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Historically, the world's "peasants" are enjoying the best quality of life in humanity's history, even if the gap on paper is widening. Capitalism is far from

Historically, the world's "peasants" are enjoying the best quality of life in humanity's history, even if the gap on paper is widening. Capitalism is far from perfect but it seems to be the best system we've come up with so far.

decentrality 8y ago
Lions in the desert are smarter than we are then. We've "built" a far less quality world around us than even ants, bees, apes, birds. They at least have authentic bonds left. We have arrangements and schemes.
- decentrality 8y ago
  I sincerely wish I were wrong.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  I think that human freedom and authenticity might be a little higher than bees.
  - decentrality 8y ago
    If we judge based on engagement? Can we be sure who is more invested? Regardless of the unknowns there, can we ascertain intrinsic loyalty and/or belonging and/or commensurate reward to investment and will/self contribution? I'm obviously attributing a lot to their mode of being. But if it's even remotely close to true, you don't think we have a lot to learn?
    - whatshisface 8y ago
      Bees are biological automatons without even the illusion of free will, and their association with each other is not comparable to society. We might have some things to learn about biochemistry or supply chain management or something, but they're not exactly philosophical analogues.
- aetherson 8y ago
  Yeah, lions have awesome lives. Nothing like roving the world, murdering other males and eating their young, taking their females to breed and hunt for you, then inevitably getting murdered yourself by other roving males. It's a utopia!
  - decentrality 8y ago
    We do an approximation of the same, macrocosmically, with little to no satisfaction. And they remain in balance with their ecosystem. And as far as we can tell their mind or conscience or consciousness is uncluttered by any of their acts.
    - aetherson 8y ago
      Neat! How many of your half-siblings were devoured by your father? (Also: God, "remain in balance with their ecosystem" is such a mendacious phrase. People use it all the time, as if animals have some kind of mystical gaia sense that says, "Woah, woah, woah lion, you're using too many natural resources here. Maybe just meditate today." Here's how lions "remain in balance with their ecosystem": they try to eat everything they can. Sometimes they're unsuccessful and they starve. Sometimes they're successful and cause a local shortage of prey and then they starve. Yaaaaaaaaaaay.)
gameswithgo 8y ago
We peasants have been consistently pushing back against unfettered capitalism for hundreds of years. If our efforts are eroded too much we may not enjoy such quality of life much longer. As well, the absolute wealth of people does not stop discontent and violent revolution. The gap is what matters.
- mcv 8y ago
  Exactly. Life of peasants has only gotten better when peasants fought for it. Poverty in the 19th century in industrial centers was pretty horrific. People moved to the cities for work, but often got brutally exploited with very little in the way of rights, until they banded together, formed unions and demanded better working conditions. Things have gotten a lot better since then, but if you look at historic trends, they have stagnated again in the US since the early 1980s. There's been no growth in the pay for working class people since the 1980s, while money for the rich has sky rocketed. It's time to pick up that fight again.
- mixedCase 8y ago
  > the absolute wealth of people does not stop discontent and violent revolution. The gap is what matters. So, politics of envy. It's a disgusting state of affairs if it's not enough to enjoy a high quality of life, but it's also imperative others' must not be significantly higher.
  - gameswithgo 8y ago
    I guess you can look down on the people like that, instead of looking down on the elites parading around in their lambos while the regular people can't get health insurance for their kids.
netcan 8y ago
I don't agree with the OPs off-hand dismissal of capitalism either but... I think this trope is misused. Peasants are better off and the world is wealthier because of science, not a political ideology. The industrial revolution, scientific medicine, the green revolution... Saudi Arabia's "peasants" (or descendants of herdsmen, properly) are wealthier because of oil mining and modern energy industry, not monarchy or capitalism or whoever else wants to take credit. I'm not saying politics doesn't effect anything, it obviously does but capitalism can't just claim credit for everything invented in the last 200. Btw, this is exactly what Lenin did and what Orwell parodied in 1984. I'm not saying you can't argue that capitalism benefited the poor, but you can't just claim everything good that happened after 1800 for capitalism.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  You can argue that research and development of new products is motivated by the constant churn of competition and obsolescence that isn't present in a monarchy which would be primarily concerned with stability. "My Lord, a pesant is trying to usurp my authority." "Very well, I will have him hung."
  - netcan 8y ago
    The problem with political ideas (and ideals) is that you can always argue both ways. Historically, both modern capitalism and the industrial revolution were born and raised in monarchies. The forefathers of modern global corporations were royal charter companies.
    - whatshisface 8y ago
      >Historically, both modern capitalism and the industrial revolution were born and raised in monarchies. I think that's more of an example of how the actual distribution of power in society is the only thing that matters, the label of the system being purely ceremonial. If everyone in a society is allowed to participate in a free market, you will see the fruits of capitalism, even if the market is black and the politburo insist that the state is fully communist. In the context of my earlier point, sure, if a monarch allows other people in their society to hold enough power to participate in capitalism, then, well, the system will start looking a lot like capitalism.
int_19h 8y ago
The gap is widening for real, not just "on paper". And study after study shows that humans very much define happiness in relative terms. It doesn't matter if quality of life is rising for everybody, if the gap is rising much faster - you're going to have the populace that is unhappy, and that unhappiness eventually translates to anger (it has already started doing so). You can either work to fix that, or you can wait for torches and pitchforks.
- johnnyfaehell 8y ago
  > you can wait for torches and pitchforks. I am honestly waiting. People are only going to put up with this for so long.
  - int_19h 8y ago
    If you're mid-to-high middle class (which probably describes most of HN audience), torches and pitchforks will come for you first, because 1) you live next door, and 2) you don't have a personal jet to scramble to New Zealand when SHTF. Look at the Russian communist revolution for an example of how it happens, and who is the first the mob drags out against the wall. So I wouldn't exactly look forward to it. The educated, well-off classes in US need to understand that fixing the inequality problem isn't just about empathy, or some abstract political thinking. It is literally a matter of physical survival, if you look at it long term. Either we build a society which the majority of its members consider fair, or those of us who are significantly better off than the median will perish.
    - aetherson 8y ago
      The vast majority of societies all throughout history have not been what any person would consider "fair." Rebellions of the disadvantaged classes have happened, of course, but for the most part, the ruling classes have done fine. You might reconsider whether an appeal to fairness versus naked pragmatism is the winning approach.
      - int_19h 8y ago
FranzFerdiNaN 8y ago
The question is if this is thanks to or instead of capitalism. I would say it's the latter. Capitalism put a lot of those 'peasants' in terrible conditions for a few hundred years, for the last 40 years or so things are getting slightly better and that's supposed to be thanks to capitalism? Post hoc ergo propter hoc is a fallacy for a reason.
crispyambulance 8y ago
> "peasants" are enjoying the best quality of life in humanity's history... Well, if you ONLY count the most basic aspects human existence like availability of food and shelter, yes, they are. BUT there's a whole lot more to the quality of life. Things like self-actualization-- the stuff at the top of Maslow's hierarchy. People can thrive in all kinds of economic systems (capitalism included). However when a small number of people re-arrange "the universe" for their exclusive benefit, there's going to be a reaction to that and it won't be pretty. I think we should favor measured incremental adjustments to curb the worst aspects of capitalism over all-out revolution. Banning employers from having a say in what work a terminated employee takes in the future is one such measured response.
- dv_dt 8y ago
  If you look at the rise of the homeless in CA, then I don't really know if the most recent time can count as rise of availability of food and shelter...
mcv 8y ago
Hunter-gatherers apparently had to work only 7 hours per week. They may not have cable TV, but they've got more nature to enjoy. Problem is, you can't sustain a large population that way, so civilisation has always used larger and more technologically advanced populations to push out smaller and more primitive ones. But that doesn't mean the larger and more advanced populations were necessarily happier. Now life in general is absolutely better today than it was in the past, but that doesn't mean it's better for everybody in every respect. Peasants in the West may not get slaughtered by warlords anymore, but especially in the US, there are definitely poor people who struggle to make ends meet, and are slowly sinking deeper into poverty. Peasants in northern Europe may be enjoying the best quality of life ever, but that's not true in many other countries. The best system we've come up with so far is clearly regulated capitalism with plenty of protections for the poor.

decentrality 8y ago

Lions in the desert are smarter than we are then. We've "built" a far less quality world around us than even ants, bees, apes, birds. They at least have authentic bonds left. We have arrangements and schemes.

decentrality 8y ago
I sincerely wish I were wrong.
whatshisface 8y ago
I think that human freedom and authenticity might be a little higher than bees.
- decentrality 8y ago
  If we judge based on engagement? Can we be sure who is more invested? Regardless of the unknowns there, can we ascertain intrinsic loyalty and/or belonging and/or commensurate reward to investment and will/self contribution? I'm obviously attributing a lot to their mode of being. But if it's even remotely close to true, you don't think we have a lot to learn?
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    Bees are biological automatons without even the illusion of free will, and their association with each other is not comparable to society. We might have some things to learn about biochemistry or supply chain management or something, but they're not exactly philosophical analogues.
aetherson 8y ago
Yeah, lions have awesome lives. Nothing like roving the world, murdering other males and eating their young, taking their females to breed and hunt for you, then inevitably getting murdered yourself by other roving males. It's a utopia!
- decentrality 8y ago
  We do an approximation of the same, macrocosmically, with little to no satisfaction. And they remain in balance with their ecosystem. And as far as we can tell their mind or conscience or consciousness is uncluttered by any of their acts.
  - aetherson 8y ago
    Neat! How many of your half-siblings were devoured by your father? (Also: God, "remain in balance with their ecosystem" is such a mendacious phrase. People use it all the time, as if animals have some kind of mystical gaia sense that says, "Woah, woah, woah lion, you're using too many natural resources here. Maybe just meditate today." Here's how lions "remain in balance with their ecosystem": they try to eat everything they can. Sometimes they're unsuccessful and they starve. Sometimes they're successful and cause a local shortage of prey and then they starve. Yaaaaaaaaaaay.)

gameswithgo 8y ago

We peasants have been consistently pushing back against unfettered capitalism for hundreds of years. If our efforts are eroded too much we may not enjoy such quality of life much longer. As well, the absolute wealth of people does not stop discontent and violent revolution. The gap is what matters.

mcv 8y ago
Exactly. Life of peasants has only gotten better when peasants fought for it. Poverty in the 19th century in industrial centers was pretty horrific. People moved to the cities for work, but often got brutally exploited with very little in the way of rights, until they banded together, formed unions and demanded better working conditions. Things have gotten a lot better since then, but if you look at historic trends, they have stagnated again in the US since the early 1980s. There's been no growth in the pay for working class people since the 1980s, while money for the rich has sky rocketed. It's time to pick up that fight again.
mixedCase 8y ago
> the absolute wealth of people does not stop discontent and violent revolution. The gap is what matters. So, politics of envy. It's a disgusting state of affairs if it's not enough to enjoy a high quality of life, but it's also imperative others' must not be significantly higher.
- gameswithgo 8y ago
  I guess you can look down on the people like that, instead of looking down on the elites parading around in their lambos while the regular people can't get health insurance for their kids.

netcan 8y ago

I don't agree with the OPs off-hand dismissal of capitalism either but... I think this trope is misused. Peasants are better off and the world is wealthier because of science, not a political ideology. The industrial revolution, scientific medicine, the green revolution... Saudi Arabia's "peasants" (or descendants of herdsmen, properly) are wealthier because of oil mining and modern energy industry, not monarchy or capitalism or whoever else wants to take credit. I'm not saying politics doesn't effect anything, it obviously does but capitalism can't just claim credit for everything invented in the last 200. Btw, this is exactly what Lenin did and what Orwell parodied in 1984. I'm not saying you can't argue that capitalism benefited the poor, but you can't just claim everything good that happened after 1800 for capitalism.

whatshisface 8y ago
You can argue that research and development of new products is motivated by the constant churn of competition and obsolescence that isn't present in a monarchy which would be primarily concerned with stability. "My Lord, a pesant is trying to usurp my authority." "Very well, I will have him hung."
- netcan 8y ago
  The problem with political ideas (and ideals) is that you can always argue both ways. Historically, both modern capitalism and the industrial revolution were born and raised in monarchies. The forefathers of modern global corporations were royal charter companies.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    >Historically, both modern capitalism and the industrial revolution were born and raised in monarchies. I think that's more of an example of how the actual distribution of power in society is the only thing that matters, the label of the system being purely ceremonial. If everyone in a society is allowed to participate in a free market, you will see the fruits of capitalism, even if the market is black and the politburo insist that the state is fully communist. In the context of my earlier point, sure, if a monarch allows other people in their society to hold enough power to participate in capitalism, then, well, the system will start looking a lot like capitalism.

int_19h 8y ago

The gap is widening for real, not just "on paper". And study after study shows that humans very much define happiness in relative terms. It doesn't matter if quality of life is rising for everybody, if the gap is rising much faster - you're going to have the populace that is unhappy, and that unhappiness eventually translates to anger (it has already started doing so). You can either work to fix that, or you can wait for torches and pitchforks.

johnnyfaehell 8y ago
> you can wait for torches and pitchforks. I am honestly waiting. People are only going to put up with this for so long.
- int_19h 8y ago
  If you're mid-to-high middle class (which probably describes most of HN audience), torches and pitchforks will come for you first, because 1) you live next door, and 2) you don't have a personal jet to scramble to New Zealand when SHTF. Look at the Russian communist revolution for an example of how it happens, and who is the first the mob drags out against the wall. So I wouldn't exactly look forward to it. The educated, well-off classes in US need to understand that fixing the inequality problem isn't just about empathy, or some abstract political thinking. It is literally a matter of physical survival, if you look at it long term. Either we build a society which the majority of its members consider fair, or those of us who are significantly better off than the median will perish.
  - aetherson 8y ago
    The vast majority of societies all throughout history have not been what any person would consider "fair." Rebellions of the disadvantaged classes have happened, of course, but for the most part, the ruling classes have done fine. You might reconsider whether an appeal to fairness versus naked pragmatism is the winning approach.
    - int_19h 8y ago

FranzFerdiNaN 8y ago

The question is if this is thanks to or instead of capitalism. I would say it's the latter. Capitalism put a lot of those 'peasants' in terrible conditions for a few hundred years, for the last 40 years or so things are getting slightly better and that's supposed to be thanks to capitalism? Post hoc ergo propter hoc is a fallacy for a reason.

crispyambulance 8y ago

> "peasants" are enjoying the best quality of life in humanity's history... Well, if you ONLY count the most basic aspects human existence like availability of food and shelter, yes, they are. BUT there's a whole lot more to the quality of life. Things like self-actualization-- the stuff at the top of Maslow's hierarchy. People can thrive in all kinds of economic systems (capitalism included). However when a small number of people re-arrange "the universe" for their exclusive benefit, there's going to be a reaction to that and it won't be pretty. I think we should favor measured incremental adjustments to curb the worst aspects of capitalism over all-out revolution. Banning employers from having a say in what work a terminated employee takes in the future is one such measured response.

dv_dt 8y ago
If you look at the rise of the homeless in CA, then I don't really know if the most recent time can count as rise of availability of food and shelter...

mcv 8y ago

Hunter-gatherers apparently had to work only 7 hours per week. They may not have cable TV, but they've got more nature to enjoy. Problem is, you can't sustain a large population that way, so civilisation has always used larger and more technologically advanced populations to push out smaller and more primitive ones. But that doesn't mean the larger and more advanced populations were necessarily happier. Now life in general is absolutely better today than it was in the past, but that doesn't mean it's better for everybody in every respect. Peasants in the West may not get slaughtered by warlords anymore, but especially in the US, there are definitely poor people who struggle to make ends meet, and are slowly sinking deeper into poverty. Peasants in northern Europe may be enjoying the best quality of life ever, but that's not true in many other countries. The best system we've come up with so far is clearly regulated capitalism with plenty of protections for the poor.