5 ms·

Are you kidding me? Victorian Britain was the most prosperous country on Earth, at the time. Sure, the average Brit had it much rougher than they do today, but

by zeteo 16y ago

Are you kidding me? Victorian Britain was the most prosperous country on Earth, at the time. Sure, the average Brit had it much rougher than they do today, but that's not a valid comparison. Give me one country that had it better during the 19th century than Victorian Britain!

anthonyb 16y ago
Sure, they were more prosperous on average, but the poor were much more worse off than the poor in rural areas. It's also impossible to say whether the prosperity was due to the free market and lack of regulations, the industrial revolution and development of steam power or the rise of the middle class and their increased free time/income. I suspect that mostly it was technology, similar to what's happening in developing nations right now, rather than any free markets.
- zeteo 16y ago
  "the poor were much more worse off than the poor in rural areas." Do you have any support for that assertion? The poor themselves decided en masse to move from village to city at the time, which seems to indicate the contrary. Yes, in the city they were also much more visible to literate observers who would write about their misery, but who knows what those same observers might have exposed if they had lived in a village instead. The people who knew both sides of the situation, certainly seemed to vote with their feet for the industrialized cities. We see the same phenomenon at work in China nowadays.
  - anthonyb 16y ago
    > The poor themselves decided en masse to move from village to city at the time, which seems to indicate the contrary. You have the same mechanism at work today, in slums in India, South America and so on. The draw is the possibility of being better off and having more opportunity than you would in a rural area, but it doesn't always end up that way. But we're getting off the point, which is that a free market doesn't give you "unprecedented human health and prosperity" - the best that you can argue is that it's one of the preconditions (but not the only one).
  - _delirium 16y ago
    > The poor themselves decided en masse to move from village to city at the time In many cases they hardly "decided"; they were en masse kicked off the land, so had no real choice. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclosure_Acts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclosure_Acts
    - zeteo 16y ago
      That's the standard Marxist analysis, but it's been refuted since, by Armstrong and others. The Enclosure Acts "kicked" very few people off the land. What they did mostly was to transform poorly utilized common land (marginal pasture, forests, and even some "tragedy of the commons"-style arable land) into extremely productive privately owned plots. The food production increased immensely as a result, which allowed bustling cities and industries to be well supplied. The general prosperity of society increased immensely, while previously starving peasants moved into the cities to become well-fed, but poorly-housed, poorly-clothed etc. workers (at least in the first generation). Even these deficiencies were remedied quite fast, and by the end of the Victorian period, manual laborers would commonly go around town dressed in what today we'd call a business suit.
      - _delirium 16y ago
        I'm not arguing that the Enclosure Acts reduced the prosperity of society in aggregate, merely that one of their direct results was that "previously starving peasants moved into the cities" wasn't a free choice on the part of the peasants in many cases. They may have even ended up better off in doing so, but that's different from whether it was voluntary. I don't think you need a Marxist analysis to come to the conclusion that the Enclosure Acts didn't have a neutral effect on the pace of urbanization; it's what you find in standard mainstream histories from folks like Spielvogel as well. Mostly I don't think it's at all clear that "being poor in the city working in a factory" would actually be preferred over "being a peasant farmer" given conditions of the time, if it were truly a free choice. In the United States at around the same time, you find many people choosing to leave cities to become subsistence farmers on the frontiers, because the Homestead Acts made it a viable option. If the UK had taken the enclosed land and distributed it via a Homestead-Act style process, would British peasants have chosen that option?
  - anthonyb 16y ago
    > Do you have any support for that assertion? How about an eyewitness account, from 1902: http://london.sonoma.edu/Writings/PeopleOfTheAbyss/ http://london.sonoma.edu/Writings/PeopleOfTheAbyss/

by zeteo 16y ago

anthonyb 16y ago

Sure, they were more prosperous on average, but the poor were much more worse off than the poor in rural areas. It's also impossible to say whether the prosperity was due to the free market and lack of regulations, the industrial revolution and development of steam power or the rise of the middle class and their increased free time/income. I suspect that mostly it was technology, similar to what's happening in developing nations right now, rather than any free markets.

zeteo 16y ago
"the poor were much more worse off than the poor in rural areas." Do you have any support for that assertion? The poor themselves decided en masse to move from village to city at the time, which seems to indicate the contrary. Yes, in the city they were also much more visible to literate observers who would write about their misery, but who knows what those same observers might have exposed if they had lived in a village instead. The people who knew both sides of the situation, certainly seemed to vote with their feet for the industrialized cities. We see the same phenomenon at work in China nowadays.
- anthonyb 16y ago
  > The poor themselves decided en masse to move from village to city at the time, which seems to indicate the contrary. You have the same mechanism at work today, in slums in India, South America and so on. The draw is the possibility of being better off and having more opportunity than you would in a rural area, but it doesn't always end up that way. But we're getting off the point, which is that a free market doesn't give you "unprecedented human health and prosperity" - the best that you can argue is that it's one of the preconditions (but not the only one).
- _delirium 16y ago
  > The poor themselves decided en masse to move from village to city at the time In many cases they hardly "decided"; they were en masse kicked off the land, so had no real choice. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclosure_Acts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclosure_Acts
  - zeteo 16y ago
    That's the standard Marxist analysis, but it's been refuted since, by Armstrong and others. The Enclosure Acts "kicked" very few people off the land. What they did mostly was to transform poorly utilized common land (marginal pasture, forests, and even some "tragedy of the commons"-style arable land) into extremely productive privately owned plots. The food production increased immensely as a result, which allowed bustling cities and industries to be well supplied. The general prosperity of society increased immensely, while previously starving peasants moved into the cities to become well-fed, but poorly-housed, poorly-clothed etc. workers (at least in the first generation). Even these deficiencies were remedied quite fast, and by the end of the Victorian period, manual laborers would commonly go around town dressed in what today we'd call a business suit.
    - _delirium 16y ago
      I'm not arguing that the Enclosure Acts reduced the prosperity of society in aggregate, merely that one of their direct results was that "previously starving peasants moved into the cities" wasn't a free choice on the part of the peasants in many cases. They may have even ended up better off in doing so, but that's different from whether it was voluntary. I don't think you need a Marxist analysis to come to the conclusion that the Enclosure Acts didn't have a neutral effect on the pace of urbanization; it's what you find in standard mainstream histories from folks like Spielvogel as well. Mostly I don't think it's at all clear that "being poor in the city working in a factory" would actually be preferred over "being a peasant farmer" given conditions of the time, if it were truly a free choice. In the United States at around the same time, you find many people choosing to leave cities to become subsistence farmers on the frontiers, because the Homestead Acts made it a viable option. If the UK had taken the enclosed land and distributed it via a Homestead-Act style process, would British peasants have chosen that option?
- anthonyb 16y ago
  > Do you have any support for that assertion? How about an eyewitness account, from 1902: http://london.sonoma.edu/Writings/PeopleOfTheAbyss/ http://london.sonoma.edu/Writings/PeopleOfTheAbyss/