Robin Hanson writes: > A simple theory of farm economics says that farmers were mostly at a > subsistence level through most of human history, at least until > recently. I had always thought that horses were used in such subsistence > farming, but it has come to my attention that a horse weighs about ten > times as much as a human. It would seem that horses would eat about ten > times as much as a human, and so to be a part of the optimal mix of a > subsistence farm, they should be able to do more than ten times as much > work on a farm as a human. Now I'm sure horses are useful, but can they > really do more useful farm work, at least for certain important tasks, than > ten humans? Or is it just not true that horses are used in subsistence > farming?
Maybe horses eat cheaper food than humans? That is, maybe you are right that horses eat 10x as much food by weight, but that doesn't mean it's 10x as much weight by dollar value. Also, horses do not do the same types of work as humans. It's like the difference between capital and labor; the optimal solution is usually to use a mix of both. A farmer would use a horse if its MARGINAL product of labor is greater than or equal to that of additional people who could do the same amount of work on the same farm. Maybe having a horse pull a plow with one person holding it is more productive than 11 people trying to plow with hand tools. I'm not sure why taht's so hard to believe. --Robert Book
