So I’ve read an overview[1] which says Chagnon observed a pre-Malthusian group of people, which was kept from exponentially increasing not by scarcity of resources, but by sheer competitive violence; a totalitarian society that lives in abundance.
There seems to be an important scarcity factor shaping their society, but not of the kind where we could say that “we only very recently left the era in which scarcity was the dominant feature of people’s lives.”
Although, reading again, this doesn’t disprove violence in general arising due to scarcity, and then misgeneralizing in abundant environments… And again, “violence” is not the same as “coercion”.
Unnecessarily political, but seems to accurately represent Chagnon’s observations, based on other reporting and a quick skim of Chagnon’s work on Google Books.
So I’ve read an overview [1] which says Chagnon observed a pre-Malthusian group of people, which was kept from exponentially increasing not by scarcity of resources, but by sheer competitive violence; a totalitarian society that lives in abundance.
There seems to be an important scarcity factor shaping their society, but not of the kind where we could say that “we only very recently left the era in which scarcity was the dominant feature of people’s lives.”
Although, reading again, this doesn’t disprove violence in general arising due to scarcity, and then misgeneralizing in abundant environments… And again, “violence” is not the same as “coercion”.
Unnecessarily political, but seems to accurately represent Chagnon’s observations, based on other reporting and a quick skim of Chagnon’s work on Google Books.