• shalafi@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Go read The Grapes of Wrath and The Concrete Jungle. Get back to me on today’s unrelenting misery.

      • blackbelt352@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        One kind of misery does not negate the existence of other kinds of misery. The pain of living through the Great Depression is different from the pain of seeing reality eroded away into propaganda for the highest bidders, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be fighting to end misery.

      • jerkface@lemmy.ca
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        1 month ago

        There are more human slaves alive on Earth today than at any previous point in history.

        • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
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          1 month ago

          I doubt it. The Roman Empire alone at its height had a population of 50-90 million with roughly a quarter of that enslaved.

          Even with extremely inclusive definitions of slavery (which are also not included in the classical count) the modern estimates of the total number of slaves is like 40-50 million. It’s too many, obviously, but classical period Europe, Africa, and Asia alone would crush those numbers, and the 'New World" didn’t appear out of nowhere when Columbus stumbled into it.

        • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          There are more people alive today then any other point in human history. Do you have slaves per capita?

      • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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        1 month ago

        Just read the plot of grapes of wrath, uhhh, you do understand that the story is about late stage capitalism right? And the person you were responding to is saying how we live in similar times right?

        Its like someone saying poison can kill you and you respond with: see this story about how bad lots of poison is… yeah… that’s the point.