zlacker

>>diodor+(OP)
The productivity increases of the modern times led to a corporate class. These oligarchs have eschewed the progressive initiatives, in eager pursuit of even greater wealth, supported by the wholly owned media and a bribed political class. What has been more evenly distributed globally is the ever-growing poverty, pollution and apathy against these powers.

To be fair, some improvements have been made, even at the feet of these giants, driven by government action and populist initiatives. This has been at the cost of concentration and increases in pollution and poverty in the poorest nations. The future looks bleak today, as the divide grows and progressive progress has all but halted.

>>Superm+yIc
This attitude is so common. It's obviously wrong. Humanity is richer and freer than ever. Here's a theory of why people spend so much time railing against modernity, capitalism, and "the corporate class":

Humans used to have to labor all to avoid starvation. There were few choices and most of us we died in the town where we were born. Compare to today -- now, we have incredible freedom, cheap and delicious food, cheap ubiquitous entertainment, are more or less immune to the elements, and have tons of free time. But all of this freedom and plenty has forced us to make choices, and it turns out people aren't good at making choices. We struggle to not gorge ourselves on food or waste years of our lives on insipid entertainment. We would like to exercise, eat right, read books, learn things, contribute meaningfully to our areas of interest -- but most of us don't. Worse, we have no excuse for our choices because we are almost completely free.

This dynamic leads to a situation where people hate modernity. Partly because making choices is hard and partly because our freedom makes it clear that our bad choices are our own fault. And so people long for a return to un-freedom. Many of us would rather be poor and starving than to have to make choices and face our own inadequacies.

>>slibhb+c7d
Do you think cost of living today is lower than it was 10, 20, 30 years ago? Do you think the average person today works more or less than before?

Because I’m really curious what you mean when you say we’re more free than ever. Free time especially is what eludes most people of my peer group; endless tv shows to stream is meaningless without free time for example.

>>Jambal+kqd
Globally? Sure, assuming cost of living is measured against a fixed quality standard.

Specific countries may be failing to improve, but if you're from the USA remember that your country is 4.25% of the world, and very few of you were ever in abject poverty in the beginning of that timeframe.

Global abject poverty as a standard is roughly "sleeping rough" in western terms (more precisely, it's 2.15 US dollars of purchasing power per day), and the number of people worldwide at that level has gone from 1930 million in 1994 to 1510 million in 2004 to 806 million in 2014 to 693 million today.