the cost of living in an agricultural society will be less than in an industrial one. by living away from urban centers property tends to be much cheaper, and growing your own food, as well as any wild game you may hunt, reduces your dependency on trade and therefore money. not to say that trade doesn't exist, rather that basic survival does not depend on it exclusively. in an urban industrial situation you're entirely dependent upon a paycheck as a primary means of survival.
What you're essentially advocating is arnarcho-primitivism. Actually what you are describing is how things used to be 200 years ago and the result was basically rampant poverty and decidedly worse nutrition. By your own admission China is, at this stage, much better off than India and most of Africa, and the reason for this is because China is much more industrialized. If you want to look at agro based societies and how much they suck, look no farther than most of Africa.
the usa used to be an agricultural society and still is to a huge degree. and we didnt need more powerful nations pumping us with cash and corruption to do it. the original point i was trying to make was that middle-class environmentalism is a sham and to make any real progress in terms of environmental protection, that you need to:
bring production closer to home
make efficient products that have a longer design life, made with longer production runs, and that can be repaired
only trade internationally in raw materials (and then only goods that are abundant locally for ones that are rare locally)
process our own waste (such as not shipping tech waste to china for reclamation, which is very damaging to their environment)
and most importantly, stop exploiting the 3rd world
my argument wasnt against industrialization, it was against industrialization to benefit the west and not the nation in which the industry is undertaken. if they farm let them farm and use the food locally instead of for export. if they are going to build vehicles or machinery or general consumer products, let them use them for their betterment and not for ours. every nation must find its balance between agriculture and industry. then when their population is in good enough shaape, they should implement appropriate environmental standards. they should probably do it before their resources are depleted and their land to contaminated to grow anything.
