One of the standard complaints about modern commerce is that it creates large differences in the living conditions of the ‘haves and have not's. Between the successful middle class nearly everywhere and the persistent poor found in almost all prosperous nations.
This is a serious confusion of two separate and independent factors.
Modern commerce rewards some disproportionately more than others. The distribution of wealth and income is a steep curve with a tiny percent of any nation's people at the top and the majority at the bottom. Much like the natural world where there are billions, maybe trillions of insects and only millions of creatures larger than humans. Where there are billions of dandelions and only millions of large trees.
But this observation leads to confusion. What modern commerce creates is the divergent distribution of wealth and income, it is government that determines the number of any nation’s population that lives in poverty. The best example is Singapore, an island like nation, with five and a half million citizens in a super-successful modern commercial world with no poverty. No poverty because the government decrees that there is to be ‘no poverty’.
Some Scandinavian countries have little measurable poverty and virtually no visible poverty while being successful modern commercial nations.
Poverty is the responsibility of government, not modern commerce which generates abundance but does not determine its final distribution.