quality of life

its crazy to think that some of the same pressures have been plaguing man for thousands of years.
maybe not on the same level, but nonetheless similar pressures on the decision of how to live life.

it seems that it always comes down to two choices:
resource and population maintenance or a push for increased population and unchecked use of resources.

hunter-gatherers used to live where resources were used, left to replenish, and once again returned to in due time. to keep populations that can't be supported in check, infanticide was inacted.

then came agriculture that allowed for more densely packed populations. many more people may be able to survive, but at the cost of nutrition. a single staple crop can't deliver the necessary ingredients for a healthy diet.

so populations boomed as agriculture spread, but quality of life became low.

this mentality of a larger population used to mean power. maybe, to an extent, it still can. if you have 500 healthy men, living off the land, they can still be easily overpowered by 5000 men with a meager food/nutrient allotment.

so with higher populations of people with mediocre lifestyles, the smaller populations with a higher quality of life who were living off the land succumbed, or were forced to, or were killed by those who were able to support the most life.

more resources are consumed and more quickly depleted, and you're left with very unhappy people. agriculture also allows for someone to control surplus and land. few happy people, more unhappy people.

i could go so many ways with this, but i can't decide.
it's just weird to realize that in a dumbed-down form, politics of today still wrestle with the same problems of millenia past:

should we control the population?
should and how could we control resource use?
how will quality of life fare for the majority of the population?