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Comment by agorabinary | Hacker News Reader

Poverty is the natural state of things. Those that exist in a state of poverty exist in the natural state of things. It is only through globalization and development that some people free themselves from this natural order. This phenomenon is the only known on record to lift people out of poverty, and it so happens that this phenomenon allocates this wealth unequally. No alternative method has ever succeeded in both creating wealth and allocating it equally.

If all the effort expended on arguing about this magical "other path" to prosperity was spent on actually generating prosperity, I think we would find that many of our former grievances would resolve themselves..

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If you study the behaviors of pre-agricultural societies, you will find that, although life was less comfortable for hunter-gatherers, they tended to be far more egalitarian than agriculturists or anyone beyond.

Poverty is NOT the natural state of things. The adoption of agriculture enabled property ownership which led to the owner-worker dynamic that persists to this day.

In fact, examinations of certain agricultural civilizations, like in the ancient Indus Valley, show a distinct lack of poverty. Perhaps instead of calling poverty "natural" we can examine it for what it really is: cheaper for the owners than broad prosperity.

And if you look back even farther than that, the atmosphere was made out of lava for about a billion years. If we're voting I'd just as soon not go back to the natural state. In the cretaceous high concentrations of oxygen produced giant insects.

Also, quality of life took a huge dip at the tail of the neolithic because early agricultural societies had worse nutrition and higher population density (= disease). Life wasn't less comfortable for the H-Gs.

Define "creating wealth" in this sentence? Many cultures and civilizations lived in relatively egalitarian ways and lived lives of abundance in terms of leisure time and cultural pursuits and lack of famine, etc. Poverty is not only absolute, it is also relative.

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