Things have gotten better and progress has been made from times past, it just seems worse now because we have more access to information. We've come far, and have further to go!
As well as the average life span being skewed by those same infant mortality rates. People have been living long and now they're forced to retire later.
Plus, while we have extended life, we haven't made progress with extended life care. So you might live 20 years longer, but those 20 years will be spent in your bed waiting for your nurse to clean your diaper.
Edit: They didnt.
After a long journey we found out that china is boasting about how all chinese citizens are now above 1 dollar a day aka. EXTREME poverty(in 2011) Aparrently this is an achievement and not incredibly sad.
This writeup is a great argument, here's some highlights I thought were good:
I simply pointed out that we cannot ignore the fact that the period 1820 to circa 1950 was one of violent dispossession across much of the global South. If you have read colonial history, you will know colonizers had immense difficulty getting people to work on their mines and plantations. As it turns out, people tended to prefer their subsistence lifestyles, and wages were not high enough to induce them to leave. Colonizers had to coerce people into the labour market: imposing taxes, enclosing commons and constraining access to food, or just outright forcing people off their land.
Remember: $1.90 [chosen poverty line] is the equivalent of what that amount of money could buy in the US in 2011. The economist David Woodward once calculated that to live at this level (in an earlier base year) would be like 35 people trying to survive in Britain “on a single minimum wage, with no benefits of any kind, no gifts, borrowing, scavenging, begging or savings to draw on (since these are all included as ‘income’ in poverty calculations).” That goes beyond any definition of “extreme”. It is absurd. It is an insult to humanity.
From 1980 to 2000, the IMF and World Bank imposed structural adjustment programs that did exactly the opposite: slashing tariffs, subsidies, social spending and capital controls while reversing land reforms and privatizing public assets – all in the face of massive popular resistance. During this period, the number of people in poverty outside China increased by 1.3 billion. In fact, even the proportion of people living in poverty increased, from 62% to 68%.
But there is something else that needs to be said here. You and Gates like to invoke the poverty numbers to make claims about the legitimacy of the existing global economic system. You say the system is working for the poor, so people should stop complaining about it.
When it comes to assessing such a claim, it’s really neither absolute numbers nor proportions that matter. What matters, rather, is the extent of poverty vis-à-vis our capacity to end it. As I have pointed out before, our capacity to end poverty (e.g., the cost of ending poverty as a proportion of the income of the non-poor) has increased many times faster than the proportional poverty rate has decreased (to use your preferred measure). By this metric we are doing worse than ever before. Indeed, our civilization is regressing. Why? Because the vast majority of the yields of our global economy are being captured by the world’s rich.
the last two are easily debunked. I hate shit like this because it reinforces an idea that time = progress. There are influential and powerful people alive today who would reverse any of these trends if it meant money in their pocket.
I don't get why they are comparing things to the depression rather than after ww2. 50 years would be a better measure. Also retirement wise people can't always choose to so income and home ownership in retirment would be more practical.
It's not about time = progress, it's about showing that there was progress even if feels like we're in a shitty downward phase currently. I don't validate the numbers, just the intention.
It's fair to want to be optimistic and to want to fight against doomerism. I think OP was misguided at best.
To be fair, I don't think I was as clear as I could have been either. It's just that post just has smells of neoliberalism has fixed the world propaganda. These are the same kinda statistics they use to justify an immoral and unethical economic system. I think a lot of people agree and get slightly triggered seeing these same untrustworthy statistics paraded around.
Jesus Christ this thread. The technicalities aren't the point. You are allowed to find happiness where you can in an imperfect world that contains suffering. It doesn't mean you'll be complacent to injustice. Fighting against injustice can be done without thinking the world is hopeless dogshit. There's satisfaction that can be justifiably had, through means other than smug superiority at knowing all the depressing truths of the world, or the sympathy of others for your problems. We feed ourselves so much rage and sadness via the internet, can we not have a palate-cleanser like this without chewing it up and spitting it out, and then going back to gorging on more?
The thingeis: the world is getting less free and inequality has been constantly rising in the last decades.
This Steven Pinker BS is advertising complacency, while we should agitate people to fight for a better world.
If you want to be optimistic, look around for the average kindness of everyday live inside communities. The FOSS community, unions, mutual aid in neighborhoods etc.
This would lift you up and point in the direction where things could get better.
Basically everything is getting better, despite public opinion to the contrary. The one thing (as this thread is harping on) is climate change, and ya, that's big, but it is good to acknowledge that most other things are changing for the better in most ways.
Celebrating and taking pride in what has been achieved is part of what motivates people to defend it. Doomposting online does nothing to motivate people and merely depresses them.
Every inch of progress has been won through a combination of a rhetoric of hope for what could be achieved, and a recognition of the shortcomings of the current system. Having the former without the latter leads to complacency, but having the latter without the former leads to apathy and despair.
Wealth inequality is higher now than it was back when most of us were serfs who barely owned the clothes on our backs while one family lived in a castle and owned the rest of us?
Yes. Modernity made it a lot easier to create wealth out of thin air. However most of the worlds lowest class have it better in pretty much every metric than that family.
Believe it or not, even the richest monarchs didn't have over a million serfs working directly under them. Even today there are many people who still barely own the clothes they wear
Yeah actually. It wasn't until industrialization that work hours and pay got so bad. Most commoners in the middle ages did just fine on what we would consider to be a half day of work and suffered for things out of human control like droughts.
Not that Feudalism was a better system, just more that people were more scarce, less replaceable, and automation was zero.
There's more wealth being transferred in circulation than ever before
There's more food being produced than ever before
Your points are invalid without the context we need better regulation and methods to prevent collapse and waste. We're literally outgrowing by production over our knowledge.
Wealth being transferred is meaningless when it's amongst the wealthy, and more food is also being wasted than ever before.
We're at a point in human civilization where we should be able to provide more for EVERYONE while expecting them to work less, yet here I am one catastrophic car accident or unexpected massive medical bill away from telling my kids we're homeless. But the very fact that, for now, I have a mortgage and my kids are getting a decent education and three square meals a day means I'm still way ahead of a shitload of people in my country, and I'm filthy fucking rich compared to people elsewhere in the world.
My wife and I work hard for our family, but I know for a fact that others work WAY harder. Since their labor is considered less valuable than mine they make WAY less than we do. The dumbest thing is that if society does implode, the guys working manual labor for peanuts will be more capable and provide more value than me, an asshole who sits on his ass all day fucking with Excel.
There’s more wealth being transferred in circulation than ever before
Which, as lingh0e pointed, is meaningless since most of it is coming from and going to the wealthy.
There’s more food being produced than ever before
And yet, hunger is still an issue worldwide. What's the point of producing, say, 100 tons of food if 40 tons go straight to the trash?
Your points are invalid without the context
What context? Inequality is rising and you can check that with a quick search for "countryname inequality index per year". For the food, it's probably harder to really assess how much of the production is wasted, but it's a significant number.
we need better regulation and methods to prevent collapse and waste
Good luck doing that, as it hurts profits, and the profiteers will spend more money than you and me will ever make in our entire lives combined to fight said regulations.
It has. That inequality means that a small number of people can drive the price of certain items, such as housing, way above inflation, making it impossible for people who rely on their salaries to buy and own a home, or even manage to pay rent. Being forced to live farther and farther away from where you work, wasting precious time in transit to and back from work (or anywhere you need to be), just in order to have some money, reduces the quality of life.
There is enough money around to fix poverty in most places and still have rich people enjoying their luxurious lives. Inequality has a very direct impact in the quality of life of millions.
It means that the cake is growing, but your share is getting smaller. Companies declare record profits and celebrate by mass firing people. People with big investments are never at risk of losing money due to inflation. Meanwhile, workers' salaries are in a constant struggle against inflation and cost of living.
There's huge amounts of money circulating around, but most of it ends up in the pockets of very few people. To ensure that even more money ends up in their pockets, they invest in new venues that will get more of your money for themselves. Because a very small number of people can simply buy up "everything", and usually do so for pure speculation, prices rise faster than your salary. Rent and home prices keep going up because of this, people that actually want and need a home don't have the means to buy them, but a single asshole with money can buy a lot of stuff, drive up prices and fuck everyone who can't pay.
If you don't see a problem with wealth getting more and more concentrated in fewer and fewer hands as time passes, you probably want few people to effectively control the world.
But they don’t exactly have the power of Mansa Musa.
They do. Anyone with over 100 million dollars laying around could easily crash some local economies, maybe not in the USA, but definitely in a number of developing countries' cities.
While "technically" true. We all know the average lifespan was brought down by a high infant mortality. So comparingbthat to when peopke retired is meaningless.
That said, it dies seem worse because with more information we realize how much better it could be. 100 years ago, the average american had no idea how common slums were outside the US. And those that knew considered those slum people less than human. So what we have really done is expanded who is considered human, and who matters. That certainly does make it look worse.
100 years ago, the average american had no idea how common slums were outside the US.
This was and still is very true. The level of the poverty in places like that is astounding and beyond the experience of most anyone in a 1st world country. I grew up in America, in poverty of the level that my single mother was only eating what she could scrounge at work some years so she'd have enough to feed us kids. Yet when I deployed to Panama in the mid 90's for a 2 month military operation, and had to operate in many of the rural areas of Panama during those missions, I had my eyes opened to what real 3rd world poverty looks like. The way I grew up would have been a huge improvement for many of the people I saw there. You can't really understand it until you've seen it with your own eyes.
This meme effectively expired in 2019. COVID reversed out the direction on all of it. About the only thing we haven't stopped backsliding on is "shareholder value".
I have noticed lately people on the Internet starting sentences more with "Look." Is it just me or is this becoming more of a trend? (Not trying to judge or anything, just wondering if I am going crazy)
Yeah, in particular the "average age of death" might be 51 if the average includes a lot of people who died as children. OTOH, the average person dying at 51 is fundamentally different in how you think of it.
Posting a bunch of context-free statistics without any citations is not what I'd call hope-posting.
There are hopeful trends in the world: the resurgence of unions, successful environmental protest, public opinion changing against police, etc. They inspire hope because they point to the possibility of a better world. Statistics like these just point to how bad the world used to be, and in contrast, how good the current world is. It's a way of saying "be thankful for what you have", a sentiment easily weaponized against progress and protest.
And the climate change will help them. They are basically a team just that one of them doesn't know about the partnership and the other didn't choose it...
The environmental problems are critical, though. And it's what ultimately will decide the fate of our species. There is room for optimism in some aspects of our society, but that is not an indication that in the end everything will be alright.
If you like this post maybe read The Progress Paradox. It goes in much more detail than this meme, it then poses the question but then why aren't we happy. Without giving answers it does point to possible paths. It's a good book.
The extreme poverty one is laughable especially when criteria to define extreme poverty is ridiculous. Extreme poverty in places where you earn less than $1.90 but can still have subsistence farming and community doesn't make sense - also if living in San Francisco and earning $2/day isn't extreme poverty... I don't know what is.
Poverty shouldn't be tied to capital but to standards of living - that would be a completely different story.
The problem is that the line between “we’ve come a long way” and it’s corollary “therefore why are you upset/why do we have to address [insert issue]?” is razor thin.
Celebrating success is great. Using it as a cudgel to stop further success is not.
The real problem with ignoring progress we’ve made is that it gives the false impression that what we’re doing is worthless, leading to demands to tear down everything we’re doing.
People are constantly clamoring to replace our systems with new ones “that actually work”. This is a result of being blind to the ways our current system works.
I don't really care about any of that. All that matters is that I'm constantly having to fight to keep wfh, it's impossible to get health issues diagnosed and I just keep wasting hundreds of dollars on trying, I've resigned myself to staying untreated for adhd and whatever else, I am sick of having to work a job where I need to interact with people, and all the foods I enjoy the most make me incredibly sick and I'm sure are gonna kill me one day.
If I had a choice I wouldn't have been born. I am very lucky, I have no money problems, didn't have to buy my house, have a good long term stable relationship, not having to deal with having had kids, quiet neighborhood with no crime... but things should be a lot better than this. People can shove their head in the sand and pretend things are not going to end very badly for humankind and I personally don't care. I live my life and enjoy what I like and either I'll be dead or will witness the glorious end of humanity. I just hope my AC keeps up with climate change lol!
Over the last 20 years, the proportion of people living in extreme poverty has almost been cut in half
If you quote this people will applaud gleefully, but if you ask "Which countries have been the most successful at eliminating poverty" you get called a bot.
Of course it’s mostly going to be in Asia and Africa since that’s where the largest concentration of people in extreme poverty was.
There's no shortage of poverty in Latin America and Africa. However, the states that outperform their peers tend to be the ones westerners hate. Bolivia, South Africa, Burkina Faso...
99% of lemmy is: bashing and memeing rich, companies, conservatives. Posting outrage and celeb articles. Honestly these issues are not even on my mind a fraction as much as it is for most guys here.
Im mainly hanging around for my preferred topics to reach a critical level so that it will be enjoyable.
As of right now, even main lemmy sites like technology is not even about technology but this bullshit "how Musk fucked over twitter at this moment". And look at that. Wasnt this trend taken 1:1 from reddit. I cant clean up properly because this spam keeps leaking into my feed. I cant subscribe to my only preferred communities as they are too small.
People are saying these aren't even true which I believe, but also what this does not take into account is that the ability to take care of humanity has expanded far, far more than we're allowing to actually happen. And if the right wing has anything to say about it, we'll do even less caring for our people. We could easily solve world hunger with today's wealth but instead we have people that could burn a million dollars a day and still be rich for many years
Oh, look, a bastardization of statistics to defend the status quo wrapped up in "positivity" bullshit so if you call out their nonsense, you look like an asshole.
There's a special place in hell for people like @Godric.
Try using the logic OP is espousing and applying it to other things which that logic has been employed to defend the status quo and keep certain people on top of society.
We can take the most obvious example, black people in America. At every single turn black people in America have been told to praise the freedoms they've been given by their slave masters then later by white people. We heard this same logic in the summer of 2020, literally 3 years ago, when black people were protesting, "we've come so far since the days of the past, start being grateful and positive." So, saying that there's more that needs to be done, but it's "positivity" that they've been given some more rights is pathetic.
All this type of logic and people like you are doing is shutting down people, attacking the moral wrongs and questioning the status quo of society, who are fighting for a better world. Shame on all you.
-Overpopulation is a fascist lie
-no one chooses to be illiterate
-agreed
-homelessness is not caused by increasing population but by psychopathic policies.