I wonder whether there is a qualitative difference between "fighting to survive" and "fighting to thrive"? Aren't both just attempts to fulfill your needs, starting with the most basic ones?

And if social tensions are caused by the interaction of these kinds of societies, what are the consequences? What does this model predict?

May I sharpen this up a bit, without disagreeing with you too much?

We started out in natal groups, not as individuals. Yes, of course we were born one by one, and we died one by one, but the primates from which we evolved were social, group animals. What material progress has allowed is Individuation outside of our natal group. In other words one can grow up and strike out on ones own, provided he has sufficient resources. If not, he stays home.

Yes, there is a difference between "threshold" and "Maximizing" societies. Just my preference, but I would set the level of "threshold" fairly low, especially in the modern, industrialized world. That puts most people in many countries in a maximizing setting.

In the US, for instance, an officially poor family on welfare living in public housing and getting food stamps--no car, no assets, no cash--is probably living above the threshold level. NOT living well, certainly. But the adults and children are in a position to do more than survive. Someone living in a large urban setting receiving no support whatsoever (living on the streets, eating garbage, begging, etc.) are surviving. The problem of the unsheltered homeless (or even the sheltered ones) is that there is very little chance of them ascending even a step or two above surviving, unless someone lifts them up from above -- and generally that doesn't happen.

Now, in some developing countries, there are many more people living on a threshold level--especially if they live in a current or recent war zone, are currently being fucked over by some stronger group, or have been sent back to square one by drought and disease.

Going back a ways (like...15,000 years) hunter-gatherers probably were operating above the threshold level. There is some evidence that many were reasonably well fed and reasonably healthy. They didn't engage in material maximization, however. They didn't accumulate stuff. Good idea because H-G societies have to be pretty mobile, and carting around a log cabin is highly inconvenient. So, you build a shelter out of whatever you've got.

The 5,000 year old man found in the alpine glacier was dressed in leather pants, shirt and shoes; he carried a copper knife, a bow, and some arrows; a little food, maybe a small piece of hot coals wrapped up in... something, some sort of vegetable matter for later use, and that's about it. He was killed by an arrow--somebody was chasing him. He had maximized his personal situation, which probably made him a target. Or he had pissed somebody off. Hard to tell. Anyway, he died, was covered up with ice, and eventually showed up still frozen.

I understand the argument behind thinking they're both attempting to fulfill needs, and that surviving is just the first stage of thriving - and in a sense, they absolutely are - but I think its reasonable to consider that there is a different between specifically seeking to reach a threshold amount of a quantity and specifically seeking to maximize a quantity. It is, for example, the difference between wanting enough money to purchase commodity X and wanting enough money to purchase any commodity you might desire in the future. For another example, it is the difference between attempting to heat solid-water until it melts into liquid-water and trying to get as hot of liquid-water as possible from solid-water.

I don't really know what this model predicts - I'm only just starting to think about it. Furthering the analogy to phase transitions, maybe it predicts that, like both solid and liquid water existing in the same body of water at the same time at critical temperatures, a society with multiple forms of society existing within it is an inherently unstable equilibrium

I would set the level of "threshold" fairly low, especially in the modern, industrialized world. That puts most people in many countries in a maximizing setting...In the US, for instance, an officially poor family on welfare living in public housing and getting food stamps--no car, no assets, no cash--is probably living above the threshold level. NOT living well, certainly.

You touch on something really good here: I was originally going use the term "survival society" instead of "threshold society", but then I realized that there are more thresholds than just survival. Another one is what is useful to call a "societal engagement threshold" : the wealth necessary to not only live, but to engage with society. No one needs access to the internet to survive, but "everyone" "needs" the internet in order to be a participating member of today's society, depending on your society.

Until everyone has access to at least the wealth necessary to not only survive in but engage with society, society will be unstable. Maybe.

Maybe. I'm not sure what all makes a society unstable. Economic instability certainly plays a role; political instability, climate instability, water-food instability. All those.

Access to the Internet is, as you said, an important threshold. I for one would be very unhappy if I lost access.

In general, I think raising the issue of survival thresholds, social engagement thresholds, and maximizing thresholds is very useful. We can be a little more nuanced about poverty, for instance.

I get your point. I think I would agree that there is a qualitative difference between needing a specific amount of resources and wanting an unlimited, or arbitrarily high, amount.

I wonder though, if a society or an individual can ever fully exist in one stare or another. Perhaps I am coming at this from too much of a layman's psychology angle, but it seems to me that some desires do inherently have thresholds while others do not.

Take the desire for food. What is the threshold? Is it just the strictly necessary amount of calories and trace elements? Even a sustenance farmer, who is, I think, undoubtedly in a "threshold" mode of living, will place some value on taste. If an unexpected windfall happens, or the village has a feast, they might eat more than is necessary. But it doesn't seem very useful to say that everyone who is not starving is already "maximising" their desire for food. On the other hand, even someone well off in an industrialized country does not desire arbitrarily high amounts of food. They might overeat, or eat unhealthy foods, but they won't be celebrating feasts every day.

Other desires, like social status or material security don't seem to have threshold, even in a society with very low material wealth. Other desires will take precedence most or all the time, but is there a natural point at which the desire to be more accepted, more famous, more loved turns from a "need" to a "want"?

Yet, a significant portion of the population still exists in a threshold society, in that a significant portion of the population is living paycheck-to-paycheck, trying to reach the wealth threshold required to sustain themselves. — Bliss

That "sustaining themselves" has a variable threshold. A lot of people live paycheck-to-paycheck to maximize their utility.

The majority of people living this way do own a car (even if an old cheap one), a home (even if not in the best neighbourhood), have clothes and don't go to sleep hungry because they cannot afford to buy any kind of food. Their consumption and spending might be meager compared to others, but who we compare to is the question.

The whole problem is that povetry is usually defined as the from some low percentile of the population. Threshold society, especially historically speaking, would be something totally different. Hence if by one statistic in the US about 1,3% live on less than 3.25$ (PPP) per day, in Congo about 90.1% live on 3.24$ (PPP) or less.

Hello Bliss, it looks like you are new to posting in the forum. My take on this is to not have children. Do not throw more people into the economic system as, by definition, they will be used by society as units of labor (less they survive sub-optimally and/or die). To me, this is a harm to the individual. Thus, the biggest harm is bringing a child into this economic system in the first place.