You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss

While I see some value in his practical insights the logic is deeply flawed. I would much rather he just share his observations on optimal work environments than try to explain what we are "meant" to do in some kind of incomprehensible pseudo-science.

By precisely the same reasoning we are meant to rape women to impregnate them and murder members of competing tribes, and are not meant to have birth control, surgery, or a level of technological complexity in the world that is beyond the power of any one human to fully comprehend.

>Technology tends to separate normal from natural. Our bodies weren't designed to eat the foods that people in rich countries eat, or to get so little exercise. There may be a similar problem with the way we work: a normal job may be as bad for us intellectually as white flour or sugar is for us physically.

It's not technology, it's society. The notion of "working from 9 to 5 until 65" is a relatively recent construct brought on by the industrial revolution. There's a great section on this in the book Your Money or Your Life. If you read some of the literature of the times, there was a period in which some authors and thinkers started saying that people would have more leisure time, and thus be more creative. Industrialists didn't like this since it limited productivity and the potential for growth. Moralists didn't like this, since they believed idle hands lead to trouble. A massive campaign was waged to get society to buy into the concepts that growth (not sustainability) is needed, and that productivity is important. This also coincided with the growth of consumerism, as people started thinking they needed more stuff.

Woah. It's not like he's saying "this newfangled thing is bad because it's new", he's citing specific health and well-being effects that he has observed. I doubt you could make the same case for rape.

> Are there any Human hunter/gatherer societies that scaled?

I'm not aware of any, and I think that it would be impossible. You can't really achieve a lot of density with hunting and gathering because before long you've hunted and gathered everything around you at a rate beyond which those natural resources can regenerate. Thence cometh agriculture.

>> It's not technology, it's society. The notion of "working from 9 to 5 until 65" is a relatively recent construct brought on by the industrial revolution.

I'll buy this if by "brought on by the industrial revolution" you mean "demanded by organized workers in response to the excesses of the industrial revolution." If it weren't for unions I don't think the 40 hour work week would be anything like the norm.