A VOTE FOR THE INVENTION OF AGRICULTURE BEING A GOOD THING. In her article, Elif Batumen raises the argument Jared Diamond makes that the invention of agriculture was “the worst mistake in the history of the human race”—responsible for “the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism, that curse our existence.” I raised the issue in this post, without expressing my strongly-held opinion on the issue. Diamond’s argument relies on the fact that agriculture permits a population density of about 100 times the population density for hunter-gathering but that the population increase with agriculture eventually led to Malthusian traps. However, the hunter-gatherers presumably also encountered Malthusian traps—consisting of whatever was holding their population size down— but at much lower levels of population density. In any event, we don’t see many people today who have a choice making the choice to live as hunter-gatherers.
I am appalled by Diamond’s position. I acknowledge I have a conflict of interest on this issue. I would not be around in Diamond’s utopia. And billions of other people would not be around either. And the odds are we would not have had Shakespeare or Chekhov. It is scary to read about somebody who is walking around thinking it would be a good thing if most of the people in the world were not there.