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0 pointszeteo15y ago0 comments

Are you kidding me? Victorian Britain was the most prosperous country on Earth, at the time. Sure, the average Brit had it much rougher than they do today, but that's not a valid comparison. Give me one country that had it better during the 19th century than Victorian Britain!

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anthonyb15y ago

Sure, they were more prosperous on average, but the poor were much more worse off than the poor in rural areas.

It's also impossible to say whether the prosperity was due to the free market and lack of regulations, the industrial revolution and development of steam power or the rise of the middle class and their increased free time/income.

I suspect that mostly it was technology, similar to what's happening in developing nations right now, rather than any free markets.

zeteoOP15y ago

"the poor were much more worse off than the poor in rural areas."

Do you have any support for that assertion? The poor themselves decided en masse to move from village to city at the time, which seems to indicate the contrary. Yes, in the city they were also much more visible to literate observers who would write about their misery, but who knows what those same observers might have exposed if they had lived in a village instead. The people who knew both sides of the situation, certainly seemed to vote with their feet for the industrialized cities. We see the same phenomenon at work in China nowadays.

_delirium15y ago

> The poor themselves decided en masse to move from village to city at the time

In many cases they hardly "decided"; they were en masse kicked off the land, so had no real choice. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclosure_Acts

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anthonyb15y ago

> The poor themselves decided en masse to move from village to city at the time, which seems to indicate the contrary.

You have the same mechanism at work today, in slums in India, South America and so on. The draw is the possibility of being better off and having more opportunity than you would in a rural area, but it doesn't always end up that way.

But we're getting off the point, which is that a free market doesn't give you "unprecedented human health and prosperity" - the best that you can argue is that it's one of the preconditions (but not the only one).

anthonyb15y ago

> Do you have any support for that assertion?

How about an eyewitness account, from 1902:

http://london.sonoma.edu/Writings/PeopleOfTheAbyss/

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anthonyb15y ago

Sure, they were more prosperous on average, but the poor were much more worse off than the poor in rural areas.

I suspect that mostly it was technology, similar to what's happening in developing nations right now, rather than any free markets.

zeteoOP15y ago

"the poor were much more worse off than the poor in rural areas."

_delirium15y ago

> The poor themselves decided en masse to move from village to city at the time

In many cases they hardly "decided"; they were en masse kicked off the land, so had no real choice. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclosure_Acts

1 more reply

anthonyb15y ago

> The poor themselves decided en masse to move from village to city at the time, which seems to indicate the contrary.

anthonyb15y ago

> Do you have any support for that assertion?

How about an eyewitness account, from 1902:

http://london.sonoma.edu/Writings/PeopleOfTheAbyss/

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse