119
Blahaj admin defending a blatant transphobe (lemmy.blahaj.zone)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net
305 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 1 point 3 years ago (6 children)

Check out this interesting write up here by Dr. Jason Hickel Professor of Economics. He (and the research he mentions in this piece) suggest that this view of pre-capitlist poverty is in fact not true, but based on poorly sourced ideas and amplified by capital to provide capitalist savior propaganda.

Really interesting read, and the papers he mentions are also really great too.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (5 children)

    An interesting read thanks. We shouldn't conflate poverty and extreme poverty however. The author makes some very good points, and it's true that capitalism creates extremes of human misery not generally seen elsewhere however their own data shows that nearly all the population would be considered in poverty, if not extreme poverty across all of the periods and areas examined.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (4 children)

    That's not their graph that they're showing, that's the one produced by the Gates foundation that they are saying it's wrong.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (3 children)

    That's not what I was referring to. Extreme poverty is different to poverty.

    Dr Hickel does not seem to be disputing that the majority of people in history lived in poverty, only extreme poverty.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (2 children)

    I read it that they were disputing the measurement of poverty itself. Like, if you measure poverty by equivalent purchasing power, that does not take into account actual access to food through community and subsistence.

    Check this one out as well: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22002169

    While you're right they still do talk about extreme poverty - I believe they define it much better here as the "inability to access essential goods." Which I think is in line with how they are discussing this $1.90/day regular poverty today, actually.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (1 child)

    The way I see it, they're suggesting that the living standards which pre-indstrial people generally enjoyed were factually better than what capitalist propaganda tends to suggest.

    Basic access to essential goods is the absolute floor of what a society needs to be able to provide for the majority of it's members to survive.

    While I agree that pre-indstrial people did generally enjoy access to basic goods, their standard of living was still very poor, and far worse off than the majority of people even in the exploited global south enjoy today.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago

    I would wonder though, is $1.90/day enough to procure "essential goods" even in the exploited south? As I understand it, the bar for the definition of poverty has also been changed. Is someone making $1.90/day under capitalism better off than someone preindustrial? I would argue that they're not better off. At least pre-capitalism people were able to fend for themselves and with a community (and afford housing, food, and comfort for living). But that's the comparison that I think is being made.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent