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It’s harder to scapegoat minorities when nobody’s all that mad about anything. Conversely, it’s easier to be charitable when you have more to give. Finally, the

• sanderjd 7y ago
  Well, you could a look at the antebellum south of the US, to start. Don't think much more needs to be said about that... Or you could look at the contemporary US. We have basically no unemployment, enormous wealth, no war on our land in over a century and a half, we're probably the most prosperous and least attacked people in history, and yet we see quite a lot of majority-minority strife. You could also look at the article or the book it's talking about, which is also talking about a period where your theorizing didn't hold up. Maybe let's flip it, do you have examples of peaceful high-well-being societies where people who were different from most people in the society were equivalent participants in that well being?
  • _iyig 7y ago
    >Well, you could a look at the antebellum south of the US, to start. Don't think much more needs to be said about that... The abolitionist movement was huge in the North, where economic equality was better [0]. The antebellum South was a great example of a deeply unequal society, where poor whites were easily pitted against blacks. (Still haven't solved this problem) >Or you could look at the contemporary US. We have basically no unemployment, enormous wealth, no war on our land Huge wealth inequality. Student debt crisis. Opioid crisis. Healthcare. Good jobs gone, replaced with bad jobs. Labor participation rate hasn’t recovered since the Great Recession. >Maybe let's flip it, do you have examples of peaceful high-well-being societies where people who were different from most people in the society were equivalent participants in that well being? Sure, though I did only say better, not "equivalent": we can look at Jews who prospered in Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth [1][2], or Jews in England during the Victorian Era [3]. As contrasted with Jews in Western Europe during the Dark Ages -- _lots_ of pogroms and expulsions -- or Jews in Weimar Germany, or Jews in Tsarist Russia. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antebellum_South#Wealth_inequality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antebellum_South#Wealth_inequa... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Poland_before_the_18th_century#Prosperity_in_a_reunited_Poland:_1320–1385 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Poland_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Poland#The_Polish-Lithuanian_Commonwealth:_1572–1795 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Poland#... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_England#Emancipation_and_prosperity,_1800s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_England...
    • sanderjd 7y ago
      I'm ... no longer sure what your point is, but just one reply to note that you can't put responsibility for slaves on plantations onto "poor whites" who "were easily pitted against blacks". They were rich people who enslaved others just because they thought they were superior and could get away with it. No economic solution was going to solve that.