"However, at best we can only say that it is not necessarily intrinsic to the human condition."
Also fair enough -- my point here would be that "not necessarily intrinsic to the human condition" means the same thing as "definitely NOT part of human nature" -- and if its not part of human *nature*, and there've been successful human societies WITHOUT it, then there its not INEVITABLE that a human society become hyper-consumers to be successful. My message is one of HOPE, you see, not despair, for that way lies madness.
For if we are fated to perpetual growth in both our number and in the amount we consume (after all, to be a hyper-consumer, we must consume MORE as compared to whatever measure we use to gauge our own consumption, which typically will mean the consumption of other humans, who, if they share our delusion about the hyper-consuming nature of humans, will then compare to US, which will spur THEM to consume more, and so on and so on) AND we live in a finite universe, what possible ultimate outcome can we hope for our race except ruin?
*steps down from pulpit*
All that said, another (minor) correction:
"Think about it: 50,000 years ago the tribes that survived were the ones who horded resources for themselves"
This is not strictly INCORRECT -- especially in light of your later comments about hoarding in one's on body -- but it represents a pretty inaccurate mental model for the situation 50,000 years ago. Namely, the tribes that ACTUALLY thrived 50,000 years ago, near as anthropologists can tell, are the ones who waged war most successfully on their neighbors. Yes, those we think of "noble savages" were, in most cases (and most especially in areas where many tribes competed for "resources"), quite warlike, cruel, and brutal, at least as regards members of other tribes (My, how things have changed, huh? .... ;^)
And the "resource" most fought over was, of course, *LAND*. And that's why its so misleading to say hunter-gatherers "hoarded" resources -- to people that DO NOT collect all their food up in warehouses and grocery stores and then lock it away from each other, the world is MADE OF food -- everything a human hunter gatherer sees -- with a typical human's ability to eat both so high and so low on the food chain, in such variety, and gain sustenance from said eating -- in his world is his food, or at the least it's the food of SOME of his food. To a human living in a world made of food, to speak of "hoarding" of food is a bit of a non-sequitur. How can one "store" or "hoard" the world in which one lives? (Within one's own body does make some sense as an answer to this, as you've pointed out ... ) And even if you could, why would you?
However, to be more strictly accurate, I'd encourage you to think rather in terms of the competition between tribes to (mostly) monopolize the (human) use of a region -- that is a more accurate model. "Hoarding" has a connotation of "storage", which really just doesn't much apply to the way most hunter-gatherers lived.
To bring this around to the original point, I'd agree that "competition between humans for desired things (land, food, whatever)" may well be intrinsic to human nature (or, more probably, just "any nature", as opposed to "human nature") -- but the evidence suggests hyper-CONSUMPTION is NOT.
And, if you'll allow me to wax even MORE long-winded, this is the crux of the point -- the KEY difference between "us" and "them" is NOT in the way we "hoard", or even "how we consume", it is ACTUALLY in "how we compete". What happened 8,000 years ago, with the STYLE of agriculture that started being practiced (what anthropologists recognize as "agriculture" actually started much earlier), was that we decided to become not just "those who compete" but rather think of ourselves as "those who make the rules for competition".
If we define "agriculture" as "the encouragement of desired plants to grow in a certain area", then what started being practiced 8,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent could be thought of as "owning a group of desired plants and attempting to commit the genocide (at least at the local scale) of any other species that might want those plants".
I'm no bleeding-heart liberal who thinks no one should ever hurt anything. I'm just a person that sees killing huge swaths of the set of species that, in the collective, form our own life-support system, is inherently self-destructive. And, more importantly, a person that believes changing away from a path towards ruin requires FIRST understanding that it IS a path toward ruin, and SECOND believing another path exists.
Hence the long-windedness of my reply; I apologize for it, and humbly ask forgiveness for expecting you to wade thru it.
