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> Pre-Green revolution humanity probably couldn’t make a utopia. Post-Green revolution humanity hasn’t pulled it off either.
by roughly 3mo ago
> Pre-Green revolution humanity probably couldn’t make a utopia.
Post-Green revolution humanity hasn’t pulled it off either.
- piloto_ciego 3mo agoIt's a lot better than it was for the average human on earth than it was a couple centuries ago. Utopia can't happen overnight.
- expedition32 3mo agoInfamously the 19th century saw declining living conditions in my country despite the technological and scientific progress. It is socialism that gets us to utopia not the technology.
- ben_w 3mo agoIt needs both together; the 20th century had a variety of attempts at (and degrees of) socialism, and the ones which politicised the science and technology instead of listening to it didn't work out too well either.
- ben_w 3mo agoNot entirely, but we have entirely eliminated at least one disease that was once so common there was a specific goddess to whom you prayed if you wanted to be cured of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shitala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shitala
- roughly 3mo agoWhat is your story for how smallpox was eliminated?
- ben_w 3mo agoHow, or when? How is a lot of things, including the rich paying for it to be eliminated even in the poor nations who had no strong government to do this themselves. When is where: https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/many-people-alive-today-still-recall-when-smallpox-was-common https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/many-people-alive-t...
- roughly 3mo agoYeah, to shortcut the debate here, I think the crux of the argument is that, starting in the 80s, the capital & tech sets both started pointing to things like the smallpox vaccine and the green revolution and saying "See? This is why you need to get out of our way and just let us do our thing," whereas the rest of the world has been saying "the only reason any of that worked is because we built the social and political systems during the 50s, 60s, and 70s to get those solutions into the hands of the people." The argument to ignore the social, economic, and political effects of technology because eventually it makes the world better ignores the process by which it eventually makes the world better, and also ignores that it does not de-facto make the world better without those social and political processes. Technology should be encouraged, and also when you look around and see people starving or dying from preventable diseases while billionaires shoot people into space for the hell of it, the balance is off.
- ben_w 3mo agoAgreed, that argument seems sound.
- robocat 3mo agoWe've also done pretty well at reducing deficiency diseases. How common in wealthy countries is it to know someone with scurvy, pellagra, rickets, goitre, or beriberi. Common words from the past. First world problems (many of which were previously uncommon) are quite different.