logoalt Hacker News

samivtoday at 1:16 PM1 replyview on HN

The automation at least built unimaginable amounts of wealth for the rich people while the poor people are essentially just as poor they were hundreds of years ago.


Replies

joe_mambatoday at 1:20 PM

>while the poor people are essentially just as poor they were hundreds of years ago.

How can people say false things like this with a straight face?

Thanks to industrialisation, automation and mass production, the poor of today have access to things that even kings from hundreds of years ago couldn't even fathom, let alone poor people back then: abundant cheap food that poor people can now be fat instead of starve to death, cars, planes, MRI machines, helicopter ambulances, vaccines, personal heating and air conditioning, OZEMPIC, etc

Kings back then would eat hard bread, shit down a vertical shaft that emitted the scent through the whole castle, and their sleeping chambers had ice on the walls in winter and lice in the clothes and bet sheets, plus they had parasites in their gut and any small disease could kill you.

Meanwhile the cool homeless guy outside my building has 3 hot meals a day and a daily shower in the homeless shelter nearby, warm clean sleeping bag for winter, shades for summer, a bicycle for moving around town, a smartphone which he uses to watch youtube all day in his sleeping bag, plus access to medical care that kings of kings never had. All this with no job, and no care in the world.

show 5 replies