That the poor in Africa can have a cellphone...
I get a kick out of watching reruns of "Dallas". The mega rich oilmen depicted in that series did not have cellphones. But because some people pioneered cellphones and got rich, then because of that the poor in Africa are in someways richer than the oilmen of "Dallas".
> then because of that the poor in Africa are in someways richer than the oilmen of "Dallas".
Not really; they're still poor, what actually happened is the world changed making things only once not available to anyone available to everyone. That really has no bearing on rich vs poor. Saying I'm richer today than Henry the VIII is clearly wrong, even though I have access to much greater technology and can do things he couldn't, he's was still vastly wealthier with the ability to do whatever he wanted.
Could he fly to another part of the country? Could he easily and cheaply avoid water/waste borne disease, eat fruit in winter, or call someone from his phone while on the road? He would have paid large portions of his wealth to do any of these things. So yes, nearly everyone is richer than good ol Henry.
Wish HN had a an notification option for responses. But I thought I made clear that with all Henry's wealth and a strong desire to purchase the results of modern technology, he couldn't get them. So he could command the labor of many times as many people as a modern poor person, but he couldn't use that labor to accomplish nearly as much as many poor people can today. Is he wealthier? I guess it depends on what you value more. Being able to have someone bring you dirty water from a well on command, or having to get your own purified clean water from the tap in your house.
Wealth is power and freedom, not access to stuff; I have to work for a living, Henry the VIII was a king with the power of life and death over others, he was wealthier by any reasonable measure. My access to greater tech doesn't make me wealthier.
Do you know what "wealth" is academically? (I don't) How much of it access to capital (credit worthiness), ownership of property, influence over the commons (political power)?
The last one is tricky. If one society says say, all water is privatized and you need x amount for your factory then you purchase it. If another says all water is communal, then you need to assuage the community to permit you x amount.
At the end you have the effectively the same thing and these two people have the same "water wealth". Measuring generalized wealth quantitatively however, I don't know what that means.
