Aside from technology, humanity is not better off ...

[Rye]

Let's say you have a totally godawful lower-class job. Say, working retail or flipping hamburgers. Is that not better than plowing fields so that your family can eat, while your Lord takes a good chunk of the food? How much of your life is irrational fears promuglated from priests declaring that any disobedience will result in horrific damnation?

Today's absolute poverty is way better than yesterday's absolute poverty. Way, way better.

You are so full of it. You think the majority of lower class jobs in the world are like low class life in the west? Of course not, most of it is an abhorrent grind slave labour or looking for rice in dust to feed your family. Or trawling through garbage mountains.

Even in the west there's intimidation, discrimination and crime to worry about, not to mention unemployment. Try unemployment in most of the world, countries without money to burn from centuries of imperialism. It's not better than hunter-gatherer life, and in loads of cases is worse. If life were so great, there wouldn't be a drug problem. Why do you think drug use even exists, if not the fact it's an easy way to escape an unbearable reality?

[Nephtys]

Let's say you have a totally godawful lower-class job. Say, working retail or flipping hamburgers. Is that not better than plowing fields so that your family can eat, while your Lord takes a good chunk of the food? How much of your life is irrational fears promuglated from priests declaring that any disobedience will result in horrific damnation?

Today's absolute poverty is way better than yesterday's absolute poverty. Way, way better.

You are so full of it. You think the majority of lower class jobs in the world are like low class life in the west? Of course not, most of it is an abhorrent grind slave labour or looking for rice in dust to feed your family. Or trawling through garbage mountains.

Even in the west there's intimidation, discrimination and crime to worry about, not to mention unemployment. Try unemployment in most of the world, countries without money to burn from centuries of imperialism. It's not better than hunter-gatherer life, and in loads of cases is worse. If life were so great, there wouldn't be a drug problem. Why do you think drug use even exists, if not the fact it's an easy way to escape an unbearable reality?

I'm talking about the west, for one. Even then, so what do you think life was like for ancient slaves or people in states of poverty before? Are you seriously suggesting that it's worse than hunter-gatherer life, where you need to beware of not only human predators, but wolves and shit? Are you seriously also suggesting that crime was an invention of modern society and not way worse when it was too dangerous to travel to the next down for fear of brigands killing you?

...And of all things, now you've brought drug use into this? By that reasoning, Robert Downy Jr must have had such a horrible life to have spent all those years using heroine and cocaine. He'd be much happier I bet as a subsistence-farming serf.

[Samuel]

Most of humanity is in horrid conditions in several cases (like in Somalia) worse conditions than pre-agriculture.

Not at all.



Average life expectancy for hunter gatherers is in their 40s. So yeah, conditions are better.

More people commit suicide now than ever before. There are more people than ever before, meaning more people on the bottom rung of society being exposed to the hideous ruthlessness of absolute poverty.

So you are going to completely discount percentages? Is so than the best time was before the evolution of the human species when no one was in poverty!

We live longer, but how much more of our life by proportion do we work?

Less. Most people no longer start working as children or in their teens and they are able to retire which has helped to bring the percentage down.

You are so full of it. You think the majority of lower class jobs in the world are like low class life in the west? Of course not, most of it is an abhorrent grind slave labour or looking for rice in dust to feed your family. Or trawling through garbage mountains.

What the heck? Most of the worlds poor are subsistence farmers or manual laborers. Slave labor and garbage trawling are the exceptions. And even the subsistence farmers and manual laborers are better off. Despite the world having more people, the death tolls from famines have dropped.

Even in the west there's intimidation, discrimination and crime to worry about,

Yes, hunter gathers never had crime. Or intimidated and discriminated against other groups. You are full of shit Rye.

countries without money to burn from centuries of imperialism.

Yes, I remember the vast colonial Swiss empire pumping in wealth from their colonies, which is why Switzerland is so rich. Or how America was a poor nation until it stole the wealth of... the Phillipines? Here is a hint- economics doesn't work that way. Countries that are rich today aren't becayse they stole the wealth from other nations.

If life were so great, there wouldn't be a drug problem. Why do you think drug use even exists, if not the fact it's an easy way to escape an unbearable reality?

Unless depression is a medical problem. Or young males are into risk taking. Or drugs stimulate the pleasure centers of your brain. Or...

[Stark]

Some of this sounds similar to the rubbish Critchon put in Jurassic Park; work hours, life expectancy, that sort of thing.

[K. A. Pital]

Average life expectancy went up once people stopped massively dying due to a lack of antibiotics and other medicine. Even in Africa. Without antibiotics, ALE will go down because infant mortality will rise (leading to a corresponding decrease) and adult mortality will also increase to an extent.

In a certain way, most if not all life expectancy increases are the virtue of the chemical industry. So in a certain morbid way it proves the thesis that "aside from technology, humans are not better off"

[Molyneux]

Average life expectancy went up once people stopped massively dying due to a lack of antibiotics and other medicine. Even in Africa. Without antibiotics, ALE will go down because infant mortality will rise (leading to a corresponding decrease) and adult mortality will also increase to an extent.

In a certain way, most if not all life expectancy increases are the virtue of the chemical industry. So in a certain morbid way it proves the thesis that "aside from technology, humans are not better off"

True, but that is stretching the definition of "technology" beyond all reason.
Or to put it bluntly: "Without the stuff that makes humans better off, humans aren't better off!" Never saw that one coming.

[K. A. Pital]

Some other examples in this thread are "stretching" it, but drugs? Antibiotics are technology, pure and simple. They do not depend on the social order. Even a slavocratic state could have antibiotics and have a life expectancy comparable to modern nations. Just give them the tech.

[Rye]

I'm talking about the west, for one.

I know you are, hence complaining that you're dismissing the bulk of the population and thinking of people in relatively comfortable first world nations.

Even then, so what do you think life was like for ancient slaves or people in states of poverty before? Are you seriously suggesting that it's worse than hunter-gatherer life, where you need to beware of not only human predators, but wolves and shit? Are you seriously also suggesting that crime was an invention of modern society and not way worse when it was too dangerous to travel to the next down for fear of brigands killing you?

No, I am not saying that crime only appeared recently. I'm saying that poverty in the west is far from easy street.

...And of all things, now you've brought drug use into this? By that reasoning, Robert Downy Jr must have had such a horrible life to have spent all those years using heroine and cocaine. He'd be much happier I bet as a subsistence-farming serf.

The majority of drug users are not like that. Most of them are variations on this.

[Omeganian]

I'm talking about the west, for one.

I know you are, hence complaining that you're dismissing the bulk of the population and thinking of people in relatively comfortable first world nations.

If the world has a part which is slightly better off, and a part which is very much better off, then on the average, humanity is better off. The fact that some things haven't quite spread yet all over the 140 million square km of land is regrettable, but I'm not pessimistic enough to consider it permanent.

Even then, so what do you think life was like for ancient slaves or people in states of poverty before? Are you seriously suggesting that it's worse than hunter-gatherer life, where you need to beware of not only human predators, but wolves and shit? Are you seriously also suggesting that crime was an invention of modern society and not way worse when it was too dangerous to travel to the next down for fear of brigands killing you?

No, I am not saying that crime only appeared recently. I'm saying that poverty in the west is far from easy street.

I don't think a 12th century person would have called it poverty - you can buy all the food you need in order not to starve and more, you can afford having more than one shirt, you change clothes more often than once a month... it must be heaven.

[Molyneux]

Some other examples in this thread are "stretching" it, but drugs? Antibiotics are technology, pure and simple. They do not depend on the social order. Even a slavocratic state could have antibiotics and have a life expectancy comparable to modern nations. Just give them the tech.

That's quite true, but saying that life isn't any better aside from technology tries to ignore the fact that at least a significant portion of humanity's miseries came from sources other than social order. Claiming that we're not substantially better off despite very few people indeed having to worry about dying of plague or smallpox is more than a little disingenuous.

[Simon_Jester]

Also, I'd think that even in the Marxist framework, one must consider that certain advances in technology (like antibiotics) cannot be divorced from evolution of the social framework. Ancient-style hydraulic despotisms* and "slavocracies," when translated into the modern world and forced to survive on their own devices, do not do well. The best example I know of of an ancient style slavocracy implemented in the modern world is North Korea**; I doubt it is a coincidence that North Korea is a grossly dysfunctional state that would be even more dysfunctional without aid given to it by foreigners as a consequence of its strategic position.

Antibiotics, electrification of rural areas, and other things that greatly benefit the average citizen regardless of social order are nonetheless products of more advanced social systems. The world existed for thousands of years without electricity under pre-modern*** social orders, and I doubt it is a coincidence that electricity emerged within a relatively short time once modern social orders came into being.

*A very, very inaccurate term, but one that is at least vaguely descriptive of many of the "slave economy" societies Marx discussed.
** Kim Jong Il really makes much more sense if you view him as an Egyptian pharaoh or Mesopotamian priest-king than as a modern head of state...
*** Defining pre-modern as "everything before capitalism," to describe the kind of social order that was overwhelmingly dominant before the Industrial Revolution and that in turn became hopelessly non-competitive during the 19th century.

[K. A. Pital]

In Marxism, you can't just separate technology from the social order. Indeed, Marxism postulates that the transition from feudalism to capitalism in terms of social relations is both dependent on and necessary for a wide-reaching technical progress.

[Simon_Jester]

In Marxism, you can't just separate technology from the social order. Indeed, Marxism postulates that the transition from feudalism to capitalism in terms of social relations is both dependent on and necessary for a wide-reaching technical progress.

...OK, so I'm right about the line of reasoning. Hurrah!

[That NOS Guy]

...OK, so I'm right about the line of reasoning. Hurrah!

"What we have to deal with here is a Communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundaations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally and intellectually, still stamped with the birth marks of the old society from whose womb it emerges."

-Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program

Just in case anyone wanted evidence that that is indeed a Marxist POV.