[cirrus3]

This is mostly a rant on the style of article title and intro. The content may be interesting, but I seriously doubt it.

It starts off with:

> Hunter-gatherers worked 15-hour weeks. Why don’t we?

Uh, well, for starters, 15 hours is apparently what it took to survive and live a comparatively successful lifestyle back then, a lifestyle that really only involved SURVIVING to see the next day.

Dial that up to what it takes to live a comparatively successful lifestyle now and you know the reasons, article done.

The whole "15 hours" thing is misleading considering that in the modern world where we're not all on the same playing field anymore (for a lot of disturbing underlying reasons) and just fighting for survival is no longer the common experience or goal, and again, lots of easy reasons.

I did not read this whole thing but the premise and title seems to ignore so many obvious reasons out of the gate that it didn't seem worth it. Maybe they got down stating some obvious reasons, but I may never know... starting off with a click-bait title and intro lost my interest asap.

If you want to comment "but hey, you never said what those easy reasons are!! provide links!!" then you are probably part of the problem.

[vishnugupta]

> Hunter-gatherers worked 15-hour weeks. Why don’t we?

Yeah, this drivel of a narrative must be extinguished. The world as it is now is completely different from the world in the 90s that I grew up in. To an extent that someone teleported from 90s to now will take a month or so just to make sense of it all. And this narrative is comparing the worlds that are thousand of years apart.

And what is the basis for that 15hr number? Did a group of people try to live the life of a hunter-gatherer for a decade or two? Or is it all based on back-of-the-envelop calculation, that goes "I need 2-3hr/day to gather food and eat"? If they did, then they have completely missed the ordeal (also under the category of work) our ancestors had to put up with just to survive the unforgiving nature.

Next time we hear something like this we should challenge them to actually live the life of a hunter-gatherer and then come back. At the very least live with and observe similar societies and gather data.

[hackeraccount]

If you put a hunter/gather in my shoes they'd say I "work" about an hour a day - in the morning when I go out for a run; that's work.

The rest of the day I read bit, type on a keyboard and talk to people occasionally. For me the rest of the day is work but honestly it's only a bit stressful and has an element of fun to it. If I didn't need the money I'd probably be doing something that's equivalent to the same thing.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

It's pretty easy to survive - even if you're homeless - anywhere in the advanced world - sure, I'll give you that.

But in the hunter gatherer days - people learned skills to make this much easier to survive than it would be for some random person to do today.

But I think there was more to life, even in hunter gatherer days, than surviving. Surely, they also put some effort into not being miserable.

I'm not convinced that 15 hours of unskilled labor per week is enough to be not-miserable in most places where people actually live in the US.

It's not like homeless people have the skills to go forage in the forests and enjoy the natural beauty of life. We don't learn those skills anymore. And even if we did, you'd have a hard time convincing anyone to leave civilization and join you - and we all have social needs...

I think I'd much rather camp in the peace and quiet in a tight knit community in a decent shelter with fresh food than on the streets or in a crappy old car basically only able to afford to eat processed variations of corn - which is what you'd be doing on 15 hours per week.

[cirrus3]

> It's pretty easy to survive - even if you're homeless

Stop typing. Stop now.