Re:Giving money directly to poor people (2013)
by TheSpiceIsLife on Saturday April 21, 2018 @05:08AM
(#16890636)
It’s a good point, but it doesn’t invalidate the fact that we do now enjoy a standard of living unimaginable to a 1400s peasant, in no short order due to the industrialisation of a fair whack of the planet.
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Re:Giving money directly to poor people (2013)
by zeth___ on Saturday April 21, 2018 @05:24AM
(#16890676)
That we have a standard of living that high is a historical contingency. Industrialization can work with slavery just as well as it can with 1970s style welfare states.
It is politics and struggle that determines which version of industrialization we end up with, not industrialization itself.
One of my favorite alternative history ideas is the combustion engine and assembly becoming viable in 1790 instead of 1890.
Imagine a South that replaces all the slaves with tractors and automated cotton pickers, and a North which finds slavery works better in Fordist conditions than free labor.
Re:Giving money directly to poor people (2013)
by eeZah7Ux on Saturday April 21, 2018 @06:27PM
(#16893726)
"standard of living" is not defined only by having a smartphone and a microwave.
There are many critical aspects that were very often better for the average 1400s peasant than a 1900s industrial worker or even many people as today:
- sense of community: super tight-knit for many 1400s farmers
- ...of belonging to a place
- ...of purpose
- job safety!
- food safety