Scarcity

[Gordon Fitch]

Justin Schwartz:
> Sahlins argues athat hunter-gatherers worked a few hours a  day and spent 
> the rest of the time telling stories and hanging out, not a bad life (as 
> long as there wasn't a famine or drought). The Sahlins argument is a 
> favorite among the Live Simply crowd, who think that we can eliminate 
> scarcity by reducing our wants. Theoretically, this is true. It is of course 
> _profoundly_ anti-Marxist, for those of you who care about such things; Marx 
> praised capitalism for its creation of nrew wants and needs. He thought that 
> communism would be better than capitalsim at satisfyting these things. Me, I 
> don't know. But I do know that the genie is out of the bottle. Short of a 
> cataclysmic disaster, we will never be hunter-gathereras, and anyone who 
> davocates reducing (as opposed to, say, rearranging) our needs and wants, 
> will find a cold audience from contemprary workers an oppressed people.

On the other hand, it's clear that in a finite universe
unlimited need / desire will eventually (probably sooner
rather than later) meet insurmountable obstacles, so that
regardless of the system under which people organize
themselves, they will find themselves frustrated and needy.
I would guess also that, in order to maximize their ability
to wring goods, services and powers out of their
environment, there will be a strong susceptibility toward
wringing goods, services and powers out of one another as
well, so that freedom, equality and peace, the program of
the Left as I see it, will have to be set aside in favor of
a totalitarian quest for more for the sake of more.

This was why I suggested differentiating "needs" by what
drove them, instead of simplifying the choice as one between
rank primitivism and unlimited technological and industrial
aggression, both of which appear to me to be rhetorical
chimerae -- or perhaps I should say sirens, since beside
being mythical they're evidently stunningly attractive.