If you're in a society where everyone is poor, there is not peace, there's extreme violence being applied by a government that is responsible for everyone being

If you're in a society where everyone is poor, there is not peace, there's extreme violence being applied by a government that is responsible for everyone being poor This is a relatively recent phenomenon. To have oppression, there has to be enough of a surplus for a ruling class to extract. For many 10's of thousands of years, our ancestors didn't have the means to have a surplus. Also, we have many examples of local societies which are egalitarian, but embedded within a larger, distant feudal hierarchy. In some of those cases, there can be very little violence directed locally, though in other cases, people can be so low in society, again, their only hope for advancement is violence. Where there have been increases in the general standard of living, it has been through the adoption of new technology and the increase of trade.