, I found this IEEE Spectrum article quite appropriate: The Age of Hard-to-Get Oil - IEEE Spectrum. Check out the graphic, it is pretty interesting.

[IamIan]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

I think you missed my point, which was that large-scale agriculture quite likely wouldn't ever have existed without the social & military organization needed to force people to spend their lives laboring in the fields, and thus that organization is more of a major innovation than agriculture itself. How many people would choose to spend their lives doing field work, when they could get all they needed from hunting & gathering?

And ... I think you missed my point that you were replying to about an non-conservation innovation.

What you listed is a conservation innovation ... the whole reason to enslave someone to work for you is so that they are now doing work you don't have to ... thus it conserves the en-slaver's time.

And thus it only serves as one more example of my point about innovation coming from conservation efforts.

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As for you theory about about a system that forces or enslaves people to labor in fields being needed for large scale agriculture ... I don't see sufficient evidence to support that conclusion.

After all ... not every farmer in the history of the world was forced or enslaved to be that farmer ... not every society in history used slave labor in the fields.

Yes some did ... but the conclusion / theory you make about it that ... it wouldn't have happened ... I think that goes way beyond the evidence that I see ... and if anything I see evidence to show that the enslavement and forced labor in the fields is not needed ... and that societies are capable of growing without enslaving others or using forced labor in the fields.

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As for the enslaving organization being a bigger innovation than agriculture itself ... that is your opinion ... I don't share it ... but even if it is bigger ... it still does not meet the criteria ... it is not a non-conservation innovation.

Take agriculture innovation without your enslaving culture ... and it is still possible for it to grow as a culture without being an enslaving of others culture ... while still keeping the benefits of agriculture.

On the other hand ... if you take your enslaving culture without agriculture ... they stay as hunter gatherers ... they spend more time on average to get food ... they won't be able to support nearly as large of a population.

If I compare each without the other innovation ... the one with agriculture wins.

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As for who would want to farm for food instead of hunt and gather for food.

The person who wants to conserve their own time and energy... and I know some people who enjoy doing it.

Try going out and hunting and gathering year round without modern equipment ... it's very very hard work ... and takes lots of your own time and energy.

Last I checked ... the average hunter gatherer spent on average about 28 hours per week to survive ... and was often under feed , and suffer from some type of malnutrition ... while today ( without the now antiquated enslaving you listed ) , our current agriculture system allows the average person in the US to eat better ( over eat in many cases ) have better nutrition ... and do it for on average about 4 hours per week worth of work ... 1/7 the amount of time on average ... that is a major conservation of time... especially as it is for the average person in this society.

I'd say there is a good reason why we don't see people hunting and gathering anymore ... agriculture conserves more of the average persons time than hunting and gathering does.

But by all means if you think you can go out hunt and gather without any technology developed sense the invention of agriculture ... and spend less of your own time and energy doing that to feed yourself , year round ... have at it ... best of luck.

Originally Posted by MPGranger

What we did was discovered a way to let one guy specialize in food production to free up others into taking others food.

I disagree with the 2nd part.

I do not see sufficient evidence to support your conclusion that the reason we developed agriculture was to free up time to go take food from others.

If anything the evidence I see shows that the advantages of agriculture meant there was more food available ... thus less motivation even want the food from others.

And even if that was why we did it ... that doesn't change that it is still a conservation innovation ... because it was conversing those other people's time.

Originally Posted by MPGranger

So let's go to the next innovation: Roads. Is it a more efficient way to move goods for trade or a way to quickly move your troops to reinforce key areas?

Doesn't matter ... it is a conversation innovation either way ... weather it conserves the time and energy to moves goods during peace time ... or if it conserves time and energy to move troops in war time ... either way it is still a conservation innovation.

Originally Posted by MPGranger

Have you ever thought of the concept of total war? The idea that the factories and farms of a country are a military asset? So attacking civilian populations was acceptable to stop resource development.

Also another conservation innovation ... the attack that reduces and conserves the amount of resources needed to wage war or win a war is still conserving time and resources of the person trying to win that war.

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Remember what I wrote was for ( Bold Added ):

Originally Posted by IamIan

what military non-conservation innovation was 'bigger' than agriculture?

Any conservation innovation does not meet the criteria listed... and thus far people have only listed additional conservation innovations ... thus reinforcing my point.

[cfg83]

IamIan -

Originally Posted by IamIan

...

As for you theory about about a system that forces or enslaves people to labor in fields being needed for large scale agriculture ... I don't see sufficient evidence to support that conclusion.

After all ... not every farmer in the history of the world was forced or enslaved to be that farmer ... not every society in history used slave labor in the fields.

Yes some did ... but the conclusion / theory you make about it that ... it wouldn't have happened ... I think that goes way beyond the evidence that I see ... and if anything I see evidence to show that the enslavement and forced labor in the fields is not needed ... and that societies are capable of growing without enslaving others or using forced labor in the fields.

...

This is an interesting article :

Hunter-gatherers: Noble or savage? | The Economist

...
Why change? In the late 1970s Mark Cohen, an archaeologist, first suggested that agriculture was born of desperation, rather than inspiration. Evidence from the Fertile Crescent seems to support him. Rising human population density, combined perhaps with a cooling, drying climate, left the Natufian hunter-gatherers of the region short of acorns, gazelles and wild grass seeds. Somebody started trying to preserve and enhance a field of chickpeas or wheat-grass and soon planting, weeding, reaping and threshing were born.
...
Constant warfare [among hunter gatherers] was necessary to keep population density down to one person per square mile. Farmers can live at 100 times that density. Hunter-gatherers may have been so lithe and healthy because the weak were dead. The invention of agriculture and the advent of settled society merely swapped high mortality for high morbidity, allowing people some relief from chronic warfare so they could at least grind out an existence, rather than being ground out of existence altogether.
...

CarloSW2

[Fat Charlie]

The reason we developed agriculture wasn't to free up enslavers, but that was one of the earliest results. By allowing people to produce a surplus of food, spending your time taking food from others suddenly became workable as a career path- and you had time to build a system of control instead of just looking for food.

I maintain that every innovation is in the field of conservation. If it doesn't let you do more with less then it isn't an innovation, it's a failed experiment.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by IamIan

What you listed is a conservation innovation ... the whole reason to enslave someone to work for you is so that they are now doing work you don't have to ... thus it conserves the en-slaver's time.

If you look at the whole society, you find that the slaves/serfs/sharecroppers wind up spending a lot more time working to produce food, so that a numerically much smaller warrior/aristocracy class can spend a lot of its time either training for warfare, or hunting for recreation.

So it's conserving time in the same sense that hooking your car to the back of a semi conserves gas.

After all ... not every farmer in the history of the world was forced or enslaved to be that farmer ... not every society in history used slave labor in the fields.

No? Pre-industrial revolution, where was there much but slaves, serfs, or peasants? Of course eventually you get to the point where farming is all people know, so the freed slaves go out and become sharecroppers.

...and if anything I see evidence to show that the enslavement and forced labor in the fields is not needed ... and that societies are capable of growing without enslaving others or using forced labor in the fields.

OK, got examples? Pre-industrial revolution, remember.

On the other hand ... if you take your enslaving culture without agriculture ... they stay as hunter gatherers ... they spend more time on average to get food ... they won't be able to support nearly as large of a population.

Would your average hunter-gatherer really spend more time working to feed themselves? I agree that it'd be harder to support the large population, and also that there likely wouldn't be nearly so much of a societal pyramid, but you need to remember that the tip of the pyramid is supported by a broad base.,

If I compare each without the other innovation ... the one with agriculture wins.

But again, how do you get that large-scale agriculture without the coercive society? And vice versa, of course. It's really a synergy, each one driving the other.

As for who would want to farm for food instead of hunt and gather for food.

The person who wants to conserve their own time and energy... and I know some people who enjoy doing it.

I very much doubt that you know anyone who enjoys farming with the techniques of say the Romans or medieval serfs.

Last I checked ... the average hunter gatherer spent on average about 28 hours per week to survive ...

And how many hours did your medieval peasant work, or a free Greek/Roman farmer?

...our current agriculture system allows the average person in the US to eat better ( over eat in many cases ) have better nutrition ... and do it for on average about 4 hours per week worth of work ... 1/7 the amount of time on average ... that is a major conservation of time... especially as it is for the average person in this society.

But it is not agriculture which has done this, it is the later application of industrial revolution technology, and especially the use of petroleum. How many hours work would it take to produce the same amount of food if fields were plowed without oxen or horses? (And without horsecollars, one of the first IR innovations.) If the fields had to be harvested by hand? Ever swung a scythe?

Consider the productivity gains from just McCormick's invention of the reaper: "Prior to inventing the reaper, farmers could only harvest 0.5-acre (2,000 m2) an a day; after the reaper was invented, farmers could harvest 12 acres (49,000 m2) a day using less manual labor." Cyrus McCormick Farm - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Christ]

Use the fat from dead Americans to make bio-fuel. But that's illegal because of social need to wastefully bury the dead to decompose instead of using what could otherwise be a valuable resource. Your body is no longer necessary after you're dead. It's just a rotten old car with no engine. Why not recycle it?

Solves several problems, land use not being the least of them.

[NachtRitter]

Wow... this thread has gone way ...

... off topic

[IamIan]

Originally Posted by Fat Charlie

The reason we developed agriculture wasn't to free up enslavers, but that was one of the earliest results. By allowing people to produce a surplus of food, spending your time taking food from others suddenly became workable as a career path- and you had time to build a system of control instead of just looking for food.

????A surplus of food was only done to be able to take food from others????

I don't agree... that doesn't make much sense to me.

Once you have the surplus ... you no longer have any need to take the food from others ... the surplus itself massively reduces the motivation to want that other food ... much less spend a bunch of time and effort to go try and take what you don't need.

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Originally Posted by jamesqf

So it's conserving time in the same sense that hooking your car to the back of a semi conserves gas.

Yes ... point of view always matters ... and many people care mainly about their own point of view... they want to conserve their gas ... their time.

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@jamessqf:
The bellow is my effort to summarize without eating the much larger amount of space needed to reply to every individual thing you posted that I might have otherwise replied to.

If you would rather continue a more in depth ... back and forth ... point by point ... I suggest a new thread is started , and this side conversation gets moved there... it has grown significantly off topic here.

• It seems to me that there is a significant difference in our point of views on Agriculture ... to the point of you even seemingly questioning weather it was any savings in time at all over hunting and gathering before it ... I don't share this view of Agriculture being a time eating waste for our ancestors thousands of years ago.
• It seems to me that there is a significant difference in our point of views on how 'needed' the enslavement and forced labor of people is ... Weather it is even possible to advance without it or not ... you seem to suggest that there was no possible way to achieve advancement without the enslavement and forced labor ... I don't agree with that 'need' for it concept... and I don't see sufficient evidence to prove that 'need' ... and I don't see enough evidence to disprove ever possible way of advancing without a enslavement and forced labor period of time.
• It seems to me we disagree on weather anyone would even want to farm willingly ... You seem to suggest no one would , force was needed ... I disagree , I even know people who enjoy farming , even using less technology than they had in Ancient Rome.

[cfg83]

NachtRitter -

Originally Posted by NachtRitter

Wow... this thread has gone way ...
[...snip...]
... off topic

Here is my question :



Is the squirrel holding a :

A - Nut?
B - Donut hole?
C - Mini football?
D - None of the above?

CarloSW2