Re: 11 Things I Will Serve My Best Never to Put In A Fantasy/SF Novel...


"David Friedman" <ddfr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:ddfr-516E6B.18082319082006@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In article <12ef5lusof4va84@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"Suzanne Blom" <sueblom@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"David Friedman" <ddfr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:ddfr-36D610.13531519082006@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

...

Okay, just how many other cultures ever had the resources to be able
to
store everything needful for human life for two years? Not the one I
live
in.

Unless you are counting air--which they didn't store either--our
society
could do it pretty easily. It's an interesting exercise to walk through
an ordinary supermarket, find the lowest per calorie costs for fat,
protein and carbohydrates, and estimate a minimal cost diet.

I think you will find it difficult to come up with a plausible measure
of resources by which the pre-Columbian New World populations were
richer than we are.

I do not have food stored for more than about three months at most ever;
I
sometimes have 6months worth of toilet paper in my house, but that's
about
it for regular consumables. I seriously doubt that any country could
anymore feed all its people for a year or two on stored food.

As it happens, I suspect you are wrong--remember that, in a famine, all
the soybeans and corn that now go to feed animals could be diverted to
feed humans, and I expect there are a fair number of agricultural
countries where those stockpiles would be sufficient for two years.

But that wasn't my point. You said "the resources to be able to store
everything needful ... ." Having the resources to be able to do it isn't
the same thing as choosing to do it.

If the U.S. wished, it could quite easily, over a period of a few years,
probably less, build up a sufficient inventory of food to feed the whole
population for two years, so we have "the resources to be able to store
everything needful... . We just haven't chosen to use those resources
for that purpose, famine not being a serious issue for developed
countries of late. A smaller country could do it practically overnight,
by simply going out on the world market and buying up enough storable
foodstuffs--because the cost would be a pretty small fraction of the
annual budget of a developed country.

Oops! Then I misspoke. The Incas did in fact store "everything
needful"(direct quote from eyewitness) & had rows of warehouses above every
provincial capital(40-50miles apart).

Of course. My point was that the supermarket prices provided evidence of
the cost of foodstuffs, hence of the resources required to stockpile two
years worth.

We could argue a long time about what the supermarket prices show, & I don't
want to get into it.

For the US the Inca empire had better access to health care, which,
though
lower quality in most areas was better in some.
Access to fresh unpolluted air, security ie low crime are two other areas
where I would argue South America in general & the Inca empire in
particular
were ahead. Also community responsibility for one another(which
admittedly
is a double-edged sword).

I'm not sure how good our data are on crime rates that far back. But in
any case, if you want to argue that the Inca empire was, in some useful
sense, better off than we are, you need something more general than
crime rates. I suggest that life expectancy would be one measure,
although an imperfect one--it combines many of the effects of medical
care, nutrition, crime rates, and the like. Any data?

Life expectancy data on the Incas have so far been thwarted by postInca
looters. It is interesting to note, tho, that full retirement was not until
80, tho partial retirement was at 60. They expected enough people to reach
full retirement that it was a recognized age category.


.

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