> I suppose. If the 'good life' includes sleeping with a tire iron and a > big knife to fend off predators of the human species. > > In SOME COUNTRIES the homeless may not get fat or have ipods but the > odds of being attacked by an idiot kid of the gentry, or being lit up, > is pretty slim. I say it's a trade off.
Well, I can't speak to the exact forms of violence that may or may not be rampant in "shanty" communities or the like in third world countries, or what their people have to deal with, exactly, but I would be very surprised if those societies didn't have human predators as well. In many 3rd world countries, arms are essentially unregulated, and are quite common. That would suggest to me that violence, of some form, is a daily routine. I know that plenty of African women feel the need to carry around AKs to fend off rapists. I know that a first world homeless guy may have to worry about individual attacks from some college jock, but he doesn't have to worry about sleeping under the wrong bridge that gets bombed. I saw a study, by MIT recently, that estimated the carbon usage of first world humans compared to third world. In particular, it was striking to me because first world homeless people are estimated to use 8 tons of carbon in the form of the services they have available to them, whereas third worlders used about 4. I think energy consumption is probably a reasonable gauge for quality of life, at least in the physical sense. Again, I'm not saying by any stretch that first world homeless have it easy or anything like that -- but I'm just trying to keep an eye on the perspective and to remember that even part-time workers in the first world making $25k-30k USD are globally in the 1% or so. And my concern is, for those people that are just getting by or are on the streets, now.. societal collapse will burden them most of all. The rich are going to hole themselves up in their mountain houses, top-floor penthouses, and gated communities playing the fiddle like Nero as the world burns. It'll be every day people that get burned.