Agriculture did not free up time, it costs more time. It also has been a catastrophe for the human diet, which was superior before. Besides food, living constantly next to cattle has caused all kinds of new diseases.
Finally, agriculture established the concept of property. Almost all the negative behavior we commonly attribute to people...greed, competition, theft, envy, hoarding...come from the invention of personal property. It's not a natural occurrence of human behavior.
It was a catastrophe for the human diet, back when most people ate grains for 90% of their meals. Now we benefit from having basically any food available to us consistently. Hunter gatherers had better diets than their farming descendents and we know this because of their skeletons. But what farming provides is a surplus of food. Extra food means you feel comfortable enough to have a bunch of kids and all sit around inventing things like computers and Hacker News
Agriculture did not free up time, it costs more time. It also has been a catastrophe for the human diet, which was superior before. Besides food, living constantly next to cattle has caused all kinds of new diseases.
Finally, agriculture established the concept of property. Almost all the negative behavior we commonly attribute to people...greed, competition, theft, envy, hoarding...come from the invention of personal property. It's not a natural occurrence of human behavior.