So I’ve thought about this very example (or one very similar to it, the increasing price of healthcare per capita which is somewhat a sadly realistic proxy for the Anoxistan thought experiment). But healthcare has gotten really expensive because we now treat things that used to kill people outright (e.g., chemotherapy, stem cells and/or recently invented biologics didn’t even exist before).
Also with regards to working 60 hours a week so your kids can go to a school where their brain doesn’t rot or they don’t lose teeth.. that’s not just unrealistic, it doesn’t even make sense as a comparison to the past. Despite media hysteria, violent crime (especially against children) has dropped massively in most of the developed world over the past several decades. Poorer areas have seen some of the more significant decreases in violent crime. If today’s poverty were pushing people past the edge into desperation, we’d expect the opposite trend.
What I think often gets treated like (maybe even mistaken for) a “lack of oxygen” in today’s world is really a form of status anxiety. Many people who feel poor (or feel they would be poor if they didn’t work 60-hour weeks or kowtow before their bosses or customers/clients) not because they lack necessities but because they’re constantly seeing what wealthier people have on social media. But that’s relative deprivation, not actual scarcity. If people didn’t immerse themselves in endless comparison, then much of what is labeled as “poverty” in the urban West (especially among the overworked but housed and fed) would look more like psychological exhaustion than actual lack.
Poverty due to absolute scarcity has declined dramatically in the past several centuries. Most of us live longer, healthier, safer and better-informed lives than even the wealthiest most powerful elite of 250 years ago.
Modern life can be hard, but it’s a very different kind of hardship. Pretending we haven’t advanced in the fight against poverty over the decades and millennia, that’s not helping anyone.
So I’ve thought about this very example (or one very similar to it, the increasing price of healthcare per capita which is somewhat a sadly realistic proxy for the Anoxistan thought experiment). But healthcare has gotten really expensive because we now treat things that used to kill people outright (e.g., chemotherapy, stem cells and/or recently invented biologics didn’t even exist before).
Also with regards to working 60 hours a week so your kids can go to a school where their brain doesn’t rot or they don’t lose teeth.. that’s not just unrealistic, it doesn’t even make sense as a comparison to the past. Despite media hysteria, violent crime (especially against children) has dropped massively in most of the developed world over the past several decades. Poorer areas have seen some of the more significant decreases in violent crime. If today’s poverty were pushing people past the edge into desperation, we’d expect the opposite trend.
As for schools and the fear that children’s brains are “rotting,” it wasn’t very long ago that Western education involved indoctrination, racial segregation and irrational dogma (such as creationism). While some disparities remain, most research finds that core cognitive abilities (like non-verbal reasoning and the executive functions) are barely or very weakly tied to income levels and SES once basic needs are met. (See: https://neuroethics.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/LawsonHookFarah-EF-SES-meta-analyis.pdf and https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/desc.13451 )
What I think often gets treated like (maybe even mistaken for) a “lack of oxygen” in today’s world is really a form of status anxiety. Many people who feel poor (or feel they would be poor if they didn’t work 60-hour weeks or kowtow before their bosses or customers/clients) not because they lack necessities but because they’re constantly seeing what wealthier people have on social media. But that’s relative deprivation, not actual scarcity. If people didn’t immerse themselves in endless comparison, then much of what is labeled as “poverty” in the urban West (especially among the overworked but housed and fed) would look more like psychological exhaustion than actual lack.
Poverty due to absolute scarcity has declined dramatically in the past several centuries. Most of us live longer, healthier, safer and better-informed lives than even the wealthiest most powerful elite of 250 years ago.
Modern life can be hard, but it’s a very different kind of hardship. Pretending we haven’t advanced in the fight against poverty over the decades and millennia, that’s not helping anyone.