When transportation costs were high, it prevented regions from competing with each other, leading to networks of artisans in each region.

Nobody _EVER_ built a suit this way — it is too labor intensive!
Adam Smith pointed this out in his pin-factory example.

The sheep shearer would shear 200+ sheep in a day. Then the carder would card all of the wool, the spinners would use ring-spinning or spinning jennys, the dye-maker would specialize in dye-production, the weavers would use high-speed looms, the shoemaker would make large numbers of shoes, the tanner would tan thousands of hides, etc.

So the labor costs were due to unspecialized and often unskilled laborers doing artisinal work that has been superseded by modern technology.

As a practical matter, people didn’t really dress like this before modern methods reduced the labor costs. The colonial garments were much easier to make.

Of course, they couldn’t go back because, as you say, there’s five times as many people in the world. The old methods of production wouldn’t work any more to support a larger population.

Saying they have an “abundance of leisure” leads me to believe that you do not understand what subsistence living is. Subsistence living means you have no leisure, because you spend (virtually) every waking moment trying to ensure that you do not die from lack of food, clothing, shelter, or whatever other natural/human hazards are present. If someone had time for leisure, that means that they are *not* subsistence farming and that they have nothing greatly productive to be doing with that time.

I won’t dispute the next two, but they are also fairly irrelevant. As capitalism aids family after family to rise out of poverty, they can afford to move to suburbs to avoid traffic and they can afford to travel frequently to see family, who incidentally now can live farther apart and still see each other regularly.

“Connected to their natural environment”? The poor subsistence farmers of the water-logged Bangladesh coast(along with their similarly-placed counterparts in India) daily are “connected” to their environment with floods that kill them by the thousands and ruin their crops, tigers that kill them by the hundreds (it still stuns me that man-killing animals are such a source of fear in places on earth in modern times), and hurricanes, tidal waves, and disease brought on by the nature of the swampy conditions they live in. Whereas wealthier, non-subsistence areas similar in geography can afford to minimize the dangers of their locations while still enjoying nature’s splendor around them.

I think our whole discussion centers on disagreement as to the benefit of self-sufficiency, so I’ll skip that as well. No war is hugely unlikely. Recall that the primary source of African slaves for European traders was not Europeans, but African tribal chiefs who sold their enemies, gained in myriad tribal wars. War is best avoided when people are interconnected through trade. Who wants to shoot their customers? A good example is World War II. After the first world war, a massive wave of protectionism issued across the world, and by the time WWII started, each “side” was reliant on their allies for trade, so of *course* they could attack each other. In contrast, China and the US are not likely to fight, for each side would lose out hugely in terms of international providers and customers.

Ahh yes, and the grand finale: money. Of course, money is only a medium by which trade is conducted. Money is used so one does not have to figure out how many of a farmer’s ears of corn are worth a tailor’s shirt. Instead, you can determine for yourself how many pieces of [insert monetary unit] an ear of corn is, and how many a shirt is, then exchange based on that. Money is only a representation of resources, a representation of real wealth. Subsistence farmers still have resources and still have wealth in the form of their property. Saying they have no money is probably false first of all, and if true, only means that they are hurting themselves by refusing mutual exchange with neighbors.

Are finances the only way to measure happiness. I suspect the Natives of Hispanola and others had a happy life of liberty, no government, abundance of resources, an abundance of leisure, no commute traffic, surrounded by family, connected to their natural environment, self sufficiency, no war and NO money. Then the Capitalist arrived. We’ll never know if they were happier then us… but happier then “slumdogs”… I’d guess so.

This post was mentioned on Twitter by cehwiedel: Steve Landsberg: 92% local-sourced men’s suit for $10k, http://bit.ly/2KDP6h | new suit at Wal-Mart: $100; not looking dorky, priceless…