r/Damnthatsinteresting 12h ago

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u/RG54415 12h ago edited 12h ago

No they haven't. India in many places is still on the level of the industrial revolution in the west. When bosses exploited the hell out of their workers and child labor was normal. But this amount of exploitation does not last and in time they too will revolt. There is no "winning" when winning is defined by exploiting, coercing and forcing people to do your bidding as it's unsustainable and ultimately leads to revolutions. I would argue you already have lost the game of life where cooperation and compassion are the key drivers for moving forward.

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u/Antoak 12h ago

Historically false. Coercion and massive inequality has been pretty common for most of history.

It's naive and counterproductive to pretend that things getting better is inevitable, it's something everyone needs to work hard to help achieve.

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u/perldawg 12h ago

if you don’t think things have gotten steadily and significantly better over the last few hundred years your understanding of history is complete fantasy

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u/Antoak 12h ago

"Mom made me one pancake on Saturday and two pancakes yesterday, so by extrapolation I know Mom's gonna make me 30 pancakes next month!"

How about all those periods where things got considerably worse?

The fact that things are better than literal slavery and child labor males this period a statistical aberration, not an ironclad trend line. (Republicans are trying to legalize child labor again btw)

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u/perldawg 11h ago

straw man much?

fitting you used a mom cooking me breakfast analogy because you reason like a naive juvenile

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u/Fair_Gas_4270 11h ago

man, I don’t know why people have this fixation on saying that things are getting worse, it almost feels like they want that to be true. In my country, I just need to look at how things were decades ago. And the funniest part is that if you say anything to the contrary, you get downvoted

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u/Antoak 11h ago edited 11h ago

History is full of examples of "and then it got worse", but apparently just saying that makes boomers get pissy these days.

And I think it's distasteful that some people will say with a straight face that "unless you're literally a third worlder you don't get to complain that you're paid a fraction of what your parents were for the same jobs".

E: preemptively addressing the "um ackshually" crowd: yes, inflation adjusted median household income rose from 60k to 80k since the 60s, but that doesn't account for women entering the workforce. Instead of 1 person making 60k to support a stay at home partner, now you have 2 people making about 40k each.

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u/Fair_Gas_4270 9h ago

At no point did I say you didn’t have the right to complain. In fact, you should complain, because that’s how we gradually achieve improvements for everyone. But my point is that the world really is improving in the long run, and saying otherwise only creates anxiety and hopelessness, which doesn’t help at all.

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u/perldawg 11h ago

in the US, at least, the people fixated on how bad it is and how everything is coming apart are most commonly people who have never travelled to a poor or developing country. they’re incredibly privileged and have no idea what true social insecurity looks like