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probably number in the tens of millions between health care, advertising, and agriculture.
Consider how easily deaths are preventable by good diet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPiR9VcuVWw
And then look at what is subsidized:
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/debunking-diet-myths-the-food-pyramid-of-the-insane.html
http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html

Sector by sector one could go through the US economy and look at the suffering and deaths caused by corporate-friendly profit-oriented social policies (mercury poisoning anyone?). It may well add up to fifty million US Americans killed at least twenty to thirty years early. It's just someone dying in a car accident from lack of sensible land use policies, or someone dying from cancer from industrial toxins, or someone dying from heart disease from eating too much subsidized meat and processed wheat is not normally seen in the USA as a victim of government policy shaped by corporate interests. But they are just as dead as if someone had shot them. And it is not a good rebuttal to say other countries do as bad in other ways when the USA could have done a lot better with all its advantages...

What about the millions of people in the US prison system? What about the tens of millions who seek out illegal drugs to escape for a time from the USA?

And the risk still remains that we will all perish in a nuclear war or bioengineered plague, driven by a competitive war racket.
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html

Related to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-sector_hypothesis

People went from 90% agriculture workers to about 2% agriculutre workers over the past two hundred years in the USA. Of the current agriculutral production, 75% of the effort goes to meat production which is not strictly needed and in general is harming people's health, and otherwise people eat too much of the wrong foods and are obese (see Dr. Fuhrman). Why is agriculture still not using 90% of the labor force? Automation and limited demand.

Compulsory schools were created to keep kids off the street and train them to be soldiers and factory workers. Working hours went down from 12 hours 6 days a week to 8 hours five days a week, and only for adults. Child labor was outlawed. So, much of the working force was freed.

In 1950, about 30% of the workforce was in manufacturing. Now it is more like aroung 12%, and the same amount of stuff is still produced (plus some is imported from China). Why? Increasing automation, better design, and limited demand. Many people are drowning in junk that clutters their homes and lives.

Granted, in the USA, women have gone into the work force and there are other confounding factors.

What happens when services go the same way through robotics and other automation, better design, voluntary social networks, and limited demand?
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery/

Consider also that unlike food and some basic goods, most services are optional.

It turns out even most medical care is probably harmful and unneccesary, compared to just eating better and getting adequate vitamin D.
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html

The entire economy is poised to implode.
http://idlenest.freehostia.com/mirror/www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
http://idlenest.freehostia.com/mirror/www.whywork.org/index.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&feature=channel
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1108-21.htm
http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/info.php?titleID=29&cmd=summary
http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-dealing-with-social-hurricanes.html
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_nonviolence.html
http://www.bluezones.com/
http://books.google.com/books?id=hM_JDjq6V-kC
http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/depression.shtml
http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html

See also my comment here on how it's all about our social paradigm:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1883960&cid=34448172

Yes, S-curves are common in nature. Although we are stil facing discontinuities in our economics. By me on that:
    http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery
    http://dougengelbart.org/colloquium/forum/discussion/0061.html
    http://dougengelbart.org/colloquium/forum/discussion/0126.html

Roy Amara first said Kurzweil's law of accelerating returns:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Amara
"We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run."

I sent Ray Kurzweil some emails on why he gets evolution wrong and why uploaded minds will be eaten by digital pirahna (someone else put up copies):
    http://heybryan.org/fernhout/

Another key point is here by me:
    http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/1f6bb622cafc8c29?hl=en
"Is the Singularity like Harry Potter's "Mirror of Erised"? ("Erised" is "Desire" spelled backwards.) What would we see in the mirror if we are a financially successful capitalist (hint, hint)? Does capitalist ideology dominate "mainstream" singularity thinking? What is the danger of seeing capitalism and competing over scarce resources as the way to build the future of abundance? Or could we see cooperation, or at least, balance, as a better way forward to a world that works for everyone, and where the capacity to collectively create, monitor, and respond outweighs the individual or collective ability to destroy and harm? "

There is a low-tech way to prevent cancer, heart disease, and many other illnesses now, and that is to be sure to get enough vitamin D and to eat lots of vegetables and fruits.
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
    http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html
Although it is true that it has taken modern science and technology to prove why that works and to communicate that finding. Kurzweil is probably taking too many potions for his health, sadly. He should check out Dr. Fuhrman's January retreat in Princeotn, NJ on health.

With all that said, I still have a lof respect for Ray Kurzweil's accomplishments and predictions and his efforts to help humanity with technology. I just think some of his pedictions show some of the limts of his perspective based on who he has been, which is true for any of us.

I'd second this; from: http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
"We predict that treatment with physiological doses of vitamin D3 (between 4,000–10,000 IU/day from all sources, including sun, food and supplements) along with periodic monitoring of blood calcidiol and calcium levels will become routine. [Zittermann A. Vitamin D in preventive medicine: are we ignoring the evidence? Br J of Nutr. 2003;89:552–572. Holick M. Vitamin D: A Millennium Perspective. J Cell Biochem. 2003;88:296–307.] Research indicates it will help several vitamin D deficiency-associated diseases such as: autism, autoimmune illness, cancer, chronic pain, depression, diabetes, heart disease, hyperparathyroidism, hypertension, influenza, myopathy (neuromuscular disorders), and osteoporosis.
    At this time, we advise even healthy people (those without the diseases of vitamin D deficiency) to seek a knowledgeable physician and have your 25(OH)D level measured. If your levels are below 50 ng/mL you need enough sun, artificial light, oral vitamin D3 supplements, or some combination of the three, to maintain your 25(OH)D levels between 50–80 ng/mL year-round.
How Much Vitamin D?
    If you refuse to see a physician, or can't find a knowledgeable one, purchase the 1000 IU/day vitamin D3 cholecalciferol pills that are available over-the-counter in North America or a 5,000 IU capsule. Take an average of 5,000 IU a day, year-round, if you have some sun exposure. If you have little, or no, sun exposure you will need to take at least 5,000 IU per day. How much more depends on your latitude of residence, skin pigmentation, and body weight. Generally speaking, the further you live away from the equator, the darker your skin, and/or the more you weigh, the more you will have to take to maintain healthy blood levels.
    For example, Dr. Cannell lives at latitude 32 degrees, weighs 220 pounds, and has fair skin. In the late fall and winter he takes 5,000 IU per day. In the early fall and spring he takes 2,000 IU per day. In the summer he regularly sunbathes for a few minutes most days and thus takes no vitamin D on those days in the summer. The only way you can know how much you vitamin D you need to take is by repeatedly getting your blood tested—known as a 25(OH)D test—and seeing what you need to do to keep your level around 50 ng/mL."

Another site with somewhat lower recommendations:
    http://www.grassrootshealth.net/

Eating a lot of vegetables and fruits can help too, as can other good lifestyle things like exercise and sleeping well and thinking positive, having friends, having a sense of humor, communing periodically with nature and the inifinite, and so on. Example on food, related to Dr. Joel Fuhrman:
    http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html

You may just have had an advantage from natural talent and experience? Or maybe you just eat a better diet or exercise more than others?
    http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html

You can see another post I made for links about alternative education.
    http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1847578&cid=34081206

But basically, most young children tend to learn best through interactions with people, nature, exposure to a waide variety of experiences including music and stories, and basic things like playing with sand, water, and blocks. It is on those sorts of things that more advanced thinking is built. Trying to put the cart before the horse may lead to less success, not more. It has been hypothesized that the reason many kids are doing worse in math and science and criticial thinking is that those sorts of general early experiences have been curtailed in favor of early academics focusing on things like early print literacy or early drill of math concepts. So, you might want to research this more, including reading stuff by John Holt (a mathematical person who also studied alternative education).
    http://holtgws.com/

With that said, there are things you can do, like pointing out things. I've pointed out examples of recursion to my kid from a young age (like trucks carrying trucks). And math has been a daily thing by pointing out examples of it in our daily life, including when working with LEGOs. But that is not the same as "lessons" in any kind of formal sense.

A good open-ended site for young kids to learn through play as an example:
    http://www.poissonrouge.com/

I agree with you that programming is a good way to approach math. As people talked about on the Python edusig list, "math" can really just be seen as a subset of computation and programming in general (at least within the bounds of whatever most schools teach).

I can also wonder if getting kids indoors more at an early age has made them vitamin D deficient which has led to some learning difficulties? So, even if you use computers with a kid a lot, make sure that everyone is getting enough vitamin D.
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

My comment on another article: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1692444&cid=32644166

Basically, many researchers keep looking for a magic bullet they can patent, but overlook the basics they can't patent (like vegetables&fruits&legumes, exercise, sleep, meditation, humor, friendships, dogs, a clean environment, good work, peace of mind, etc.)

Examples:
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
    http://www.lewrockwell.com/sardi/sardi111.html
    http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html
    http://www.bluezones.com/makeover-about
    http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C
    http://books.google.com/books?id=RKZreNYKNHQC
 

It says somewhere on the CIA public website (or used to) essentially that if you are applying for a job there, you should not tell anyone. I guess, the first rule of the CIA is no one works there, except Valery Plame. :-) But the CIA suggests that in part for the reasons you imply, as it can presumably make people a target (although it also would complicated covert things). Of course, who is not a target in some way in this world? Things become an issue of "risk management", like so much in life. It's unfortunate that the US has such an organization that mixes up sensemaking, spying, and covert operations. I think a "COIA" (Central Open Intelligence Agency?) that just worked in public would be much more effective for US security. :-) Maybe to complement the "Department of Peace" Dennis Kucinich and others have worked towards? :-) Although various different agencies and parts of agencies all do part of that task, but there may be poor integration of all that. And, of course, nothing is going to work right as long as our economic religion is so messed up (and a top priority has to be rethinking economics for the 21st century so it stops being primarily a faith-based dogmatic religion that denies it is a religion. :-) Related:
"The Market as God"
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/99mar/marketgod.htm

As to me and my funding, under our current socioeconomic paradigm, I'm right now mostly one step above Kryten as a toilet-scrubbing homeschooling stay-at-home Dad, supported by a wife doing data-analysis consulting for "civilian" corporations these days, where my hobbies include developing FOSS software, writing long essays like this that hardly anyone reads, taking care of three elderly chickens, and taking part in a global "Blessed Unrest" http://www.blessedunrest.com/ towards saving a world that, way more often than not, is uninterested in being saved from its own internal contradictions and ironies. A world going mad from simple things like vitamin D deficiency and not eating enough vegetables, fruits, and legumes:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/mentalIllness.shtml
http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html

Best job I ever had. :-)

But if the CIA came along and offered me a big grant to do publicly available FOSS Intelligence software and related content, would I ask my wife to do even more of the homeschooling and chicken care than she does already, or maybe even hire a multilingual tutor for some of the time and/or buy a toilet scrubbing robot? Probably. :-) How's that for ethics? :-) Would I rather such work was funded some other way? Sure. We tried a bit and failed with the NSF and NASA:
http://www.gardenwithinsight.com/nsfprop.htm
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/

Maybe we did not try hard enough perhaps... I have to admire these Concord people for their success and doing stuff mostly the right way (at least, as right as you can be if focused mostly on the needs of compulsory schools):
http://www.concord.org/

Politics and FOSS can make strange bedfellows. A few years ago there was a slashdot story on someone doing FOSS who lost a military-related contract after he said he took military money because it meant one less cruise missile or something. But he was right in a way. Imagine what some FOSS developers could do with the time otherwise made available by the money tied up in just one Tomahawk cruise missile (US$6

See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzXBn5koFbY
http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html
http://www.drfuhrman.com/
http://www.diseaseproof.com/

Check your vitamin D levels too:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

What you describe sound like a very respectable life. :-) Still, no one (including me) can live in this world and not get involved in some bad aspects of it (like, in the case of helping broadcasting stations, the mainstream media was often not doing its job of investigative journalism). Related:
    "What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream"
    http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710--.htm

Anyway, I hope those first links might help with reversing Type-II diabetes.

BTW, two other boxes of democracy are moving box (to somewhere with better laws) and mail box (writing representatives). :-) So, there are at least six. :-)

Why the ammo box is problematical:
    "Social Movements and Strategic Nonviolence"
    http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_nonviolence.html

Anyway, the things they don't teach in school...
    "Educating for a Peaceful World"
    http://www.forums.alliance21.org/d_read/pax/articles/Deutsch.htm

Maybe you were better off to get out sooner?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZGgeGHU1Bs
http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPiR9VcuVWw
http://books.google.com/books?id=CX8huSU0n8AC
http://www.drfuhrman.com/
http://www.diseaseproof.com/
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/diet-myths-the-food-pyramid-of-the-insane.html

And this site has some great videos to improve your knife skills for using wicked sharp knives to cut up your veggies:
http://www.kitchenonfire.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RhfAE6McrM

And don't forget your vitamin D, which you almost certainly won't get enough of from food:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html
http://www.earthsave.org/news/03summer/eat2live.htm
"Chapter seven is perhaps the most powerful chapter of the book. It offers compelling evidence of dietary causes for most of the common health problems faced by Americans. Then Dr. Fuhrman explains how diet can prevent and even reverse heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, chronic headaches, and autoimmune disease. He relates true stories of patients (who gave permission to be named) who have been able to stop their antihypertensive, antianginal, and antidiabetic drugs; patients who have experienced gradual elimination of their chest pain; patients who have been able to stop their use of toxic drugs for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. I was able to review the charts of Dr. Fuhrman's patients and verified that he is accurately presenting these results."

His diet is killing him.

At least everyone in Cuba have access to medical care.
    http://www.hr676.org/

On your points:

"Go to work,"
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html

"send your kids to school."
http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
http://www.holtgws.com/

"Follow fashion,"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-consumerism
http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html

"act normal."
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/11/the_war_on_the.html
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

"Walk on the pavements,"
http://www.bluezones.com/makeover-about (shows how unusual that is)

"watch T.V."
http://www.turnoffyourtv.com/
http://www.tvturnoff.org/
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

"Save for your old age,"
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2009/02/social-collapse-best-practices.html

"obey the law."
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/47
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification

"Repeat after me: I am free."
http://www.amctv.com/videos/the-prisoner-1960s-video/
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710--.htm

Any more? :-)

http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/researchObesity.shtml
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
Though food plays a big part, too:
http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html

Anyone who works indoors and late at night is at risk: http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

People with adequate vitamin D and good nutrition are much less likely to catch respiratory infections or to under or over respond to them.
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/science/research/vitamin-d-and-influenza.shtml
http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html

Anyway, I'm sorry to hear the news, because I so much enjoyed his shows.

From Albert Einstein on Science and Religion:
    http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm
"For the scientific method can teach us nothing else beyond how facts are related to, and conditioned by, each other. The aspiration toward such objective knowledge belongs to the highest of which man is capabIe, and you will certainly not suspect me of wishing to belittle the achievements and the heroic efforts of man in this sphere. Yet it is equally clear that knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be. One can have the clearest and most complete knowledge of what is, and yet not be able to deduct from that what should be the goal of our human aspirations. Objective knowledge provides us with powerful instruments for the achievements of certain ends, but the ultimate goal itself and the longing to reach it must come from another source. And it is hardly necessary to argue for the view that our existence and our activity acquire meaning only by the setting up of such a goal and of corresponding values. The knowledge of truth as such is wonderful, but it is so little capable of acting as a guide that it cannot prove even the justification and the value of the aspiration toward that very knowledge of truth. Here we face, therefore, the limits of the purely rational conception of our existence.
    But it must not be assumed that intelligent thinking can play no part in the formation of the goal and of ethical judgments. When someone realizes that for the achievement of an end certain means would be useful, the means itself becomes thereby an end. Intelligence makes clear to us the interrelation of means and ends. But mere thinking cannot give us a sense of the ultimate and fundamental ends. To make clear these fundamental ends and valuations, and to set them fast in the emotional life of the individual, seems to me precisely the most important function which religion has to perform in the social life of man. And if one asks whence derives the authority of such fundamental ends, since they cannot be stated and justified merely by reason, one can only answer: they exist in a healthy society as powerful traditions, which act upon the conduct and aspirations and judgments of the individuals; they are there, that is, as something living, without its being necessary to find justification for their existence. They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities. One must not attempt to justify them, but rather to sense their nature simply and clearly."

Jack Horkheimer, in his own unique and quirky way, was one of those "powerful personalities", one who helped showed me the beauty of the universe in a way that made sense intellectually as well as aesthetically and emotionally. I'll try to "Keep Looking Up", and I hope you are on to better things, Jack. :-)

http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html
http://www.bluezones.com/makeover-about
http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C
http://books.google.com/books?id=RKZreNYKNHQC

That's a rather materialistic view on "the good life".What happened to the value of singing, dancing, telling stories, eating food you enjoyed, having free time, not having someone bossing you around, time for communion with nature and the infinite, doing comprehensible work you enjoyed doing at your own pace, having time to raise children, and so on? The Sahlins article shows how most hunter/gatherers most of the time had no want for food. Would you trade, say, having time for singing and dancing and friendships for some hot water? You can always put hot rocks in a basket of water if you want hot water. And while you don't have hot water on tap, you also don't have property taxes to pay or dioxin in the food supply to digest.

Also, you've overgeneralized the point. There is a big difference between saying there were a lot of good things about a period in human history and saying *everything* about that period was wonderful or that we should just abandon other aspects of our current lives that we enjoy. But clearly, these game developers are not enjoying their lives. So, something is wrong. Looking to the past helps give us some perspective on that.

By the way, life expectancy after age five in hunter/gatherers may have been comparable to today. It is only in the last 100 years that human skeletons are now as tall as they were 10,000 years in the past (because agriculture was a big step backward nutritionally and culturally):
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/6812.html

Some things like sewage treatment are only needed because of high population densities today.

Many people don't have access to medical care, and even when they do, the for-profit medical system harms them compared to simpler approaches (whole foods diet, fasting, sunlight, meditation, good sleep, etc.). Many chronic disease today are caused by eating poorly or not getting enough sunlight (cancer, diabetes, heart disease, mental illness, depression, influenza, autism, etc.)
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html
so it is not completely clear how much happier most people are now compared to people 10,000 years ago.

Also people back then did not know what was possible, so someone from now sent back to those times might feel different than people did who grew up then.

And young children in the USA spend more than a decade in prison, so that can't be happy for them compared to back then either:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2445404/the_war_on_kids_a_polemic_against_public.html?cat=9

So, sure, there are some good things about today (the internet overall seems to be a wonderful thing). But there is plenty of bad too, so the equation of how different times stack up is not so simple.

A little bit on what America was like before Columbus (describing Haiti):
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncol1.html
"""
"They ... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned... . They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features.... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane... . They would make fine servants.... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want." ... The Indians, Columbus reported, "are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who

Vitamin D deficiency can lead to depression and mental illness (as well as all sorts of other medical issues including joint pain), and I would expect most game developers working such long hours indoors are suffering from it. Here is how to get treatment for pennies a day using supplements:
    http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

A better diet than chips and diet soda would help too, like Dr. Fuhrman recommends:
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPiR9VcuVWw
    http://www.alternativeratreatments.com/eat-to-live.html

Related funny video:
    "Code Monkey"
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4Wy7gRGgeA