1. Everybody starves equally for many years until technology progresses to the point where no one has to starve. The quality of food is a small percentage better each year.

2. Everybody starves in the beginning, and after every few years some small x℅ of people don't have to starve anymore.

Depending on the specifics of the numbers, it is possible that is you had to be born in one of the societies at a random time in their existence, you would choose the former. I don't see how it is possible to dismiss the former as worse than the latter for the average person without any more evidence.