[Ambolia]

Depends what "poverty" means. A lot of poor people were subsistance farmers, able to hold property and carve a space for themselves and their families in the world. That's something that will be out of reach for many "rich" people in the upcoming decades.

[jolux]

Subsistence farming is a nightmare, I can all but guarantee that no living subsistence farmer would choose that life over renting an apartment and having disposable income.

[Ambolia]

It's not that bad, and a lot of people like to own their own land rather than never get to own anything.

[rayiner]

Dude. Go move to my dad’s village in Bangladesh for a year, so what they do, then come back and post on HN.

[SkyMarshal]

Let’s assume all of us are curious about what we would learn doing that, but none of us are probably willing or able to actually do that. What would we learn if we did?

[rayiner]

Being a subsistence farmer is really hard. When my dad was growing up, 1 out of 4 kids died before age 5. Getting in boats to go to school was a thing during monsoon season. Moreover, most people don’t own their land—they’re what Americans would call share croppers or what Europeans would call peasants.

There’s certain benefits, of course. The communities are tightly knit and there is a predictable social hierarchy. But it’s a rigid one, and the rigidity is driven by the realities of subsistence farming. It’s pretty great if you’re a landowner, but if you’re not born into one of those families then you can’t “work your way up.” Indeed, a lot of the things we think of as “more enlightened” attitudes in the modern west are really the product of us being free from the constraints of subsistence farming. You don’t get to be “child free” (or openly gay) in an economy where having lots of kids and hoping enough survive to take care of you in your old age is the only retirement plan.

Men’s dominance over women, likewise, arises naturally in an economy where people are at the edge of survival and doing extremely physically demanding work keeps the community alive. My mom grew up reading Russian literature and got a master’s degree in chemistry and edited a history of the Bangladeshi independence movement. Not because her father was enlightened, though he was, but because he was a wealthy landowner and didn’t need his daughters to be in the fields harvesting rice, or to get married off quickly so some other man could support them.

[mardifoufs]

Yeah wow, I always cringe whenever I hear people unashamedly talking about "degrowth" in poor countries because hey they like it anyways! I mean they are alive so it can't be too bad? As if there's no reason why those subsistence farmers do everything they can to either get themselves out of that situation if they get the chance or at least sacrifice everything to make sure their kids don't have to live the same life. They should've just read about the virtues of minimalist living online and like, reconnect with nature bro.

This is one of the reason why i just can't get into most modern western environmentalist movements , it actually gets uncomfortable how they fetishise misery and stagnation knowing damn well that they themselves won't ever have to experience any major deprivation. Because let's be honest, even if western countries make concessions of course they will never sacrifice more than comforts/superfluous things. abject poverty farming for thee, and at the very very worse "degrowing" a few percentage of GDP for me.