I think that the reason the poor move to city slums and accept bad housing, working conditions, services, and infrastructure is because the poor consider their lives improved by urban living.
I think the choice isn't between bad urban conditions and good conditions somewhere else. The choice is between bad urban conditions and bad rural conditions. Bad urban conditions provide people with better economic opportunity than bad rural conditions. Urban conditions provide more social mobility and this also tends to improve the economic prospects of the poor.
As demanding and dangerous as poorly regulated manufacturing workplaces can be, they tend to be no more demanding and no more dangerous than agricultural work.
Got point. I think the concept even applies to 1st world countries, where in cities like NYC lower income people will endure decrepit conditions for similar opportunities.
There's also this notion that even if you're in poverty you can disguise it living in the city and bring part of it.
> As demanding and dangerous as poorly regulated manufacturing workplaces can be, they tend to be no more demanding and no more dangerous than agricultural work.
Sometimes changes in climate can also lead to agricultural work simply becoming impossible/unprofitable, thus forcing rural labor to move to the cities, looking for work which isn't impacted by the climate.
At least that's what happened in Syria [0], the sad part is that the final outcome wasn't all that unexpected [1].
Ongoing automation of the agriculture economy in China is a much bigger displacement of labor than climate change. Without deep study it would be hard to even guess if climate change will be a net positive or negative for agricultural output in a country as large and diverse as China.
Some what disappointing to see the "climate change" meme come up so often as the cause for some badness in the world when it is, at best, tangentially related to the issue being discussed.
> Some what disappointing to see the "climate change" meme come up so often as the cause for some badness in the world when it is, at best, tangentially related to the issue being discussed.
Nowhere in my comment did I make "man-made climate change" a topic, I merely pointed out that outside of economic factors there are also environmental factors which can make rural agricultural production unprofitable if not straight up unviable.
As such it's quite relevant to the parent's point of "Why do people move from rural areas to urban centers?"
Because I'm pretty sure that Syria isn't the only place on Earth suffering from droughts, or other changes in climate, impacting a regions viability for agricultural production.
I think the choice isn't between bad urban conditions and good conditions somewhere else. The choice is between bad urban conditions and bad rural conditions. Bad urban conditions provide people with better economic opportunity than bad rural conditions. Urban conditions provide more social mobility and this also tends to improve the economic prospects of the poor.
As demanding and dangerous as poorly regulated manufacturing workplaces can be, they tend to be no more demanding and no more dangerous than agricultural work.