That could warrant a discussion, in and of itself. The most exploited people in the Expanse, are the Belters. We have our blood diamonds, our copper miners, our coal miners, our child labor, and our sweat shops, without ever considering real slave labor.
All in all, I think that world is directly comparable to our own, in screwiness.
Well, maybe the worst exploited people suffer about the same, but in my understanding, in The Expanse even the Earth people, with exclusion of a small upper class, are very bad off. IMO much worse off than people in our Western world (or at least in Europe, I can't tell about the US). Of course in the series we only get very few glimpses of the life of ordinary Earth dwellers, however I assume that those are meant to be exemplary for the general Earth population.
Basically from a social point of view, The Expanse is the world we are moving towards, but we didn't actually arrive at it yet (and I sincerely hope that we'll not get there, although I definitely see the possibility).
-- The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday January 01 2020, @02:07PM (1 child)
That could warrant a discussion, in and of itself. The most exploited people in the Expanse, are the Belters. We have our blood diamonds, our copper miners, our coal miners, our child labor, and our sweat shops, without ever considering real slave labor.
All in all, I think that world is directly comparable to our own, in screwiness.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Wednesday January 01 2020, @02:49PM
Well, maybe the worst exploited people suffer about the same, but in my understanding, in The Expanse even the Earth people, with exclusion of a small upper class, are very bad off. IMO much worse off than people in our Western world (or at least in Europe, I can't tell about the US). Of course in the series we only get very few glimpses of the life of ordinary Earth dwellers, however I assume that those are meant to be exemplary for the general Earth population.
Basically from a social point of view, The Expanse is the world we are moving towards, but we didn't actually arrive at it yet (and I sincerely hope that we'll not get there, although I definitely see the possibility).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.