Civilization and Poverty

"Civilization is the cause of poverty"

At first glance it seems like a strange statement: the organization and security provided by civilization has facilitated many advances in technology, which in turn has allowed erstwhile luxuries to be within reach of the common man and even those economically disadvantaged.

The phrase makes sense if poverty is understood as a relative and not absolute term. Look at the natural world of animals. In this world there is no accumulation of wealth and thus no rich or poor. By the standards of modern society they are all uniformly poor. However in their world economic egalitarianism prevails.

Relative wealth is probably the correct way to gauge poverty anyhow for the riches of a human do not entice the Lion. His reference set is his own brethren.

The specialization and division of labor coupled with the fact that many tasks are unpleasent and dangerous mean that the poor will always be amongst us if for nothing else but to incentivize them to pursue those tasks. For example look at some of the middle eastern countries where each citizen is guaranteed an uper middle class existence by virtue of being born there. in such societies thr poor had to be imported from elsewhere such as south asia to keep the wheels of society spinning.

With technological advances abject poverty may be eradicated. However relative poverty cannot be ended since it is a byproduct of civilization itself, and it must be created if it does not exist in a sufficient amount for the necessary impetus for
unpleasent jobs.