There is the key TLDR line (and Chagnon's justification for why the lack of development was possible).
"The obvious reason why the Yanomamö didn't reach a Malthusian condition was their high level of violence. The Yanomamö simply killed each other efficiently enough to keep populations down. In practice they ran into violent neighbors long before they ran out of land to farm or game to hunt."
The Malthusian condition is what gives us "progress", because you have to fight economically rather than individually (with knowledge, technology, and efficiency rather than with knives and individually) to survive.
My concern over the last decade has been whether in wealthier societies grifting has become more profitable than developing technology or knowledge. One can argue what is better, but not really whether it is "progress". Moore's law is really one of the few things that was dragging us forward.
We certainly,seem to be a more fraudulent society now than when I was a kid (1970s) but that might be a distorted perception. I think there are earlier times when hucksterism was even bigger than now. I guess it is down to the forces of don’t let the government regulate the operations of the market winning since 1980, so there is no one to stop the fraud or label it. But it at least the US has always been caveat emptor, let the buyer beware.
Maybe it is more fraudulent because the internet and fraudsters have gotten more effective and most people have blind spots where they are manipulable; crypto has bilked people of billions; Q Anon has gotten millions utterly divorced from shared reality; YouTube algorithm inadvertently spread flat earther stuff because it has algorithmically desirable features.
Please elaborate. Kids surely don't have a good view on the amount of fraud, but I remember people going to jail and resigning for corruption or illegal schemes more regularly.
My concern over the last decade has been whether in wealthier societies grifting has become more profitable than developing technology or knowledge. One can argue what is better, but not really whether it is "progress". Moore's law is really one of the few things that was dragging us forward.