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Blahaj admin defending a blatant transphobe (lemmy.blahaj.zone)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net
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[–] 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.

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  • [–] 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.

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  • [–] 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.

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  • [–] 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.

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  • [–] 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.

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  • [–] 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.

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