The Innate Nature of Economics - Economics and Ecology: United for a Sustainable World - page 37

was said to have had much leisure. Only in more modern times have we
come to refer to them as rich . This is a telling point as we trace the evolution
of economic thought from cave dwellers to the present. In an ancient society,
the range of goods to consume was obviously limited, and leisure, or free
time, is assumed to have been the goal. As modern industrial societies have
dramatically increased the range of produced artifacts available, the mani-
festation of wealth that exceeds subsistence has evolved into the ownership
of a wide range of goods—many of which are generally termed luxury items
clearly unnecessary for survival.
At this point, we will take brief journey through history to help you, the
reader, better understand the origin of these dynamics. Evidence indicates
that hunting-gathering peoples lived surprisingly well together, despite the
lack of a rigid social structure, solving their problems among themselves,
largely without courts and without a particular propensity for violence. They
also demonstrated a remarkable ability to thrive for long periods, sometimes
thousands of years, in harmony with their environment. They were environ-
mentally and socially harmonious and thus sustainable because they were
egalitarian, and they were egalitarian because they were socially and envi-
ronmentally harmonious. They intuitively understood the reciprocal, indis-
soluble connection between their social life and the sustainability of their
inseparable environment.
The basic social unit of most hunting-gathering peoples, based on stud-
ies of contemporary hunter-gatherer societies, was the band, a small-scale
nomadic group of 15 to 30 people who were related through kinship. These
bands were relatively egalitarian in that leadership was rather informal and
subject to the constraints of popular opinion. Leadership tended to be by
example instead of arbitrary order or decree because a leader could persuade
but not command. This form of leadership allowed for a degree of freedom
unknown in more hierarchical societies, but at the same time put hunter-
gatherers at a distinct disadvantage when they finally encountered centrally
organized colonial authorities. 1
Another characteristic associated with mobility was the habit of hunter-
gatherers to concentrate and disperse, which appears to represent the
interplay of ecological necessity and social possibility. Rather than live in
uniformly sized assemblages throughout the year, they tended to disperse
into small groups, the aforementioned 15 to 30 people, that spent part of the
year foraging, only to gather again into much larger aggregates of 100 to 200
people at other times of the year, where the supply of food, say an abundance
of fish, made such a gathering possible. 2
Hunter-gatherers were by nature and necessity nomadic—a traditional
form of wandering as a way of life wherein people move their encampment
several times a year as they either searched for food or followed the known
seasonal order of their food supply. “Home” was the journey in that belong-
ing, dwelling, and livelihood were all components thereof. Home, in this
sense, was en route.