I know the work of Jared Diamond has some problems, but as a counterpoint:
"While the case for the progressivist view seems overwhelming, it's hard to prove. How do you show that the lives of people 10,000 years ago got better when they abandoned hunting and gathering for farming? Until recently, archaeologists had to resort to indirect tests, whose results (surprisingly) failed to support the progressivist view. Here's one example of an indirect test: Are twentieth century hunter-gatherers really worse off than farmers? Scattered throughout the world, several dozen groups of so-called primitive people, like the Kalahari bushmen, continue to support themselves that way. It turns out that these people have plenty of leisure time, sleep a good deal, and work less hard than their farming neighbors. For instance, the average time devoted each week to obtaining food is only 12 to 19 hours for one group of Bushmen, 14 hours or less for the Hadza nomads of Tanzania...While farmers concentrate on high-carbohydrate crops like rice and potatoes, the mix of wild plants and animals in the diets of surviving hunter-gatherers provides more protein and a bettter balance of other nutrients. In one study, the Bushmen's average daily food intake (during a month when food was plentiful) was 2,140 calories and 93 grams of protein, considerably greater than the recommended daily allowance for people of their size. It's almost inconceivable that Bushmen, who eat 75 or so wild plants, could die of starvation the way hundreds of thousands of Irish farmers and their families did during the potato famine of the 1840s."[1]
Obviously this isn't representative of all hunter-gatherer societies, but a >20 hour work week, high-protein 2000 calorie diet seems pretty nice. Of course there are some other nice benefits of modernity but saying being homeless in the US have a categorically higher quality of life is a stretch.
The homeless aren't hungry. The leading causes of death for the homeless aren't starvation or malnutrition -- it's drug abuse, cancer, and heart disease: http://pschousing.org/news/drug-overdose-1-cause-homeless-de... Sure, they're not the healthiest bunch in the world, and they have much shorter lifespans than the average non-homeless person, but they sure have a much longer lifespan than even the well-off did 10,000 years ago.
The homeless survive off the infrastructure of society, where food is relatively plentiful because of the massive commercial agricultural system we have in place. Not only is commercial agriculture in the US completely different than the small agriculture in rural Africa, that the Diamond essay is talking about, but the homeless aren't farmers! They're consumers of agriculture, but not producers of it. So, while I agree with the essay, and think it makes some interesting points, it's just not applicable to the homeless.
Also, the 20 hour week it mentioned is entirely devoted to obtaining food, and note that they say that's "during a month when food was plentiful" If the only work we did was for food, I'd only have to work one day a month!
While access to food, shelter, and other amenities we take for granted may be "insecure" for the homeless, they're still available. The homeless congregate in cities because that's where the food banks, homeless shelters, sources of sporadic income, public restrooms, and convenient places of shelter from the elements are. They have the ability (although, again, an inconsistent and insecure one) to be warm when it's snowing, receive medical care when they need it, eat a variety of food, and hang out in the library surfing the Internet during the day.
Thanks, I like this point of view. I guess something like ratio of modern day comforts / modern day stress vs that ratio from past could be a useful measure.
"While the case for the progressivist view seems overwhelming, it's hard to prove. How do you show that the lives of people 10,000 years ago got better when they abandoned hunting and gathering for farming? Until recently, archaeologists had to resort to indirect tests, whose results (surprisingly) failed to support the progressivist view. Here's one example of an indirect test: Are twentieth century hunter-gatherers really worse off than farmers? Scattered throughout the world, several dozen groups of so-called primitive people, like the Kalahari bushmen, continue to support themselves that way. It turns out that these people have plenty of leisure time, sleep a good deal, and work less hard than their farming neighbors. For instance, the average time devoted each week to obtaining food is only 12 to 19 hours for one group of Bushmen, 14 hours or less for the Hadza nomads of Tanzania...While farmers concentrate on high-carbohydrate crops like rice and potatoes, the mix of wild plants and animals in the diets of surviving hunter-gatherers provides more protein and a bettter balance of other nutrients. In one study, the Bushmen's average daily food intake (during a month when food was plentiful) was 2,140 calories and 93 grams of protein, considerably greater than the recommended daily allowance for people of their size. It's almost inconceivable that Bushmen, who eat 75 or so wild plants, could die of starvation the way hundreds of thousands of Irish farmers and their families did during the potato famine of the 1840s."[1]
Obviously this isn't representative of all hunter-gatherer societies, but a >20 hour work week, high-protein 2000 calorie diet seems pretty nice. Of course there are some other nice benefits of modernity but saying being homeless in the US have a categorically higher quality of life is a stretch.
[1]http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html