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Re:'Right to roam' movement fights to give the commons back ... by marcosdumay on Wednesday May 22, 2024 @02:19PM (#40444225)
> Historic levels of inequality, including urban "anyone can easily see that their downstairs neighbor is a hundred times richer than they are" inequality, were much greater than modern ones and involved a lot less social pathology; maybe look in that direction.

That one is absolutely not true.

Re:'Right to roam' movement fights to give the commons back ... by gottorf on Wednesday May 22, 2024 @02:40PM (#40444544)
Which part's not true, that inequality was lesser in the past, or that social pathology is more today?
Re:'Right to roam' movement fights to give the commons back ... by marcosdumay on Thursday May 23, 2024 @08:58AM (#40454138)
Inequality was lesser in the past. Way less.

"Social pathology" is way too undefined a term for me to argue with.

Re:'Right to roam' movement fights to give the commons back ... by gottorf on Thursday May 23, 2024 @09:44AM (#40454648)
> Inequality was lesser in the past. Way less.

I'm struggling to understand this one. Are you talking about the times of the cavemen, when I suppose everyone was equally materially poor? And yet you had other kinds of inequality back then, such as a bigger and stronger caveman being able to kill you and take your stuff, since there wasn't such a thing as a society or rule of law to protect you.

Or are you referring to the vast majority of people who for the vast majority of recorded history who lived in systems that elevated certain bloodlines above others, legally and culturally, and sometimes even to the status of gods? Certainly you cannot claim that, say, Queen Victoria and the common Englishman were more equal than King Charles is to his average subject, in every possible way.

Re:'Right to roam' movement fights to give the commons back ... by thaumasiotes on Thursday May 23, 2024 @09:29AM (#40454445)
You'll want to be careful about what you measure.

For example, we generally take Forbes as an authority on who's rich, but really rich people tend to be excluded from consideration, because Forbes can only measure certain kinds of wealth, and even when people's wealth mostly exists in that form, it can be hard to see.

Don't confuse a convenience metric with actual inequality.

Re:'Right to roam' movement fights to give the commons back ... by thaumasiotes on Wednesday May 22, 2024 @02:25PM (#40444290)
Why do you think we no longer have servants?