> It’s somewhat miraculous how many people in developed countries don’t live that way anymore.

Instead of invoking the supernatural, I'd prefer to call it quite fortunate that human ingenuity has allowed us to exploit vast energy sources in order to raise the general level of well-being among a portion of humanity, while also finding ways to share wealth and power in (unfortunately not exclusively) more peaceful ways.

The cop-out I was talking about is precisely this kind of hiding behind proclaimed laws of nature and miracles, when there's clearly choice and agency involved. Comparing the situation of laborers, but also the stratification of western societies, in the Victorian era with today I think shows that we can not only increase the size of the pie, but also influence how to distribute it more fairly.

I think that seeing how much "miracle" there is to go around, it's worthwhile considering how to enable more people to take part in it, by finding ways to spread the miracle whip around a tad more evenly.

Which is exactly the reason we have these public assistance programs, so I don’t see the problem.

Yeah most of human existence was crap and crap out of necessity. The necessity doesn’t exist anymore so it’s a specious argument. Accepting any less than a basic reasonable existence now that it’s possible is selling yourself short and your countrymen short.