While people in today’s affluent societies work an average of forty to forty-five hours a week, and people in the developing world work sixty and even eighty hours a week, hunter-gatherers living today in the most inhospitable of habitats – such as the Kalahari Desert – work on average for just thirty-five to forty-five hours a week. They hunt only

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Toutefois, la référence au passé invoquée par ces décroissants pose problème. De quels ancêtres s’agit-il ? Sans doute pas de ceux de l’Âge de pierre que nos détracteurs nous accusent de vouloir rejoindre. Ceux-là, tel que les évoque Marshall Sahlins dans son fameux livre Âge de pierre, âge d’abondance, se suffisaient de 3 ou 4 heures par jour d’ac

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many hard-to-explain animal traits and behaviors may well have been shaped by the seasonal over-abundance of energy rather than the battle for scarce resources, and that in this may lie a clue as to why we, the most energy-profligate of all species, work so hard.