We still create beef because beef has value to us. So, sure the basket of goods created back then is less valuable than what we create today. But, that does not somehow mean the value created back then is meaningless.
In the end combine harvesters are more efficient than hand tools, but they both end up harvesting gains.
I don't think it's 100x; I think it's a lot more. I was giving reasons why I think that.
> the basket of goods created back then is less valuable than what we create today. But, that does not somehow mean the value created back then is meaningless.
I never said it was.
> combine harvesters are more efficient than hand tools, but they both end up harvesting gains.
Yes, but combine harvesters greatly multiply the productivity of a single human at harvesting grain, which frees up many more other humans to invent so many other things that didn't exist before.
Also, combine harvesters are only one of the things I mentioned.
I am not saying you’re being disingenuous, but you listed stuff without context. A 1% slice of a pie looks tiny, you need numbers to judge these things not lists.
The context is farmers and ranchers still make up 1.3% of the labor force in the US, but globally 28% of the population are just farmers. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/sl.agr.empl.zs Sure, more productive society’s have whither output for everything but agriculture adds up to ~6% global GDP / per capita GDP.
Now, we can argue that today’s food is better, but meat and fish likely made up a significant fraction of the Stone Age diet. So, suggesting it’s more than 6x more expensive using today’s market value seems unlikely. Note, food going bad is irrelevant as the value existed at one point, and food is temporary.
PS: Of course the population is also ~1,000x as large. So total worldwide GDP should be ~100,000x as large by my estimate, if that makes you more comfortable.
If more than 6% of current GDP is from farming, which it is, then everything else adds up to less than 20x the value farming provides. That’s just simple math.
So, we can just compare agricultural production and absolutely ignore everything else because it’s already included in the above calculation.
PS: Now you can argue that you care more about the internet or healthcare than a meal. But, I guarantee you would quickly change your mind if you had not eaten in several months. Food is an absolutely required and unlike air and water not naturally available for free in vast quantities.
No, it's not a reasonable metric at all, because it ignores the fact that the vast majority of per capita GDP growth between the Stone Age and now is not that we have improved the quality of items that existed then. It's that we have invented a huge number of new items that Stone Age humans could not have even conceived. The huge growth in productivity and wealth from the Stone Age to now is not because we make stone tools that are that much better. It's because all they had was stone tools, where we have combine harvesters and backhoes and steel skyscrapers and railroads and container ships and airplanes and medical imaging devices and computers and the Internet and...