Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was no poverty between the control of fire and civilization. We got our calories nice and easy.
Then why was the population so low?
The MVP wasn’t scalable.
The history of the end of poverty has just begun
291–300 of 449 posts
Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
They have access to all the world's information. They can travel across continents in a number of hours for less than two weeks wages. They can push a button on their phone to have gourmet food delivered to their house in under an hour. They can press another button on their phone to fetch a personal driver that will deliver them to any destination. They can choose to drive themselves, of course, and can travel hundr…
America's poor can't travel (it costs! even if you bus it, you need time off work, a place to stay, etc), they can't have gourmet food delivered (it costs!), they can't fetch a driver (it costs!), they often can't drive themselves (cars cost!). They also generally can't afford medical care, child care, a wide variety of leisure activities (plays, shows, even movies cost!) They do have access to information and music,…
>>>if I had to be a medieval king or a poor person in Cleveland, it is such a no-brainer I can't even understand how the question is being asked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_I_of_England#Death
The King of England died from a disease caused by getting shit particles in your food. Diarrheal disease deaths are barely on the radar of US fatalities. https://www.healthdata.org/news-release/despite-reductions-i...
Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
I flat out don't believe you. However you are welcome to enlighten us with some of the details. How long were you homeless? Where? How did you get homeless and how did you escape? Why did you go to jail? For how long? Where? And how amazing was your life doing all of that compared with being a King? A King that has shelter, easy access to food, sex with the most beautiful woman in the country, the power to torture an…
Kings have people trying to murder them, they also have to murder others. They do not have peace. Power doesn't attract me, neither does rape. I'm sorry you're so broken.
No post body was provided.
Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun
#294Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun
#295It is always nice to see such narratives based on robust data. For similar stories backed by data I can also recommend the book "Factfulnes" by Hans Rosling [1]. When we talk about basic needs, our global community is making tremendous progress. At the same time, we should not forget that the same system that abolishes poverty also creates enormous inequality, which not only makes people unhappier, but also leads to…
Wealth is a zero sum game, And when 1% holds more than 50% of entire wealth then inequality becomes the root cause of every social issue as the 1% has enough incentives to preserve the status-quo.
If declining poverty means at the end forced to serve that 1% by shitting in bags because there's no toilet breaks, Then I'm not sure 'celebrating the decline in poverty' is on their minds.
Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
Inequality has nothing to do with feeling superior or inferior to others (though, our culture absolutely does encourage those beliefs). In a world with limited resources, huge levels of inequality necessarily means that a small group of people are consuming vastly more of the available resources than everyone else. It also tends to concentrate political power in the same small group. Many people would say there is so…
The world has limited natural resources, but it doesn't have limited human welfare or enjoyment or wealth. Moreover, natural resources are not consumed, except for helium, energy, and the contents of spacecraft. The natural resources in a big plate glass window are a double handful of sand. The natural resources in a Rembrandt are the sunlight and rainfall needed to grow a sheaf of flax and a handful of powdered colo…
Oil isn't renewable and the rich tend to be the ones in control...
Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun
#297I think this is simply a false goal. $30 a day is an arbitrary number and is certainly in the realm of "relative poverty" already: a person who lives on $30 a day is relatively poor - that is, in relation to the middle class in rich countries. That life might seem to be a misery, but with the economic development worldwide, today's life of middle class in rich countries will also seem like a misery in 50 years, and the threshold will rise again. So a goal to "eliminate $30 a day poverty" is little but a goal to "establish artificial, Soviet style forced redistributional equality of outcomes" which is hardly beneficial for development, social cohesion, or democracy, and can hardly be morally justified.
The goal of poverty reduction must be that the people don't starve or destroy their health due to poverty, and their children aren't poverty-trapped (but it has limits too - make higher education free for everyone and in the next generation education will simply be irrelevant as elites will find different ways to preserve their hereditary status, and this is a dangerous thing cos non-educated people will get in control of things, so it's better to keep higher education unattainable to the poor so to at least the rich kids educated).
Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun
#298It is always nice to see such narratives based on robust data. For similar stories backed by data I can also recommend the book "Factfulnes" by Hans Rosling [1]. When we talk about basic needs, our global community is making tremendous progress. At the same time, we should not forget that the same system that abolishes poverty also creates enormous inequality, which not only makes people unhappier, but also leads to…
>we should not forget that the same system that abolishes poverty also creates enormous inequality Is this true? The post uses Sweden as the exemplar, which has the lowest poverty (on its chart) and also one of the lowest inequalities as measured by the Gini coeffcient (30). This page [1] seems to offer a handful of data, but nothing that outlines a clear 'higher Gini -> less poverty.' If anything it seems pretty unc…
Sweden does however, have a very high wealth Gini coefficient.
Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun
#299The end of poverty began in the US around 1800, when the specter of famine was finally eliminated. Throughout the 19th century, Americans grew in height and life expectancy, resulting in America's poor being the richest poor people in the world. Today, America's poor have a better quality of life than medieval kings.
“Today, America's poor have a better quality of life than medieval kings.” That may be true from a purely materialistic point of view but a lot of the unpleasantness of being poor is stress. Not knowing if you can feed your children tomorrow, you may become homeless, if you work minimum wage you often get treated like crap. Medieval kings didn’t have to worry about that. In short, this is a pretty condescending line…
Agreed, this is such a privileged point of view. This person wouldn't last one minute in the situations those homeless people are in, yet sees fit to pretend they are living better than kings.
Re: The history of the end of poverty has just begun
#300Could we classify the lives in tribes and villages prior to civilisation as "poverty"? Or did "poverty" begin with civilisation?
This is exactly what I had in mind, thanks for asking.
Are those tribes who are still living a secluded life in the forests of Amazon or say even those who are completely isolated like in Indian ocean islands considered poor? They've had everything they need and unless there's no external interference(Humans, Weather events e.g. Tsunami) they're living a successful life.
Also I have serious issues with the term 'Civilization', I don't know how tribes who have been co-existing with nature successfully for thousands of years could be called uncivilized where as we who have set in motion the likely destruction of vast majority of the species on the planet considered civilized?
I feel that mentality is a relic of colonial mindset, There are vast amount of written accounts of colonists calling the indigenous people 'Uncivilized'.