Change is Bad

Folks who live by the chase aren’t usually all that enthusiastic about becoming agriculturalists. They usually resist. You have to force them to make the change by taking away access to the hunting grounds, by killing the game, or by outright repression. Sometimes, you just have to kill every last one of the foragers if they cling to their way of life. You can’t have bushmen stalking game across your back yard. Essentially, hunter gatherers are just organized bands of homeless people, hobos if you will. Getting them to settle down is for their own good, you know.

And once you turn folks into farmers, they are not all that keen to leave their plows and take their places in the mills. Sure, they’ll work seasonally, or some of the family will work for extra cash, but it’s hard to subject them to harsh conditions because they’ll just quit and help out on the farm. As long as farming is an option, you have to pay more and treat folks better to keep them on the line. What you really want to do is drive folks off the land. Then they have to work for you or die. Human resource management is so much easier when you have the workers by the short and curlies.