theglandcanyon t1_itpl2e1 wrote on October 25, 2022 at 11:38 AM

> an undergraduate student raised the question of the material cause of poverty, that is, capitalist accumulation.

A very undergraduate thought. People live materially better lives now than at any previous time in history. The amount of extreme poverty worldwide is steadily going down, not just as a percentage but in absolute numbers. We live in the first historical era in which more people die from eating too much than from eating too little.

We live in an age of extreme abundance. Yes poverty is still a problem, but blaming it on "capitalism" is just about the most insipid thing ever.

frogandbanjo t1_itprrk6 wrote on October 25, 2022 at 12:41 PM

We have a mountain of evidence to suggest that we're living in an era of extreme temporary abundance permitted by mortgaging potentially the entire future of the species, with wealth inequality reaching nearly-unprecedented levels, while we're also losing a race to keep the general population educated enough to not slip into a new Dark Age of superstition.

You can lay a shitload of that at capitalism's feet. Isn't it perfectly poetic? Capitalism is all about the next quarter's profits and/or growth. Right up until this evidence started to seriously accrue, your comment seemed incredibly "post undergraduate." Now, not so much. Now it seems like capitalism trying to defend itself by focusing on absolutely nothing except a very specific set of numbers from this particular snapshot.

theglandcanyon t1_itr7w0t wrote on October 25, 2022 at 6:35 PM

Well, I'd be very interested to hear about this "mountain of evidence" that we're living in an era of extreme temporary abundance". What kind of "evidence" could even show that?

Amphy64 t1_itpya2h wrote on October 25, 2022 at 1:33 PM

That's not really accurate to history, though, superstition never went away, nor did the people calling it out as such, nor is it dependent on education or the 'general population' - eg. some more highly educated people might be more rather than less inclined to defend religion when lower class people were just sick of institutional religious exploitation.

Aggressive-Act4242 t1_itplhbx wrote on October 25, 2022 at 11:43 AM

Great, we all get to buy more stupid shit at the cost of the planet.

DuckDurian t1_itponmr wrote on October 25, 2022 at 12:13 PM

I'm not sure why OP is getting downvoted for making such an uncontroversial point.

Sure, there are aspects of capitalism that are undesirable. But let's not forget that capitalism has also done far more to solve poverty than it has to create it.

If we want to come up with solutions, we at least need to be honest about the problem we're trying to solve.

theglandcanyon t1_itr8hfp wrote on October 25, 2022 at 6:38 PM

Yeah, life was a lot better a few hundred years ago when all this stupid shit wasn't around and people could just peacefully go about dying from simple dental infections. Those were the days my friend