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Nanani comments on AndrewH's observation and opportunity costs - Less Wrong
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Comments (56)
What counts as a threshold if not monetary values?
Lack of access to things like running water and antibiotics is a mark of poverty in 2009. The pharoahs of course had neither thing because they didn't exist, but this does not mean they were poor.
Readers a thousand year from now will inevitably regard all of us as incredibly poor, if they are reading this at all.
The pharaohs may have been richer than Egyptian peasants in strictly monetary terms, but they were definitely poor in an absolute sense. Since poverty is the default human condition, this shouldn't be surprising.
I was not suggesting using something other than monetary values as a threshold (though they are of course something of a placeholder). Rather, I'm suggesting that you specify exactly what threshold you mean when you use one. Rather than "absolute poverty" you could say "living on <2USD a day", or perhaps define "poverty" stipulatively as "living on <2USD a day".