Isn't poverty a inherently relative term? It means you're impoverished relative to the contemporary living standard. To be impoverished is to be very poor, to b

Isn't poverty a inherently relative term? It means you're impoverished relative to the contemporary living standard. To be impoverished is to be very poor, to be poor is to have less, and you have to be comparing against something to define a quantity against it. So yes, relative to today's average first-world citizen, even the wealthiest humans from the past have been impoverished. But I don't think that's a useful framing. The default state of humanity is to be a hunter-gatherer in a tribe. It's to spend the day walking/running long distances to find food and coming home at night to eat it and sleep, or to spend the day preparing the food and living quarters for eating/sleeping at night and making sure the children are safe. Within this context, the only poverty that exists is the bounty of the land which one happens to inhabit. Our tribal past is often skimmed over, but I think it's instructive as to what systems and processes work well and allow the species to evolve and flourish. Psychology is a thin veneer atop biology. We should be careful to ensure that our conduct, both personal and systemic, is biologically compatible.