This meant that you worked only as much was actually needed - i.e. subsistence - and no more.
You do know that in agrarian societies this meant 12 hours a day 7 days a week with no holidays ever? And that children worked in the fields instead of going to school?
People don't subsistence farm because they don't want anything more than the bare minimum for survival. They subsistence farm because the bare minimum for survival is the best they can manage.
I'm not sure if your second paragraph necessarily leads from your first one.
I have two questions for you that you should think about.
Question 1: Why is it that, as our productivity increases, we find more things to "fill up" our workday, instead of working fewer hours for the same output (which would satisfy our needs)?
Question 2: Forget about need. Do people actually want the things they are working for today? Or is it that we are socially conditioning them, from the moment they are born, that a consumption-based lifestyle is one they need to strive for?
Question 1: Because people want more than they need. This is practically an axiom. You don't need much more than a pile of sticks to sleep under, food, and water, but I bet even you would agree this is not satisfying.
We aren't unique in this regard either. My cat needs air, water, and food. My cat wants attention, affection, and canned wet food.
Question 2: I wasn't socially conditioned to want the fan that keeps me cool when it is hot. I wasn't socially conditioned to enjoy beer. I wasn't socially conditioned to like literature. Sure, some people are working for things they have no real use or desire for, but IMO there are plenty of things that improve life beyond the truest basic needs, that are worth continuing to strive for. Amusement, art, intellectual pursuits, athleticism, etc...
>>Question 1: Because people want more than they need. This is practically an axiom.
Is it? There are several hundred million Buddhists who might disagree with you.
>>We aren't unique in this regard either. My cat needs air, water, and food. My cat wants attention, affection, and canned wet food.
Your cat wants attention, affection and canned wet food because as a pet it has gotten used to those things. There are a billion felines out there that are quite happy with living alone and marking their territory and hunting for and munching on raw meat.
>>You don't need much more than a pile of sticks to sleep under, food, and water, but I bet even you would agree this is not satisfying.
It depends. I love to go cross-country backpacking and the only things I bring with me are the bare essentials: tent, sleeping bag, food and water, clothing and some emergency supplies.
>>Question 2: I wasn't socially conditioned to want the fan that keeps me cool when it is hot. I wasn't socially conditioned to enjoy beer. I wasn't socially conditioned to like literature. Sure, some people are working for things they have no real use or desire for, but IMO there are plenty of things that improve life beyond the truest basic needs, that are worth continuing to strive for. Amusement, art, intellectual pursuits, athleticism, etc...
Your argument is shifting away from what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that you do not have to work 40+ hours a week for any of those things. You only have to do it because our capitalistic society is engineered that way.
Think about it like this: the productivity of the average worker has increased tremendously over the last century. Yet, instead of reducing work hours to account for the fact that we can produce the same amount of goods and services in less time, we have opted to work the same number of hours (or even longer in some cases) to produce more than society needs.
Even if everyone worked 20 hours a week, you could still enjoy your beer and athleticism and art and intellectual pursuits. In fact, you would have more time for them!
The Buddhists wouldn't disagree, they would agree and state that it is an axiom of their philosophy. The whole point of Buddhism is that people want more than they need and that it offers a way out.
Yes, I can easily imagine a tribesman coveting what his tribemates have. As for how exactly he acquired those things... it probably did not involve "affording" anything, because there was no currency. But I'm sure there were fights, theft, etc as well as plenty of labor invested in manufacturing more trinkets. Necklaces were not simply found on the ground; you would have needed to come up with a needle, thread, possibly a drill... all much harder to procure in the days before Home Depot!
That wasn't universally true. In northern europe winters and long nights significantly reduced the number of hours they could work. Sure, they worked extremely hard during planting and harvesting seasons, but the rest of the time not that much. Seasonal farming means that the result wasn't proportional to the work put in but rather to whether the crops got the right amount of sun and rain.
Before that, hunter gatherer groups worked even less because they were so few and the food so plentiful.
You do know that in agrarian societies this meant 12 hours a day 7 days a week with no holidays ever? And that children worked in the fields instead of going to school?
People don't subsistence farm because they don't want anything more than the bare minimum for survival. They subsistence farm because the bare minimum for survival is the best they can manage.