Dickens, poverty
I’ve watched a few versions of A Christmas Carol during this most festive of seasons and especially last night I kept thinking about how unbelievably wealthy and privileged Dickensian England was during colonialism. All of this suffering and child labor and disease and filth was during a time of unbelievable luxury and privilege. They chose suffering, they chose inequality. Feels uncomfortably relevant to present day society.
Dickens, poverty
Shout out to Man Who Invented Christmas and Christopher Plummer’s Scrooge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Invented_Christmas_(film)
Dickens, poverty
Looking into this a little, Dickens appears to be reacting against the Poor Laws of his time, which were passed after the disruptions of the Black Death to suppress wages, crack down on travel, and force people to work who otherwise would choose not to given the terrible pay and working conditions of the time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Poor_Laws
Dickens, poverty
Reading about this system reminds me of the Black Laws passed here in the U.S. to criminalize free Blacks and also the modern American practice of “sweeps” designed to punish unhoused people for appearing in public space and taking away their property without fair compensation.
@Lyle The thing to keep in mind is the difference between government force and social choice.
They are vastly different contexts.
It's one thing for us to enjoy the privileges of the wealth of the societies that we live in, but it's a completely separate thing to talk about policy makers at the top using force to impose political preferences on members of society.
