this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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Has there actually been a better century in terms of comfort and stability for most people
I don't think though.... but quantity improved.
On average, whether over a large enough population or a long enough time, people are living better and better.
Literacy rates are improving and information is becoming easier to access.
Medicine is always innovating. Medical care is becoming more and more available. Many deadly diseases are either wiped out or easily treatable.
For much (most?) of the world, nutritious food, clean water, and sanitation is available (if not always affordable).
Sure, some where in the world there is natural disaster, but we are constantly getting better at predicting them and buildings are being built to better handle them. There is still violence and unjust governments, but both are trending down.
That is not to say that we cannot do much much better nor that there are not easy things that we could do to improve. It is likely that your current situation has gotten worse in some way or another. But we are averaging ten steps forward for every step back (no matter how big and unnecessary that step back is).
Historically there would be many because the poor countries have the most people
Take China for example. A middle class person in China today lives like an upper class person compared to the 1700s. A poor person on average anywhere is doing way better than ever before..
Yes spending most of the day in a factory or a mine and rarely seeing sunlight is definitively like living as a blacksmith 300 years ago (I said blacksmith because it’s under upper class and I assume by middle class you mean office worker not middle income)
Being a farmer is much easier as well now because machines make the work 100x easier and you only have to do 1000x the amount.
Africa has certainly never had stability and the Inca/Mayans/Aztecs certainly had it worse than the rural folk of Central and South America
Remember all those old paintings of kids going through garbage to find things to sell? That’s certainly not a modern phenomenon
What about the people in winter climates that for a large portion couldn’t work in the winter? Yes they still did stuff but it wasn’t 40 hour weeks
I don't think I get your argument. Poor countries are much more prone to war, unrest, famines and all sorts of things contrary to "comfort and stability".
I am saying that they are less stable now than before colonization
Yeah, but that is the exact opposite of what you were saying in your OP.
Did you get me confused?
My argument is that this isn’t the best century for humans