The Price of Progress

Standard of living (GNP, per capita income) may not accurately reflect quality of life for autonomous cultures.
Goldschmidt's criteria: Does progress increase a culture's ability to meet its population's needs and maintain stability?
Indicators: nutrition, health, crime, demographics, family stability, and relationship to resources.
Incorporation into the world-market economy often lowers the standard of living for self-sufficient tribal people.

Economic development can increase disease rates in three ways:
- Vulnerability to diseases of "advanced" peoples (diabetes, obesity, hypertension).
- Disturbance of environmental balances, increasing bacterial and parasitic diseases.
- Poverty diseases associated with urban slums and socioeconomic breakdown.
Examples:
- Micronesia: Increased heart disease and mental disorders with rapid development.
- Polynesia: Modernizing diet and urbanization linked to gout, diabetes, atherosclerosis, obesity, and hypertension.
Development policies can lead to increased disease rates due to unforeseen effects.
Urbanization leads to poor health standards, infectious diseases, stress, and poor nutrition.

Traditional diets of tribal peoples are adapted to their nutritional needs.
Dietary changes are often forced upon tribal peoples.
Dietary changes linked to the world-market economy tend to lower nutritional levels.
Vitamin, mineral, and protein intake decreases, replaced by starch and carbohydrates.
Dietary shifts lead to malnutrition, dental problems, and nutritional disorders.
Protein supplementation programs can cause unexpected health problems due to milk intolerance.

Tribal peoples often have excellent teeth, while industrialized societies have poor teeth.
Tribal diets contribute to sound teeth, while modernized diets do the opposite.
Weston Price's study (1930s): Traditional foods correlate with perfect teeth, while modern diets increase caries and abnormalities.
Modern dental treatment may not accompany new foods, leading to suffering.
New foods are associated with crowded teeth, gum diseases, facial distortion, and nasal cavity pinching.

Malnutrition, especially protein deficiency, is a critical problem for tribal peoples adopting new economic patterns.
Population pressures, cash cropping, and government programs encourage replacing protein-rich crops with low-protein substitutes.
Low earnings of cash croppers and wage laborers hinder adequate protein purchase.
Malnutrition can lead to undersized brain development and mental impairment.

Progress imposes strains on ecosystems, disrupting the balance between population and resources.
Economic development forces ecocide on tribal peoples.
Environmental deterioration involves resource depletion, erosion, and species extinction.
Traditional birth spacing mechanisms are eliminated, leading to rapid population growth.
Swidden systems and pastoralism are vulnerable to population pressures.
Official policies can indirectly create resource depletion.
Settling nomadic herders can lead to overgrazing and erosion.
Shortened planting cycles in swidden systems can disturb forest succession and impair soil.

Tribal peoples experience relative deprivation due to socioeconomic progress standards set by industrial civilizations.
They are forced to transform cultures to achieve unattainable goals.
Population growth, environmental limits, and inequitable wealth distribution widen the gap between rich and poor.
Tribal peoples feel deprivation when economic goals fail and they face discrimination.
Traditional cultures are sacrificed, family life is disrupted, and social anomie increases.
Frustration leads to cargo cults, revitalization movements, and political/religious movements.