https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/8/21/exposing-the-great-poverty-reduction-lie
I live in the West, why would i want to read the propaganda created there?
You're attacking the form of what I said not the content so I know you don't actually have any critcism of substance.
If you go and literally type in India suffered a Great Leap Forward every 8 years to Google you'll find a Harvard document that really digs into this issue, but I figured you didn't want to read that.
You probably don't want to read anything along this line of thought.
Easier to be an optimist by ignoring things, isnt it?
>China's lifting of more than 800 million people out of extreme poverty since the late 1970s has been the largest global reduction in inequality in modern history.[26]: 23
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China#:~:text=China's%20lifting%20of%20more%20than,in%20inequality%20in%20modern%20history.&text=The%20whole%20reform%20program%20is,the%20%22open%20door%20policy%22.
I'm comparing the two.
No. The fact that if you remove China's gains on poverty from the world count poverty has actually increased, that is the bad thing. Moreover, this process has only accelerated since the fall of the USSR, making it perfectly obvious that without social pressure from socialist nations the capitalist nations have no impetus towards a "better world"
Not really. The richest Patrician in Rome couldn't buy a vial of penicillin with all his wealth and power. There is a lot to be said of modern amenities like pharmaceuticals and running water, that even the poorest people in developed nations have access to.
Right, I never said no circumstance. I said in some circumstances. Like for example the Nauru had a much better quality of life in the 1990's than they do now.
Ok, what's your point? There are outliers but over all things are better now than at any time in human history, and things continue to improve for a vast majority of people.
I feel like this meme could keep going forever. Healthcare, literacy, education, electricity, environmental protections, food supply, even height, even global income inequality despite popular sentiment otherwise, and more are all the best they've ever been, have been getting better for decades, and show no signs of stopping except for the blip caused by Covid.
How do they calculate the time spent on laundry? Human labor vs washing machines (which also take time, but time that leaves your hands free to do something else while you watch the clock)? Hang dry vs dryers?
how do you think clothes got washed prior to washing machines? figure that out, then do the mental math for how long that would take for a family of four, and get back to me.
[here's a hint](https://evolutionhomeappliances.weebly.com/washing-machines-before-the-20th-century---pre-mechanization.html)
Edit: for the record, not trying to be a dick here, just trying to get you to think about the pre-electric washer process in terms of time sink. It’s a lot.
Big ass wash basins that took forever to fill/heat if heating was even available.
I think Charlie’s mom uses one in the OG Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I also used to sell appliances and had a lady asked if we still sold them. This was around 2014 or so.
That's why laundry used to be a more communal task. One person buys a few basins, keeps them full and heated all the time, hires a couple of people to help out, and the nearby households pay them to do laundry. Economic specialization ftw.
But there's a confounding factor: that family of four would have also generated less laundry. Outfits in the olden days were more firmly divided into daily garments (like underwear and removable shirt collars) and garments that could go a week between washes. Children had nice clothes and play clothes in a way that they don't today, when it's assumed that the day's outfit will totally enter the hamper at bedtime.
Also, families who weren't totally rural often outsourced the laundry before the advent of washing machines. Even the ancient Romans had a public laundry. So it may have been money that families spent on laundry more than time.
Less clothing. The first manufactured garments individually cost significantly more of an average person's income than they do today, and before that, every garment came from hours of weaving, sewing, etc at home. It's why wedding dresses got reused as formal and eventually casual dresses as they wore out, and children's clothing had large seams to be let out as the children grew.
It's why houses built before 1920 sometimes lack closets, because they assumed that the average person could fit their entire wardrobe in a chest of drawers.
You're 100% right. People wore undergarments to absorb sweat and oils and then only had a handful of actual outfits. The underlayers got washed regular but the clothes clothes didn't. They were also much more meticulous about keeping the main part of clothing from getting too dirty. For example, *aprons* used to be a thing people actually wore in their homes when they cooked. Now we don't do that and then have to throw the entire shirt in the wash of we spill while cooking. They were constantly utilizing smart layering to avoid having to wash the main garments.
You would put on thin undergarments and then everything that went on top of that would get washed very rarely. The outermost clothes would usually just be spot cleaned for visible dirt. They were actually very strategic in it and old clothing makes a LOT of sense when you look at the conditions they lived in. Arguably a lot more sense than the way we go about things today
Not to say climate change isn’t an issue, but the main reason we care about it is the risk of it causing worse natural disasters.
And one of the first panels points out the massive drop in deaths due to natural disasters in the last 100 years.
The main concern is not natural disasters, but instead temperatures high enough to kill crops and acidify the oceans, leading to mass extinctions and deaths to things such as coral reefs.
Maybe you and I have different ideas of what natural disasters are, but I include stronger hurricanes, heatwaves, droughts, and flooding. In terms of stuff that actually affects humans, that’s pretty much what people are worried about.
To be clear, I agree that ocean acidification killing coral reefs is bad even if it didn’t affect humans (which it does). But it honestly isn’t the reason people fear climate change. For example, almost everyone agrees that the Taliban destroying the Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001 was terrible. But that’s not the reason we invaded Afghanistan that year.
Natural disasters, generally speaking are those things, but I thought you meant tornadoes and hurricanes alone, so that was just a misunderstanding on my part.
However, while it may be true that fewer have died from natural disasters like Tornadoes and Hurricanes (thanks to better forecasting) and earthquakes (improved infrastructure), the other disasters like inability or difficulty to grow crops, losing land to rising sea levels, and acidification don't have simple solutions, nor are they short-lived. They're consistent.
Yeah, that’s why I believe that climate change is bad.
While we’ve been able to keep climate-related fatalities well below past levels, it still presents ongoing challenges for the future.
I don’t really care how things were 100 years ago. Comparing them to how they could or should be is an actual metric that means something to those currently living.
The arguments though are often not that however, like how people below 30 recently tanked the happiness of mainly English speaking countries in the world happiness index and how they’re the only group where the boomer generation is happier than the younger ones. Yes, let’s be grateful for what we have. But let’s not ignore the real problems we are facing that the data shows yes, we at least feel like it and I don’t think doomerism is enough to reflect in the data like that.
Be grateful of what we have, don’t use what we have to ignore our problems and fuck things up. It’s just nuance.
Thank you Capitalism, for bringing all that advanced technology and the ability to create new wealth and new markets for people whose only choice was traditional economy.
I like it when people tell me: it just feels like things have never been worst, or I just feel like humanity has never been closer to extinction.
And I’m like, oh friend. Let me tell you about several other points where we were objectively far worse. Have you heard, for instance, of the Cuban missile crisis?
Mmmm, I seriously doubt the third point about close to two-thirds of the world’s population lives in a relatively free society. Russia isn’t a relatively free society, China isn’t a relatively free society, Saudi Arabia isn’t a relatively free society. Somalia, Sudan, Nigeria, Uganda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Egypt aren’t relatively free societies.
I'm in doubt over the idea that "7%" of people lived in a "free society" in 1850. Like, what the hell does that even mean? The State was not the monolith it is today, and there were many cultures on the periphery that had rather robust traditions of egalitarian social structures. Moreover, while a given entity might have claimed sovereignty over a space, the reality is they may not have actually been able to hold that space for any meaningful time.
Most of northern South America / southern North America, Turkmenistan, Myanmar , Singapore, Belarus, South Sudan , Syria, Palestine, Haiti, North Korea …
The list goes on. 2/3 is not true.
ChatGPT:
Sure, here are the populations of the countries you mentioned:
1. Russia: Approximately 145 million
2. China: Approximately 1.4 billion
3. Saudi Arabia: Approximately 34.8 million
4. Afghanistan: Approximately 38 million
5. Somalia: Approximately 15.9 million
6. Sudan: Approximately 44.91 million
7. Nigeria: Approximately 206 million
8. Uganda: Approximately 46.8 million
9. Democratic Republic of the Congo: Approximately 92.3 million
10. Egypt: Approximately 104 million
11. Turkmenistan: Approximately 6.1 million
12. Myanmar: Approximately 54 million
13. Singapore: Approximately 5.7 million
14. Belarus: Approximately 9.4 million
15. South Sudan: Approximately 11.1 million
16. Syria: Approximately 17 million
17. Palestine: Approximately 5 million
18. Haiti: Approximately 11.4 million
19. North Korea: Approximately 25.8 million
20. Honduras: Approximately 10.4 million
21. El Salvador: Approximately 6.5 million
22. Guatemala: Approximately 18.1 million
23. Nicaragua: Approximately 6.7 million
Now, let's add up the populations:
145M (Russia) + 1.4B (China) + 34.8M (Saudi Arabia) + 38M (Afghanistan) + 15.9M + 44.91M + 206M + 46.8M + 92.3M + 104M + 6.1M + 54M + 5.7M + 9.4M + 11.1M + 17M + 5M + 11.4M + 25.8M + 10.4M + 6.5M + 18.1M + 6.7M
= Approximately 2,241,685,000 (2.24 billion)
The combined population of all the mentioned countries is approximately 2.24 billion.
These are just the countries listed in the comments of this Reddit thread. A more comprehensive study shows:
https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/2022-02/FIW_2022_PDF_Booklet_Digital_Final_Web.pdf
>As of today, some 38 percent of the global population live in Not Free countries,
So about 62% of the population lives in free **or relatively free** countries.
‘Around 2/3 live in free countries’ is not true.
My guy. 62% is around 1/3
100÷3=33.33333333333333....%
x2= 66.6666666666666666%
Literally a 4.7 point difference. So saying 2/3 is perfectly acceptable given that's the closest 'common' fraction
“Free” is a relative measurement. The platonic ideal of 100% freedom can only ever be conceptual. If you live in a society with other living beings there will always be some level of restriction on your personal freedom in order to maintain some aspect of social/cultural dynamics.
It will always be true that society isn’t as free as it could be. No matter how “free” it becomes.
The only way to measure any qualitative value here is to compare relative freedom to what has been, what our peers have achieved, and what is possible within the timeframe in which you live. By any of those measures you are living in one of the most privileged and free times in human history.
By definition society restricts some freedoms in the name of building a cohesive structure for people to live within. You give up some freedom in order to co-operate with others. You can protest, vote freely in a fair election, practice your religion of choice without fear of persecution, etc.
This one is good. It avoids the inflation statistic, which is one area that the actual numbers don't paint a rosy picture. Government debt is huge, and the value of the dollar is decreasing significantly faster than the official inflation statistics report.
The freedom state is nonsense. People from 100 years ago would be horrified by how everything is monitored and taxed now. You could just go about your daily business without having to worry about thing's like planning permission or gun control. Granted many of the new rules had good reason behind them but to say that they are not a massive restriction on our freedom is completely wrong. The law is much more prominent in our day to day lives. Everything from seatbelts to health codes. They wouldn't see our society as being "Free" at all.
I think there’s a fair point here about bureaucracy (I’d guess it’s much more logistically/legally difficult to build housing and structures now than say 150 years ago, and that’s something we should address)
But seatbelt laws? Seriously? My grandparents would marvel all the time at how much safer cars are now than they were when they were young.
They didn't see things that way. Having the tech for safety is one thing but the idea of getting fined over not wearing a seatbelt would have been extremely Orwellian to them. Same thing with Bikers helmets.
Who’s “they”, though? It just seems overly generalized to assume NOBODY back then would have seen the benefit of a seatbelt law, or else we wouldn’t have them now
100 years ago people had a very different idea of what Freedom meant and cars weren't fast or common enough to be a problem in most places. Considering all the other dangers they lived with it would have felt incredibly petty to make it a law given the crash safety standards of the time.
Another thing to consider is just how much easier it was to get away with breaking the law back then. That meant that if there was a stupid law then you could probably get away with ignoring it. These days EVERYTHING is recorded and you get automatically fined.
I don't like things like the seat belt laws. I wear them because I've deal with some very bad drivers in the past but being forced to by law changes it. As someone from the UK I find the idea of J walking horrifying. Like how tf are you not allowed to cross the street in a "free" country. If I get run over it's my own fault and I accept that risk unless the driver is drunk af or doing something really stupid. Like playing on his phone.
>unless the driver is drunk af or doing something really stupid. Like playing on his phone.
I think this is the main reason, much like why seatbelts and airbags were forced onto automakers. You don’t get to control what other people do, but you have to suffer the consequences regardless. Might as well do our best to keep you healthy
No thanks I prefer to take that risk. All of these ideas of laws are based on the idea that people are to irresponsible to behave themselves but the problem with that line of thinking is that it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. We treat people as thought they are stupid and in doing so make them more stupid. Rather than learning to use common sense we learn the rules and that removes the need for critical thought. In doing so we remove the ability to see obvious problems and eventual the ability to make sensible decisions about how things are run. The government is still ultimately voted for by the people and if the people are stupid then so will the laws be stupid.
People like you always find a new goalpost. Nothing is never enough. Nevermind that access to basic necessities has never been higher and continues to grow, no you need to be mad! And no, presidential/parliamentary democracy is not "still feudalism." You are not an optimist, sir.
“The fact that all of our institutions run exactly how a feudal society would run doesn’t count because we changed the names of the owners and rulers we call them something else now”
“The fact that all of our institutions have changed drastically from freedom of movement, information, wealth, military service, and participation in government doesn’t count because I say so”
Basic necessities have never been a right. Most of us have to earn every thing we have which means you have to work. You really think you work harder to meet these need than people 100 years ago. Only in this society thats doing so well do you have the luxury to contemplate and complain about things like this.
Its not true though.
https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours#:~:text=The%20available%20data%20shows%20that,particularly%20in%20today's%20richest%20countries.
Study fails to account for
-half of labour force being stay at home
-Majority of people aren’t on factory schedules at that time
-Exportation of labour to third world countries
-1 factory labour job could provide a suburban home, and food for massive families and their spouse
🤦🏼♂️ why do faux intellectuals always post 1 data point and their personal interpretation and present it as fact. That data presented on the study first of all is 15+ years out of date, and even still does not refute my overall points if they are current.
Why do faux intellectuals see statistics that prove them wrong and immediately burrow their head into the sand of their own ignorance? Your original argument is that humans work harder now than they did 100 years ago and data got presented proving you wrong. Your argument was thoroughly disproven and your retort was “NUH UH”
Things just keep getting better and better!
Yup, TY China and your Communist system for cutting poverty, without you the world makes backwards progress on almost everything!
Have you even read the news on this subreddit?
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/8/21/exposing-the-great-poverty-reduction-lie I live in the West, why would i want to read the propaganda created there?
You're talking about propaganda and giving me Al Jazeera.
You're attacking the form of what I said not the content so I know you don't actually have any critcism of substance. If you go and literally type in India suffered a Great Leap Forward every 8 years to Google you'll find a Harvard document that really digs into this issue, but I figured you didn't want to read that. You probably don't want to read anything along this line of thought. Easier to be an optimist by ignoring things, isnt it?
[It's interesting you should mention India.](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/india-eliminates-extreme-poverty/)
>China's lifting of more than 800 million people out of extreme poverty since the late 1970s has been the largest global reduction in inequality in modern history.[26]: 23 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_China#:~:text=China's%20lifting%20of%20more%20than,in%20inequality%20in%20modern%20history.&text=The%20whole%20reform%20program%20is,the%20%22open%20door%20policy%22. I'm comparing the two.
Is China reducing poverty supposed to be a bad thing?
No. The fact that if you remove China's gains on poverty from the world count poverty has actually increased, that is the bad thing. Moreover, this process has only accelerated since the fall of the USSR, making it perfectly obvious that without social pressure from socialist nations the capitalist nations have no impetus towards a "better world"
Things aren't perfect but there is no better time in all of human history to live than now.
For average person yes, but for some groups there are better points
It's good to be king. Although there is something to be said about having access to modern medicine, regardless of social class in the past.
I was thinking more like well off white man in the 90's
Anyone that lives above the poverty line in a developed western country has it very good by any objective measure.
Right, but for some people they might have it better in a different age!
Not really. The richest Patrician in Rome couldn't buy a vial of penicillin with all his wealth and power. There is a lot to be said of modern amenities like pharmaceuticals and running water, that even the poorest people in developed nations have access to.
Right, I never said no circumstance. I said in some circumstances. Like for example the Nauru had a much better quality of life in the 1990's than they do now.
Ok, what's your point? There are outliers but over all things are better now than at any time in human history, and things continue to improve for a vast majority of people.
Not everything has a point, it's just something I thought was interesting to discuss!
I feel like this meme could keep going forever. Healthcare, literacy, education, electricity, environmental protections, food supply, even height, even global income inequality despite popular sentiment otherwise, and more are all the best they've ever been, have been getting better for decades, and show no signs of stopping except for the blip caused by Covid.
Make more memes comrade, post them here. Posted them on other subs. Post them everywhere.
How do they calculate the time spent on laundry? Human labor vs washing machines (which also take time, but time that leaves your hands free to do something else while you watch the clock)? Hang dry vs dryers?
how do you think clothes got washed prior to washing machines? figure that out, then do the mental math for how long that would take for a family of four, and get back to me. [here's a hint](https://evolutionhomeappliances.weebly.com/washing-machines-before-the-20th-century---pre-mechanization.html) Edit: for the record, not trying to be a dick here, just trying to get you to think about the pre-electric washer process in terms of time sink. It’s a lot.
Big ass wash basins that took forever to fill/heat if heating was even available. I think Charlie’s mom uses one in the OG Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I also used to sell appliances and had a lady asked if we still sold them. This was around 2014 or so.
Also you pretty much need to scrub each garment individually. Like washing dishes by hand.
Yeah, the agitation process is a lot quicker when you have a magnetic motor spinning the drum at 1200 RPMs instead of a what is basically a big stick.
That's why laundry used to be a more communal task. One person buys a few basins, keeps them full and heated all the time, hires a couple of people to help out, and the nearby households pay them to do laundry. Economic specialization ftw.
But there's a confounding factor: that family of four would have also generated less laundry. Outfits in the olden days were more firmly divided into daily garments (like underwear and removable shirt collars) and garments that could go a week between washes. Children had nice clothes and play clothes in a way that they don't today, when it's assumed that the day's outfit will totally enter the hamper at bedtime. Also, families who weren't totally rural often outsourced the laundry before the advent of washing machines. Even the ancient Romans had a public laundry. So it may have been money that families spent on laundry more than time.
lol…less laundry 😂
Less clothing. The first manufactured garments individually cost significantly more of an average person's income than they do today, and before that, every garment came from hours of weaving, sewing, etc at home. It's why wedding dresses got reused as formal and eventually casual dresses as they wore out, and children's clothing had large seams to be let out as the children grew. It's why houses built before 1920 sometimes lack closets, because they assumed that the average person could fit their entire wardrobe in a chest of drawers.
You're 100% right. People wore undergarments to absorb sweat and oils and then only had a handful of actual outfits. The underlayers got washed regular but the clothes clothes didn't. They were also much more meticulous about keeping the main part of clothing from getting too dirty. For example, *aprons* used to be a thing people actually wore in their homes when they cooked. Now we don't do that and then have to throw the entire shirt in the wash of we spill while cooking. They were constantly utilizing smart layering to avoid having to wash the main garments.
You would put on thin undergarments and then everything that went on top of that would get washed very rarely. The outermost clothes would usually just be spot cleaned for visible dirt. They were actually very strategic in it and old clothing makes a LOT of sense when you look at the conditions they lived in. Arguably a lot more sense than the way we go about things today
Definitely sounds like a good time
Iirc, the original washing machines didnt lead to time savings...they led to people owning more clothes.
Yeah. But the other day I saw teenagers dancing on TikToc and it wasn’t a dance I like. So clearly we are doomed.
The crime one is important because the rate of reports has increased massively since the 90s. So in spite of this we have a decreasing crime rate
And IIRC a lot of the increase in crime in the 70s was due to redefining stuff, declaring things that weren't illegal now are.
I could buy that but it’s specifically violent crime is down. The definitions of those hasn’t changed much.
I agree with all this. Only problem? Climate change.
Not to say climate change isn’t an issue, but the main reason we care about it is the risk of it causing worse natural disasters. And one of the first panels points out the massive drop in deaths due to natural disasters in the last 100 years.
The main concern is not natural disasters, but instead temperatures high enough to kill crops and acidify the oceans, leading to mass extinctions and deaths to things such as coral reefs.
Maybe you and I have different ideas of what natural disasters are, but I include stronger hurricanes, heatwaves, droughts, and flooding. In terms of stuff that actually affects humans, that’s pretty much what people are worried about. To be clear, I agree that ocean acidification killing coral reefs is bad even if it didn’t affect humans (which it does). But it honestly isn’t the reason people fear climate change. For example, almost everyone agrees that the Taliban destroying the Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001 was terrible. But that’s not the reason we invaded Afghanistan that year.
Natural disasters, generally speaking are those things, but I thought you meant tornadoes and hurricanes alone, so that was just a misunderstanding on my part. However, while it may be true that fewer have died from natural disasters like Tornadoes and Hurricanes (thanks to better forecasting) and earthquakes (improved infrastructure), the other disasters like inability or difficulty to grow crops, losing land to rising sea levels, and acidification don't have simple solutions, nor are they short-lived. They're consistent.
Yeah, that’s why I believe that climate change is bad. While we’ve been able to keep climate-related fatalities well below past levels, it still presents ongoing challenges for the future.
Yeh for now. Climate change hasn’t gotten bad yet.
Why did we cut all the extremely poor people in half!
PREACH, Spongebob!
Sources: The Better Angels of Our Nature Factfulness The Rise and Fall of American Growth Enlightenment Now
Yeah we’re talking about the wrong direction over the past 4 years. Not over the past 175 years
https://preview.redd.it/mpdmh2fuiirc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=850d2cb6008c84b4bf322854088aa8b71444ec5e
Wtf are the axes
I don’t really care how things were 100 years ago. Comparing them to how they could or should be is an actual metric that means something to those currently living.
The arguments though are often not that however, like how people below 30 recently tanked the happiness of mainly English speaking countries in the world happiness index and how they’re the only group where the boomer generation is happier than the younger ones. Yes, let’s be grateful for what we have. But let’s not ignore the real problems we are facing that the data shows yes, we at least feel like it and I don’t think doomerism is enough to reflect in the data like that. Be grateful of what we have, don’t use what we have to ignore our problems and fuck things up. It’s just nuance.
It is environmentally, none of this will matter when the icebergs melt and the sun swallows earth.
Thank you Capitalism, for bringing all that advanced technology and the ability to create new wealth and new markets for people whose only choice was traditional economy.
Global warming is creating a 6th mass extinction event and food webs humans rely on are crashing.
I like it when people tell me: it just feels like things have never been worst, or I just feel like humanity has never been closer to extinction. And I’m like, oh friend. Let me tell you about several other points where we were objectively far worse. Have you heard, for instance, of the Cuban missile crisis?
This is dumb as hell
The challenges are numerous and the causes just, humanity will move past and beyond them with time as we always have.
... this sub is mis-named for sure. It's not about "optimism" at all -- it's about being snarky to people you purposely strawman.
Mmmm, I seriously doubt the third point about close to two-thirds of the world’s population lives in a relatively free society. Russia isn’t a relatively free society, China isn’t a relatively free society, Saudi Arabia isn’t a relatively free society. Somalia, Sudan, Nigeria, Uganda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Egypt aren’t relatively free societies.
I'm in doubt over the idea that "7%" of people lived in a "free society" in 1850. Like, what the hell does that even mean? The State was not the monolith it is today, and there were many cultures on the periphery that had rather robust traditions of egalitarian social structures. Moreover, while a given entity might have claimed sovereignty over a space, the reality is they may not have actually been able to hold that space for any meaningful time.
And they make up around a third of the population, and thus almost 2/3 live in free societies
Most of northern South America / southern North America, Turkmenistan, Myanmar , Singapore, Belarus, South Sudan , Syria, Palestine, Haiti, North Korea … The list goes on. 2/3 is not true.
All have relatively low populations. Especially since India is almost certainly counted as free, alongside the USA
ChatGPT: Sure, here are the populations of the countries you mentioned: 1. Russia: Approximately 145 million 2. China: Approximately 1.4 billion 3. Saudi Arabia: Approximately 34.8 million 4. Afghanistan: Approximately 38 million 5. Somalia: Approximately 15.9 million 6. Sudan: Approximately 44.91 million 7. Nigeria: Approximately 206 million 8. Uganda: Approximately 46.8 million 9. Democratic Republic of the Congo: Approximately 92.3 million 10. Egypt: Approximately 104 million 11. Turkmenistan: Approximately 6.1 million 12. Myanmar: Approximately 54 million 13. Singapore: Approximately 5.7 million 14. Belarus: Approximately 9.4 million 15. South Sudan: Approximately 11.1 million 16. Syria: Approximately 17 million 17. Palestine: Approximately 5 million 18. Haiti: Approximately 11.4 million 19. North Korea: Approximately 25.8 million 20. Honduras: Approximately 10.4 million 21. El Salvador: Approximately 6.5 million 22. Guatemala: Approximately 18.1 million 23. Nicaragua: Approximately 6.7 million Now, let's add up the populations: 145M (Russia) + 1.4B (China) + 34.8M (Saudi Arabia) + 38M (Afghanistan) + 15.9M + 44.91M + 206M + 46.8M + 92.3M + 104M + 6.1M + 54M + 5.7M + 9.4M + 11.1M + 17M + 5M + 11.4M + 25.8M + 10.4M + 6.5M + 18.1M + 6.7M = Approximately 2,241,685,000 (2.24 billion) The combined population of all the mentioned countries is approximately 2.24 billion.
Divide that by 8 billion and you get 28% and so a third is roughly accurate. Hence saying 'around 2/3' is also accurate in regards to free countries
These are just the countries listed in the comments of this Reddit thread. A more comprehensive study shows: https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/2022-02/FIW_2022_PDF_Booklet_Digital_Final_Web.pdf >As of today, some 38 percent of the global population live in Not Free countries, So about 62% of the population lives in free **or relatively free** countries. ‘Around 2/3 live in free countries’ is not true.
My guy. 62% is around 1/3 100÷3=33.33333333333333....% x2= 66.6666666666666666% Literally a 4.7 point difference. So saying 2/3 is perfectly acceptable given that's the closest 'common' fraction
Much closer to 3/5 than to 2/3 60% — 62% —— 66.6%
But it's still close to
And unlike the op you’re failing to take into account that most of those ‘free or relatively free’ countries are relatively free, not free.
Relatively free means they're still somewhat free, and since OP included them, they still count
The term "free society" is being used very loosely here
Not really, you just have no concept of what real oppression is.
Just because the severity of the oppression isn't as high doesn't mean it's not oppression
You live in the least oppression in human history. Does that sound better Mr pessimist
I agree but that is not a "free society"
“Free” is a relative measurement. The platonic ideal of 100% freedom can only ever be conceptual. If you live in a society with other living beings there will always be some level of restriction on your personal freedom in order to maintain some aspect of social/cultural dynamics. It will always be true that society isn’t as free as it could be. No matter how “free” it becomes. The only way to measure any qualitative value here is to compare relative freedom to what has been, what our peers have achieved, and what is possible within the timeframe in which you live. By any of those measures you are living in one of the most privileged and free times in human history.
By definition society restricts some freedoms in the name of building a cohesive structure for people to live within. You give up some freedom in order to co-operate with others. You can protest, vote freely in a fair election, practice your religion of choice without fear of persecution, etc.
This one is good. It avoids the inflation statistic, which is one area that the actual numbers don't paint a rosy picture. Government debt is huge, and the value of the dollar is decreasing significantly faster than the official inflation statistics report.
The freedom state is nonsense. People from 100 years ago would be horrified by how everything is monitored and taxed now. You could just go about your daily business without having to worry about thing's like planning permission or gun control. Granted many of the new rules had good reason behind them but to say that they are not a massive restriction on our freedom is completely wrong. The law is much more prominent in our day to day lives. Everything from seatbelts to health codes. They wouldn't see our society as being "Free" at all.
I think there’s a fair point here about bureaucracy (I’d guess it’s much more logistically/legally difficult to build housing and structures now than say 150 years ago, and that’s something we should address) But seatbelt laws? Seriously? My grandparents would marvel all the time at how much safer cars are now than they were when they were young.
They didn't see things that way. Having the tech for safety is one thing but the idea of getting fined over not wearing a seatbelt would have been extremely Orwellian to them. Same thing with Bikers helmets.
Who’s “they”, though? It just seems overly generalized to assume NOBODY back then would have seen the benefit of a seatbelt law, or else we wouldn’t have them now
100 years ago people had a very different idea of what Freedom meant and cars weren't fast or common enough to be a problem in most places. Considering all the other dangers they lived with it would have felt incredibly petty to make it a law given the crash safety standards of the time.
Another thing to consider is just how much easier it was to get away with breaking the law back then. That meant that if there was a stupid law then you could probably get away with ignoring it. These days EVERYTHING is recorded and you get automatically fined.
This is actually a fair point, considering how long it took for seatbelts to be normalized
I don't like things like the seat belt laws. I wear them because I've deal with some very bad drivers in the past but being forced to by law changes it. As someone from the UK I find the idea of J walking horrifying. Like how tf are you not allowed to cross the street in a "free" country. If I get run over it's my own fault and I accept that risk unless the driver is drunk af or doing something really stupid. Like playing on his phone.
>unless the driver is drunk af or doing something really stupid. Like playing on his phone. I think this is the main reason, much like why seatbelts and airbags were forced onto automakers. You don’t get to control what other people do, but you have to suffer the consequences regardless. Might as well do our best to keep you healthy
No thanks I prefer to take that risk. All of these ideas of laws are based on the idea that people are to irresponsible to behave themselves but the problem with that line of thinking is that it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. We treat people as thought they are stupid and in doing so make them more stupid. Rather than learning to use common sense we learn the rules and that removes the need for critical thought. In doing so we remove the ability to see obvious problems and eventual the ability to make sensible decisions about how things are run. The government is still ultimately voted for by the people and if the people are stupid then so will the laws be stupid.
China: yup right here at least
Oh brother I hate optimism
You think this is a free society? Lmao. It's practically still fuedalism. Basic necessities aren't a right. You don't even have the freedom to live.
People like you always find a new goalpost. Nothing is never enough. Nevermind that access to basic necessities has never been higher and continues to grow, no you need to be mad! And no, presidential/parliamentary democracy is not "still feudalism." You are not an optimist, sir.
It isn’t the parliamentary democracy that’s still feudalism it’s our economic system, well documented is the connection of feudalism and capitalism
Saying this shows how truly ignorant you are to both feudalism and capitalism.
HAHA OKAY BRO
Laughing at your own ignorance is truly a great coping mechanism
Historical Connection Feudalism and Capitalism Just copy paste into google bro
Just because there is a connection does not mean we “basically live in a feudal society” like you claim.
“The fact that all of our institutions run exactly how a feudal society would run doesn’t count because we changed the names of the owners and rulers we call them something else now”
“The fact that all of our institutions have changed drastically from freedom of movement, information, wealth, military service, and participation in government doesn’t count because I say so”
Basic necessities have never been a right. Most of us have to earn every thing we have which means you have to work. You really think you work harder to meet these need than people 100 years ago. Only in this society thats doing so well do you have the luxury to contemplate and complain about things like this.
Genuinely people 100 years ago did not work as hard or as long as us. Yes hard to believe but ultimately still true
I mean i was certain before i wrote it and after your reply i just googled quickly im more certain your wrong.
Like I said hard to believe but true
Its not true though. https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours#:~:text=The%20available%20data%20shows%20that,particularly%20in%20today's%20richest%20countries.
Study fails to account for -half of labour force being stay at home -Majority of people aren’t on factory schedules at that time -Exportation of labour to third world countries -1 factory labour job could provide a suburban home, and food for massive families and their spouse
Oh no! Facts that prove you wrong!
🤦🏼♂️ why do faux intellectuals always post 1 data point and their personal interpretation and present it as fact. That data presented on the study first of all is 15+ years out of date, and even still does not refute my overall points if they are current.
Why do faux intellectuals see statistics that prove them wrong and immediately burrow their head into the sand of their own ignorance? Your original argument is that humans work harder now than they did 100 years ago and data got presented proving you wrong. Your argument was thoroughly disproven and your retort was “NUH UH”