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Comment by fatdog789 | Hacker News Reader

Poverty is only natural when the local human population exceeds the local resources available to sustain it. For most of human history, poverty was not the natural state of human existence; indeed, given the frequency and scale of wars (prior to the Geneva conventions, when war was between populations and not just armies), poverty was very rare until the 19th century.

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I'm surprised this has so many up votes because it is so factually incorrect. In 1690 Gregory King made an made a primitive economic census of the English population. Out of a population of 5.5 million, 1.3 million were "cottagers and paupers", and 2.7 were in the lowest class "Vagrants; as Gipsies, Theives, Beggers, &c." (source, The World we have lost by Peter Laslett)

It's should also be noted that average heights were about 4 inches shorter than the height of a modern American. Not having good enough nutrition to reach a full height seems like a pretty sure sign of poverty to me.

They did not so much have the crowded slums that are typical of modern poverty. People would die of disease before cities could reach such densities. But relative to us, people were impoverished in terms of health, nutrition, or material comfort.

EDIT:

One more point. Overall violent death rates ( including war and homicide) in 16th-19th century Britain were about the same as the violent death rate in modern Houston, Texas. See Greg Clark, A Farewell to Alms, pages 128-129.

>were about the same as the violent death rate in modern Houston, Texas.

You realize most of the world would think this is abnormally high?

Yes.

Actually, wars against populations and not just between armies began to disappear as a consequence of the end of the Thirty Years' War in the 17th Century. Until that point, armies were largely expected to be self-funding, so they would take resources from local towns (and destroy those of their opposition). Due to the utter exhaustion on all sides at the end of the war, and the cost of supporting large standing armies, a number of military reforms came about, including making armies smaller and more professional, and making non-combatant populations (more or less) off-limits. This is largely were we get the concept of a "civilian" -- someone who has allegiance to a nation but is not directly involved in the fighting of its wars.

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