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Only 300 people, the entire island is less than a quarter of a kilometer in size. They live almost exactly like they did when they arrived there 400 years ago, they grow taro and breadfruit, play ukeleles, and rely primarily on fishing the sea to survive. They are 100% self sufficient, as they are too far away to trade with other islands. I learned about them on the documentary the south pacific on netflix, and when I saw them, it made me think of Hawai'i. We should grow all our own food and fish it and stuff like the Anutians do! Their life is very hard, true, but they have 0% homeless, nobody starves, everyone shares and contributes to the greater good. Despite their agrarian level of tech, they seem happier than most of modern Hawai'ian society.
Aloha
Aloha
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I wonder what their infant mortality and life expectancy look like.
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300 people on 64 acres? They must have some very rich soil.
Feel free to grow as much as you like here.
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Jared Diamond described a very small island in the pacific with a similar lifestyle in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel. His description was not so idyllic. Their oral history covered many different attempts at dealing with what seemed like regular occurrences of demand for food exceeding supply and included warfare, murder in all its permutations (including infanticide), and suicide including sailing off to find new lands. When you contemplate the noble polynesian explorers spreading out across the pacific it was probably most often the case that they were trying to leave a bad situation behind, something bad enough to make them risk it all on a wild gamble.
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glassnumbers - I suggest you live there for six months or a year and then come back and tell us how wonderful it is. My bet is you'll come back with a very different story.
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Wikipedia says: "During the 1990s, Anuta's advisors rejected western medicines on the island, arguing that it would indicate a lack of faith in the church".
At last a place where we can escape the tyranny of Big Pharma!
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First episode. Strange that they also consider Hawaii to be "South Pacific".
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Just watched it. Yeah, that would not work for Hawaii. Communal property and Labor rarely works for small communities; look at Plymouth Colony, let alone an entire state of over a million people. communal property and labor only works in households, not communities.
