alt Hacker NewsI do believe that poverty can be (psychologically) traumatising, potentially resulting in abusive behaviour by those affected. However, I don't see that most human-made catastrophes are caused by such individuals.
Firstly, political decisions are never made by a single person. Even the most brutal dictator needs to be enabled by his environment.
Secondly, most powerful people have always been as far away from poverty as possible. For dictators, corrupt presidents and oligarchs, growing up in a wealthy environment seems the most unifying factor among the people in such positions. They are also the ones that cause wars, poverty, starvation.
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I think poverty and its threat to personal wellbeing (and the power dynamics surrounding it) are indeed a large driver. Looking back in history…
Genghis Khan [1: approximately 10 to 15 million deaths during his 1206 to 1227 reign, or roughly 2.5% to 4.2% of the 360 to 400 million global human population] and his family were abandoned by his clan following his father's death by poisoning. Joseph Stalin [2: approximately 6 to 9 million deaths during his 1924 to 1953 rule, or roughly 0.2% to 0.5% of the 2.0 to 2.5 billion global human population] grew up in an impoverished family with an abusive father. Hong Xiuquan [3: approximately 20 to 30 million deaths during his 1850 to 1864 rule, or roughly 1.6% to 2.4% of the 1.25 billion global human population] was raised in a poor peasant family that sacrificed heavily for his education; his repeated failures in the imperial civil service exams triggered a psychological breakdown prior to his path. Adolf Hitler [4: approximately 17 million direct regime murder victims, or 35 to 40 million including all European WWII war deaths during his 1933 to 1945 rule, or roughly 0.7% to 1.7% of the 2.3 billion global human population] grew up lower middle class; his father's death in 1903, his mother's in 1907, and two rejections from Vienna's Academy of Fine Arts left him impoverished by 1909 prior to his pursuits. Pol Pot [5: approximately 1.7 to 2.2 million deaths during his 1975 to 1979 rule, or roughly 0.04% to 0.05% of the 4.1 billion global human population, and 22% to 28% of Cambodia's population] came from a prosperous, royally connected family and lost his government scholarship in Paris after failing his exams. Mao Zedong [6: approximately 30 to 45 million deaths from the Great Leap Forward famine alone during his 1949 to 1976 rule, or roughly 1.0% to 1.5% of the 3.0 billion global human population] grew up in a prosperous farming and grain-dealing household under a strict father who had built the family's wealth from poverty, but who pulled him out of school at about 13 to work the farm and later cut off his allowance.
Evidence & Sources via latest Gemini model then grounded with Fable
1. Genghis Khan [Active Rule: 1206 to 1227]: Isolating Genghis Khan's personal campaigns [Northern China against the Jin, Western Xia, and Central Asia or Khwarazmia] from later 13th century conquests under Ögedei, Hulagu, and Kublai Khan suggests a rough estimate of 10 to 15 million deaths [an approximation drawing on census comparisons by Colin McEvedy and Richard Jones in Atlas of World Population History, 1978, and historian John Man's Genghis Khan: Life, Death, and Resurrection, 2004] out of a global population of approximately 360 to 400 million. 2. Joseph Stalin [Active Rule: 1924 to 1953]: Post-Soviet archival studies by historian Timothy Snyder (Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, 2010) and demographic historian Stephen Wheatcroft support 6 to 9 million direct and policy-induced deaths [executions, Gulag mortality, forced deportations, and the 1932 to 1933 Soviet famines] within his tenure, against a global population of approximately 2.0 to 2.5 billion [per U.S. Census Bureau historical estimates]. Older, pre-archival estimates run higher. 3. Hong Xiuquan [Active Rule: 1850 to 1864]: Sinologists Jonathan Spence (God's Chinese Son, 1996) and Ho Ping-ti estimate 20 to 30 million war, disease, and famine deaths during the Taiping Rebellion up to Hong's death and the fall of Nanjing in 1864, out of a global population of approximately 1.25 billion. 4. Adolf Hitler [Active Rule: 1933 to 1945]: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates total approximately 17 million civilians and prisoners of war murdered by the Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945. Including European theater WWII military and civilian war deaths up to Germany's surrender in May 1945 brings the total to approximately 35 to 40 million out of the 2.3 billion global population in 1940. 5. Pol Pot [Active Rule: 1975 to 1979]: Yale University's Cambodian Genocide Program estimates about 1.7 million deaths from execution, starvation, and forced labor during the Khmer Rouge's 1975 to 1979 rule, and most scholarly estimates fall between 1.7 and 2.2 million. Demographer Patrick Heuveline's reconstructions allow a wider range of roughly 1.2 to 3.4 million excess deaths. This is out of a 4.1 billion global population in 1976 [roughly 22% to 28% of Cambodia's 7.8 million population]. 6. Mao Zedong [Active Rule: 1949 to 1976]: Demographic reconstructions of the Great Leap Forward famine [1958 to 1962] by demographer Judith Banister [30 million], journalist Yang Jisheng (Tombstone, 2012, 36 million), and historian Frank Dikötter (Mao's Great Famine, 2010, at least 45 million) place famine excess deaths at 30 to 45 million out of a 3.0 billion global population in 1960. Deaths from the early 1950s campaigns and the Cultural Revolution [1966 to 1976] would add several million more. The account of his father's treatment comes largely from Mao's own 1936 interviews with journalist Edgar Snow (Red Star Over China, 1937).
Life is about struggle and satisfaction. Some are content to plow fields, and some want to rule nations.
Effective leaders now how to move and sway both groups. If you sway only one group, you offend the other.
There will be a group that yearns to learn, and another that chooses a simpler life.
A group that wishes to push to the sky, and another that wishes to tend to the Earth.
Who is more right? Who should exist? Politics and War....
What happens when someone powerful chooses to give it back to the people? When a King decides to share?
To empower the man plowing the field and elevate his status. Do you think the man that was happy plowing the field will suddenly be happy running a business? If his society crumbles around him, would he still be happy?
Will the once happy plower see the good deed of his King? Or will he look for another leader, one who will return his life to something he considers normal?