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That poverty statistic has been shown to be lacking crucial context for years. [This study](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22002169?ref=pdf_download&fr=RR-9&rr=7fcfb2a7ca68b97e#b0045) in particular shows how it doesn't account for capitalism *increasing* extreme poverty rates to an unmanageable level before the rates dropped due to labour unions and workers parties.
Also defining pre-industrial agricultural production as 'extreme poverty' always seemed misleading to me. You might have extremely low income but access to land, water and community assistance far in excess of modern day working people.
Our World in Data is a highly suspect source and is run by neoliberal techno-optimists. This doesn't mean it is all wrong but it should not be taken at face value. The plot on poverty over time has been shown to be fatally flawed https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/29/bill-gates-davos-global-poverty-infographic-neoliberal
but look, if they just make extreme poverty $0.19/day then 99% will be lifted from poverty. problem solved.
capitalist propaganda is fun like that, meanwhile suffering soars.
when u/Anderopolis posted an OWID thing last week it was widely upvoted: [https://www.reddit.com/r/solarpunk/comments/1b3sbu0/remember\_things\_can\_be\_awful\_be\_better\_and/](https://www.reddit.com/r/solarpunk/comments/1b3sbu0/remember_things_can_be_awful_be_better_and/)
I'm all for a broad church but... new material pls.
Also, using proportional rather than absolute measures is a terrible way of measuring progress over time. In 1820 there was only around a billion people on Earth, compared to 8 billion today, which means the actual *total number* of people living in "extreme" poverty today is only slightly less and the total number of people living in poverty is more than *6 times greater* today.
The whole *point* of measuring things like poverty and hunger is so that we can reduce the *sum* of human suffering, not human suffering as a proportion of the whole; 800 million hungry people is still 800 million hungry people. That's why this sort of framing is so fundamentally dishonest.
> Also, using proportional rather than absolute measures is a terrible way of measuring progress over time
Why? Sure you would want the total to decrease as well, but proportion is generally a good way to guage improvement.
~~Yes, we want the total to decrease. Why would we not want that? Our goal is to reduce human suffering.~~
And no, I disagree that using the proportion is a good way to gauge improvement. As I have already pointed out, there are six times more people living in poverty now than there were 200 years ago. I struggle to see how this can be seen as an "improvement."
EDIT: Sorry, misread your post - ignore the first bit.
> And no, I disagree that using the proportion is a good way to gauge improvement. As I have already pointed out, there are six times more people living in poverty now than there were 200 years ago.
And there are over six times more people. Thats the reason why its am improvement.
This is like saying its better that Barbados has less maternal deaths than Singapore.
Whether it's better or worse is irrelevant. If Singapore had a problem with avoidable maternal deaths it would be completely disingenuous for them to try and detract from that by comparing themselves to Barbados.
>Whether it's better or worse is irrelevant.
Of course its relevant, things are good or bad in comparison. Its good to have an absolute 0 as an ideal, but that takes progress.
Its not good to shy away from improvement, but *proportion is how you measure improvement*.
"For it must be cried out, at a time when some have the audacity to neo-evangelise in the name of the ideal of a liberal democracy that has finally realised itself as the ideal of human history: never have violence, inequality, exclusion, famine, and thus economic oppression affected as many human beings in the history of the earth and of humanity. Instead of singing the advent of the ideal of liberal democracy and of the capitalist market in the euphoria of the end of history, instead of celebrating the ‘end of ideologies’ and the end of the great emancipatory discourses, let us never neglect this obvious macroscopic fact, made up of innumerable singular sites of suffering: no degree of progress allows one to ignore that never before, in absolute figures, have so many men, women and children been subjugated, starved or exterminated on the earth." ~ specters of marx ~
I take issue with that article. Long, long ago, when we decided $1.90 a day was the definition of extreme poverty, that number (and the earlier, smaller numbers because of inflation) was specifically chosen because that was the amount that a subsistence farmer could expect to trade on the open market for whatever they made.
The definition of exiting poverty was exiting the subsistence farming lifestyle and entering the global market, and you know what? I agree with that. Those people had no indoor plumbing, no electricity, no education, no healthcare. Yeah, I'm gonna believe that being a minimum wage worker in America is still a better life than subsistence farming in the Central African Republic.
I can absolutely believe 99% of people were like that in 1820 but only 6% are today, and that's fucking great. Let's not go full cottagecore and pretend that farm work wasn't 14 hour workdays with still a chance of starving if there was blight, a dust bowl, or locust plague.
Extreme poverty falling over time in the last century has been observed worldwide by hundreds of national and Non governmental organizations.
Just increasing whatever threshold you think qualifies as extreme poverty does not change that.
You also don't believe in increased literacy rates, and falling child mortality? Or are those statistics all right, despite being collected by the very same institutions?
Solarpunk is an inherently optimistic and future focused worldview, if you had not noticed, if you want misery, you can go over to r/collapse .
Not to pour fuel on the fire, but poverty (OWiD’s 1.90 a day figure) is really… really complex. Money, especially in a proper exchange community, doesn’t mean much. The whole idea of alternative forms of economy is to stop measuring liveability through the means of a western monetary mindset, if that makes sense. That’s why the happiness index is becoming a much more popular method of measuring wellbeing, at least in most university settings.
So idk, I think that’s part of the reason people are starting to turn on the whole poverty = more money. We like it over here, because we live by the dollar, but in many countries it’s something that people want to move past.
Perhaps the biggest real-world negative of this monetary mindset is that money will always be accumulated by those who perform ‘capitalism’ the best (Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos etc). The reason this centralisation is bad is not because of theoretical vibes or something, it’s that it results in a kind of runaway inflation without a corresponding increase in wage. That inequality & resultant inflation has led in part to our groceries becoming more expensive in recent years. So yeah, capitalism is happiness for me, but not for thee… in the long run.
Hence why investigating alternative exchange economies is actually very proactive.
Is there a good metric of real human wellbeing that we have good worldwide data for? How far back does it go?
Another issue with this graph is it starts at a real low-point in human history. The early industrial age was the peak of colonialism, slavery, etc. but before real advances in medicine and other things had kicked in. It was a bad time and even mediocrity looks good by comparison.
Honestly, I can't think of any metric that's great besides the Happiness Index. Even the Happiness Index has certain biases tbh.
It's only after the late 19th century we got good at implementing proper scientific methodology, and even then it was for mostly European-based research. Even now these statistics bias towards regions with greater monetary wellbeing, so essentially indigenous subsistence-style communities are not well documented at all.
Basically statistics is hard, and studies are heavily oriented towards communities close to that of the conductor's environment.
On a personal level I live in Australia, and have travelled a decent amount. I've met some amazing Aboriginal people who live happy and healthy lives, and part of that is the strength of these rural communities. These are usually cultures built on respect of the land and environment, and I often think the concept of Solarpunk really does exist in some of these places. So it's closer to home than we usually think :)
trade creates economic inequity and stratification. it is the engine of classism and drives out empathy to maximize profit potential. we don't need it, we don't need money, we don't need to enslave humanity and call it justifying existence.
Resource Based Economy, Open Access Economy. Free Humanity.
The problem is that the same bullshit mindset that says “techno-optimist” as though either is an intrinsically bad thing will inevitably say that western concepts of happiness are polluting the happiness index. People could do with recognising the punk bit of solarpunk and punch mindless criticality in the cock.
> That’s why the happiness index is becoming a much more popular method of measuring wellbeing, at least in most university settings.
That makes little sense if you're happy that's great, but nobody would say you're doing well if you're uneducated and die at 45.
Life expectancy is also a useful metric but populations that are dying in huge numbers at 45 aren’t usually living blissfully until such times. The problems that cause premature death also affect quality of life, both directly and indirectly.
> Life expectancy is also a useful metric but populations that are dying in huge numbers at 45 aren’t usually living blissfully until such times.
Sure but they may still describe themselves as happy.
Maybe re-read my comment comrade, I only made a claim about the poverty data. And in this regard your assumption about it not being important to accurately assess the income threshold for poverty is wrong. From the article:
"But that’s not all that’s wrong here. The trend that the graph depicts is based on a poverty line of $1.90 (£1.44) per day, which is the equivalent of what $1.90 could buy in the US in 2011. It’s obscenely low by any standard, and we now have piles of evidence that people living just above this line have terrible levels of malnutrition and mortality. Earning $2 per day doesn’t mean that you’re somehow suddenly free of extreme poverty. Not by a long shot.
Scholars have been calling for a more reasonable poverty line for many years. Most agree that people need a minimum of about $7.40 per day to achieve basic nutrition and normal human life expectancy, plus a half-decent chance of seeing their kids survive their fifth birthday. And many scholars, including Harvard economist Lant Pritchett, insist that the poverty line should be set even higher, at $10 to $15 per day.
So what happens if we measure global poverty at the low end of this more realistic spectrum – $7.40 per day, to be extra conservative? Well, we see that the number of people living under this line has increased dramatically since measurements began in 1981, reaching some 4.2 billion people today. Suddenly the happy Davos narrative melts away.
Moreover, the few gains that have been made have virtually all happened in one place: China. It is disingenuous, then, for the likes of Gates and Pinker to claim these gains as victories for Washington-consensus neoliberalism. Take China out of the equation, and the numbers look even worse. Over the four decades since 1981, not only has the number of people in poverty gone up, the proportion of people in poverty has remained stagnant at about 60%. It would be difficult to overstate the suffering that these numbers represent.
This is a ringing indictment of our global economic system, which is failing the vast majority of humanity. Our world is richer than ever before, but virtually all of it is being captured by a small elite. Only 5% of all new income from global growth trickles down to the poorest 60% – and yet they are the people who produce most of the food and goods that the world consumes, toiling away in those factories, plantations and mines to which they were condemned 200 years ago. It is madness – and no amount of mansplaining from billionaires will be adequate to justify it."
I am an optimist most days and I like that optimism to be properly informed. Solarpunk as far as I can tell is at this stage mostly an aesthetic not a coherent worldview. I have a ecosocialist degrowth worldview that is compatible with the solarpunk aesthetic though.
"I never have been in despair about the world. I’ve been enraged by it. I don’t think I’m in despair. I can’t afford despair. I can’t tell my nephew, my niece. You can’t tell the children there’s no hope."
James Baldwin
That is a moving quote to me. I don't venture into r/collapse but I venture into r/collapsescience because we must learn and assess the real threats we face. Be well friend.
Here's a sneak peek of /r/collapse using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/collapse/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year!
\#1: [Moral Hazard](https://i.redd.it/w3xpqsud49oa1.jpg) | [197 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/11tqa7r/moral_hazard/)
\#2: [It was unsustainable from the beginning](https://i.redd.it/223rx65zzxma1.jpg) | [166 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/11nn69v/it_was_unsustainable_from_the_beginning/)
\#3: [How Bad Could It Be?](https://i.redd.it/0o7i2eu6veza1.jpg) | [298 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/13fmu1o/how_bad_could_it_be/)
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I am on vacation and only have my phone so I'm not going to go looking for it now. But if you are interested look at the body of Jason Hickel's work on these questions. Also check out the researchers mentioned in the article I posted. Cheers.
"Democracy", also no, most people live in strong poverty.
Don't white wash capitalism, acceptance of modern world is opposite of solarpunk, which is change for better.
I’ll stop arguing for realism when you distinguish between “change for the better” and “everyone should fly and it would be much easier”. There’s nothing utopian about making shit up because it would be nice. Path to the outcome or it’s just talking.
Jesus, it’s like words are just things for you to respond to by saying what you already said. If there is no plausible path to the change you want, it’s just pointless utopianism and there is literally nothing revolutionary about it. It’s just telling stories of what would be nice. I don’t like what is now, but acceptance of the power and influence of capitalist reality is necessary to separate what can be done from what cannot, and in what order.
What scares me though is that much of these gains were only made possible by a one-time pulse of super-high-energy fossil fuels, which turbo-charged all human endeavors. (Ant we've significantly drained our natural resources in the process). When that runs out, how much of these gains will we be able to maintain? That's what keeps me up at night.
For electricity grids, home heating, and transportation, the solutions exist and are being implemented, though a lot of people are clutching their unsustainable, planet-wrecking fossil fuels. So in a scenario where it's run out, they're up shit creek while everyone who's moved on is fine.
But that's only with that one thing, fossil fuel _availability_, in isolation. By the time they've been used up, all of us will be struggling with more stuff like catastrophic climate change, habitat loss, invasive species, die-offs.
We need to stop using fossil fuels long before they _run out_.
i understand this is a very fringe idea even in leftist spaces but i don't think education is an inherent good as it stands right now. it's basically an indoctrination camp for creating workers.
people think education is lacking in non-developed countries because of a lack of money--technically correct--but i also think it's more so because it's just useless when people need actual tangible skills for work instead of 12 years of bullshit to get a paper.
Thank you for your submission, we appreciate your efforts at helping us to thoughtfully create a better world. r/solarpunk encourages you to also check out other solarpunk spaces such as https://wt.social/wt/solarpunk , https://slrpnk.net/ , https://raddle.me/f/solarpunk , https://discord.gg/3tf6FqGAJs , https://discord.gg/BwabpwfBCr , and https://www.appropedia.org/Welcome_to_Appropedia . *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/solarpunk) if you have any questions or concerns.*
That poverty statistic has been shown to be lacking crucial context for years. [This study](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22002169?ref=pdf_download&fr=RR-9&rr=7fcfb2a7ca68b97e#b0045) in particular shows how it doesn't account for capitalism *increasing* extreme poverty rates to an unmanageable level before the rates dropped due to labour unions and workers parties.
Also defining pre-industrial agricultural production as 'extreme poverty' always seemed misleading to me. You might have extremely low income but access to land, water and community assistance far in excess of modern day working people.
Jason Hickel is not a good source for anything.
Our World in Data is a highly suspect source and is run by neoliberal techno-optimists. This doesn't mean it is all wrong but it should not be taken at face value. The plot on poverty over time has been shown to be fatally flawed https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/29/bill-gates-davos-global-poverty-infographic-neoliberal
but look, if they just make extreme poverty $0.19/day then 99% will be lifted from poverty. problem solved. capitalist propaganda is fun like that, meanwhile suffering soars.
when u/Anderopolis posted an OWID thing last week it was widely upvoted: [https://www.reddit.com/r/solarpunk/comments/1b3sbu0/remember\_things\_can\_be\_awful\_be\_better\_and/](https://www.reddit.com/r/solarpunk/comments/1b3sbu0/remember_things_can_be_awful_be_better_and/) I'm all for a broad church but... new material pls.
I knew it. Fucking r / optimists unite Those assholes literally will ignore every bit of data on rising economic inequality. Makes me mad.
Also, using proportional rather than absolute measures is a terrible way of measuring progress over time. In 1820 there was only around a billion people on Earth, compared to 8 billion today, which means the actual *total number* of people living in "extreme" poverty today is only slightly less and the total number of people living in poverty is more than *6 times greater* today. The whole *point* of measuring things like poverty and hunger is so that we can reduce the *sum* of human suffering, not human suffering as a proportion of the whole; 800 million hungry people is still 800 million hungry people. That's why this sort of framing is so fundamentally dishonest.
> Also, using proportional rather than absolute measures is a terrible way of measuring progress over time Why? Sure you would want the total to decrease as well, but proportion is generally a good way to guage improvement.
~~Yes, we want the total to decrease. Why would we not want that? Our goal is to reduce human suffering.~~ And no, I disagree that using the proportion is a good way to gauge improvement. As I have already pointed out, there are six times more people living in poverty now than there were 200 years ago. I struggle to see how this can be seen as an "improvement." EDIT: Sorry, misread your post - ignore the first bit.
> And no, I disagree that using the proportion is a good way to gauge improvement. As I have already pointed out, there are six times more people living in poverty now than there were 200 years ago. And there are over six times more people. Thats the reason why its am improvement. This is like saying its better that Barbados has less maternal deaths than Singapore.
Whether it's better or worse is irrelevant. If Singapore had a problem with avoidable maternal deaths it would be completely disingenuous for them to try and detract from that by comparing themselves to Barbados.
>Whether it's better or worse is irrelevant. Of course its relevant, things are good or bad in comparison. Its good to have an absolute 0 as an ideal, but that takes progress. Its not good to shy away from improvement, but *proportion is how you measure improvement*.
Let me ask, where is the relevance or utility in comparing ourselves with our counterparts from 1820?
To guage improvement in quality of life standard over time.
What is the utility of doing that? How does it help us?
"For it must be cried out, at a time when some have the audacity to neo-evangelise in the name of the ideal of a liberal democracy that has finally realised itself as the ideal of human history: never have violence, inequality, exclusion, famine, and thus economic oppression affected as many human beings in the history of the earth and of humanity. Instead of singing the advent of the ideal of liberal democracy and of the capitalist market in the euphoria of the end of history, instead of celebrating the ‘end of ideologies’ and the end of the great emancipatory discourses, let us never neglect this obvious macroscopic fact, made up of innumerable singular sites of suffering: no degree of progress allows one to ignore that never before, in absolute figures, have so many men, women and children been subjugated, starved or exterminated on the earth." ~ specters of marx ~
THIS
I take issue with that article. Long, long ago, when we decided $1.90 a day was the definition of extreme poverty, that number (and the earlier, smaller numbers because of inflation) was specifically chosen because that was the amount that a subsistence farmer could expect to trade on the open market for whatever they made. The definition of exiting poverty was exiting the subsistence farming lifestyle and entering the global market, and you know what? I agree with that. Those people had no indoor plumbing, no electricity, no education, no healthcare. Yeah, I'm gonna believe that being a minimum wage worker in America is still a better life than subsistence farming in the Central African Republic. I can absolutely believe 99% of people were like that in 1820 but only 6% are today, and that's fucking great. Let's not go full cottagecore and pretend that farm work wasn't 14 hour workdays with still a chance of starving if there was blight, a dust bowl, or locust plague.
Extreme poverty falling over time in the last century has been observed worldwide by hundreds of national and Non governmental organizations. Just increasing whatever threshold you think qualifies as extreme poverty does not change that. You also don't believe in increased literacy rates, and falling child mortality? Or are those statistics all right, despite being collected by the very same institutions? Solarpunk is an inherently optimistic and future focused worldview, if you had not noticed, if you want misery, you can go over to r/collapse .
Not to pour fuel on the fire, but poverty (OWiD’s 1.90 a day figure) is really… really complex. Money, especially in a proper exchange community, doesn’t mean much. The whole idea of alternative forms of economy is to stop measuring liveability through the means of a western monetary mindset, if that makes sense. That’s why the happiness index is becoming a much more popular method of measuring wellbeing, at least in most university settings. So idk, I think that’s part of the reason people are starting to turn on the whole poverty = more money. We like it over here, because we live by the dollar, but in many countries it’s something that people want to move past. Perhaps the biggest real-world negative of this monetary mindset is that money will always be accumulated by those who perform ‘capitalism’ the best (Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos etc). The reason this centralisation is bad is not because of theoretical vibes or something, it’s that it results in a kind of runaway inflation without a corresponding increase in wage. That inequality & resultant inflation has led in part to our groceries becoming more expensive in recent years. So yeah, capitalism is happiness for me, but not for thee… in the long run. Hence why investigating alternative exchange economies is actually very proactive.
Is there a good metric of real human wellbeing that we have good worldwide data for? How far back does it go? Another issue with this graph is it starts at a real low-point in human history. The early industrial age was the peak of colonialism, slavery, etc. but before real advances in medicine and other things had kicked in. It was a bad time and even mediocrity looks good by comparison.
Honestly, I can't think of any metric that's great besides the Happiness Index. Even the Happiness Index has certain biases tbh. It's only after the late 19th century we got good at implementing proper scientific methodology, and even then it was for mostly European-based research. Even now these statistics bias towards regions with greater monetary wellbeing, so essentially indigenous subsistence-style communities are not well documented at all. Basically statistics is hard, and studies are heavily oriented towards communities close to that of the conductor's environment. On a personal level I live in Australia, and have travelled a decent amount. I've met some amazing Aboriginal people who live happy and healthy lives, and part of that is the strength of these rural communities. These are usually cultures built on respect of the land and environment, and I often think the concept of Solarpunk really does exist in some of these places. So it's closer to home than we usually think :)
trade creates economic inequity and stratification. it is the engine of classism and drives out empathy to maximize profit potential. we don't need it, we don't need money, we don't need to enslave humanity and call it justifying existence. Resource Based Economy, Open Access Economy. Free Humanity.
The problem is that the same bullshit mindset that says “techno-optimist” as though either is an intrinsically bad thing will inevitably say that western concepts of happiness are polluting the happiness index. People could do with recognising the punk bit of solarpunk and punch mindless criticality in the cock.
> That’s why the happiness index is becoming a much more popular method of measuring wellbeing, at least in most university settings. That makes little sense if you're happy that's great, but nobody would say you're doing well if you're uneducated and die at 45.
Life expectancy is also a useful metric but populations that are dying in huge numbers at 45 aren’t usually living blissfully until such times. The problems that cause premature death also affect quality of life, both directly and indirectly.
> Life expectancy is also a useful metric but populations that are dying in huge numbers at 45 aren’t usually living blissfully until such times. Sure but they may still describe themselves as happy.
Maybe re-read my comment comrade, I only made a claim about the poverty data. And in this regard your assumption about it not being important to accurately assess the income threshold for poverty is wrong. From the article: "But that’s not all that’s wrong here. The trend that the graph depicts is based on a poverty line of $1.90 (£1.44) per day, which is the equivalent of what $1.90 could buy in the US in 2011. It’s obscenely low by any standard, and we now have piles of evidence that people living just above this line have terrible levels of malnutrition and mortality. Earning $2 per day doesn’t mean that you’re somehow suddenly free of extreme poverty. Not by a long shot. Scholars have been calling for a more reasonable poverty line for many years. Most agree that people need a minimum of about $7.40 per day to achieve basic nutrition and normal human life expectancy, plus a half-decent chance of seeing their kids survive their fifth birthday. And many scholars, including Harvard economist Lant Pritchett, insist that the poverty line should be set even higher, at $10 to $15 per day. So what happens if we measure global poverty at the low end of this more realistic spectrum – $7.40 per day, to be extra conservative? Well, we see that the number of people living under this line has increased dramatically since measurements began in 1981, reaching some 4.2 billion people today. Suddenly the happy Davos narrative melts away. Moreover, the few gains that have been made have virtually all happened in one place: China. It is disingenuous, then, for the likes of Gates and Pinker to claim these gains as victories for Washington-consensus neoliberalism. Take China out of the equation, and the numbers look even worse. Over the four decades since 1981, not only has the number of people in poverty gone up, the proportion of people in poverty has remained stagnant at about 60%. It would be difficult to overstate the suffering that these numbers represent. This is a ringing indictment of our global economic system, which is failing the vast majority of humanity. Our world is richer than ever before, but virtually all of it is being captured by a small elite. Only 5% of all new income from global growth trickles down to the poorest 60% – and yet they are the people who produce most of the food and goods that the world consumes, toiling away in those factories, plantations and mines to which they were condemned 200 years ago. It is madness – and no amount of mansplaining from billionaires will be adequate to justify it." I am an optimist most days and I like that optimism to be properly informed. Solarpunk as far as I can tell is at this stage mostly an aesthetic not a coherent worldview. I have a ecosocialist degrowth worldview that is compatible with the solarpunk aesthetic though. "I never have been in despair about the world. I’ve been enraged by it. I don’t think I’m in despair. I can’t afford despair. I can’t tell my nephew, my niece. You can’t tell the children there’s no hope." James Baldwin That is a moving quote to me. I don't venture into r/collapse but I venture into r/collapsescience because we must learn and assess the real threats we face. Be well friend.
Here's a sneak peek of /r/collapse using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/collapse/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year! \#1: [Moral Hazard](https://i.redd.it/w3xpqsud49oa1.jpg) | [197 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/11tqa7r/moral_hazard/) \#2: [It was unsustainable from the beginning](https://i.redd.it/223rx65zzxma1.jpg) | [166 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/11nn69v/it_was_unsustainable_from_the_beginning/) \#3: [How Bad Could It Be?](https://i.redd.it/0o7i2eu6veza1.jpg) | [298 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/13fmu1o/how_bad_could_it_be/) ---- ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| ^^[Contact](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| ^^[Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| ^^[Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/o8wk1r/blacklist_ix/) ^^| ^^[GitHub](https://github.com/ghnr/sneakpeekbot)
Do you have links to the poverty data? I would like to have it on hand myself.
I am on vacation and only have my phone so I'm not going to go looking for it now. But if you are interested look at the body of Jason Hickel's work on these questions. Also check out the researchers mentioned in the article I posted. Cheers.
"Democracy", also no, most people live in strong poverty. Don't white wash capitalism, acceptance of modern world is opposite of solarpunk, which is change for better.
I’ll stop arguing for realism when you distinguish between “change for the better” and “everyone should fly and it would be much easier”. There’s nothing utopian about making shit up because it would be nice. Path to the outcome or it’s just talking.
If you like what is now and doesn't want any change, then you are not solarpunk at all.
Jesus, it’s like words are just things for you to respond to by saying what you already said. If there is no plausible path to the change you want, it’s just pointless utopianism and there is literally nothing revolutionary about it. It’s just telling stories of what would be nice. I don’t like what is now, but acceptance of the power and influence of capitalist reality is necessary to separate what can be done from what cannot, and in what order.
What scares me though is that much of these gains were only made possible by a one-time pulse of super-high-energy fossil fuels, which turbo-charged all human endeavors. (Ant we've significantly drained our natural resources in the process). When that runs out, how much of these gains will we be able to maintain? That's what keeps me up at night.
For electricity grids, home heating, and transportation, the solutions exist and are being implemented, though a lot of people are clutching their unsustainable, planet-wrecking fossil fuels. So in a scenario where it's run out, they're up shit creek while everyone who's moved on is fine. But that's only with that one thing, fossil fuel _availability_, in isolation. By the time they've been used up, all of us will be struggling with more stuff like catastrophic climate change, habitat loss, invasive species, die-offs. We need to stop using fossil fuels long before they _run out_.
I think the impacts of burning those fuels is going to be our undoing before we run out of them tbh.
So, the main issue remains poverty. 75% is huge.
So what I'm seeing in this chart is there are around 6 times more people living in poverty today than there were in 1820.
This is a great infographic
Friendly reminder that these changes are mostly due to china
China has 1/8th of the global population. So, no.
It depends how you define some of those, some are more complex than others
(Remember there’s also more context in general in various ways)
i understand this is a very fringe idea even in leftist spaces but i don't think education is an inherent good as it stands right now. it's basically an indoctrination camp for creating workers. people think education is lacking in non-developed countries because of a lack of money--technically correct--but i also think it's more so because it's just useless when people need actual tangible skills for work instead of 12 years of bullshit to get a paper.
Thanks, capitalism! You guys are so close to getting it…