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by SamPatt 14 days ago
>There was no default "state", at least by the time you're talking about humans, we probably already learned from each other by observation. Sure, politics and wars and religion and feudal dynasties and whatever make bumps in the line, but generally it goes up.

No, that's not the shape of the line. You can view it here:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-average-gdp-per-ca...

The hockey stick upturn in recent centuries needs explanation.

I'm pushing back so hard on this comparative definition of wealth (which I notice is the secondary definition you found behind large possessions) because I think it's silly to do that when we have an unbelievably dramatic increase in wealth in recent centuries which needs understanding first.

Hand-waving away human progress and forcing zero sum definitions of wealth feels unserious. You have terms for things like inequality, why not use those instead of distorting what wealth means?

2 comments

> The hockey stick upturn in recent centuries needs explanation.

Why? It goes up. As I said.

> I think it's silly to do that when we have an unbelievably dramatic increase in wealth in recent centuries which needs understanding first.

That's not pushing back, that's wanting to talk about something else first. That's just not something I'm interested in.

> distorting what wealth means?

It simply means both things, from context it was obvious how it was used in this instance, you ignoring that and going on tells me explaining it yet another time won't help.

That is an entirely unserious graph.
In a sense I agree, since GDP is a bit of a silly metric.

But it's a decent enough proxy for the parts of human progress that I think are meaningful that it illustrates the point well.

That website is an excellent resource and you can find other more compelling charts there.