chapotraphouse

if time travelers kidnapped a few thousand scientists, engineers, and so forth from the present and took them back thousands of years and dropped them naked in the post-glacial northern european steppes, ... they certainly aren't building a chip manufacturing plant to start making computers.

You can blame British adventure novels for this bullshit idea. Every other day a Kickstarter of "THE END OF THE WORLD BOOK WHERE YOU CAN BUILD COMPUTER FROM SAND AFTER NUCLEAR BOMB" gets launched.

the apparent contrast of "low-tech" and "high-tech" is only going to feel like a contradiction to people (like me) who have internalized liberal economic theory based on the notion that value is ultimately created by the very smartest of fail-children having the very best ideas.

As an immigrant form the former Soviet Union, it's not liberal economic theory notions. Plenty of Post Soviet Liberal morons out there with the same notions. It's living in a rich country where you are isolated from the practicalities of the systems that shape your life.

This Archer clip on the origin of meat (before it becomes dictatorial lulziness) sums up the distinction nicely:

https://youtu.be/JHMJxFICUjk?t=57

One of the things that most Soviet Intelligentsia complained about was the fact that as students they had to work on Kolhozes (communal farms) during college summer break. But because of that everyone in the Soviet Union effectively had an intimate and direct relationship with their food supply chain. At one point (when all forms of back filling fail e.g. trade, stockpiling, etc), someone has to pick the food, fire or no fire. Otherwise nobody eats. The practical problem here is how to make that as fair and as safe as possible. This is why communist theory is the theory of misery.