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The specific passage from the article where the author romanticizes subsistence economies: > Prior to colonisation, most people lived in subsistence economies
by bko 8y ago
The specific passage from the article where the author romanticizes subsistence economies:
> Prior to colonisation, most people lived in subsistence economies where they enjoyed access to abundant commons – land, water, forests, livestock and robust systems of sharing and reciprocity. They had little if any money, but then they didn’t need it in order to live well – so it makes little sense to claim that they were poor. This way of life was violently destroyed by colonisers who forced people off the land and into European-owned mines, factories and plantations, where they were paid paltry wages for work they never wanted to do in the first place.
- ricw 8y agoThis. Most people in developed countries typically don’t know that in poor countries subsistence farmers are the poorest of them all, literally starving for months when their crops are done. Without trade or refrigeration you simply can’t subsist. On the other hand people don’t know that people in cities, even if they live in slums, are much better nourished than people in the country side, who are mostly subsistence farmers. In short, typically cities are rich and the country side is poor, as much as that may go against a romanticised view of older days. Valid point may be that a dollar value may not be the best way to describe poverty. Nourishment, healthcare access and life expectancy are likely much better indicators.