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by Bayart
2053 days ago
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>Anyone who travels to Europe is shocked at home, food, and car sizes. Sure there is beauty and history, but the standard of living seems significantly worse off It's not the first time I've talked about it on HN, but from an EU point of view making a connection between house/car/food size and standards of living is baffling. |
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Humanity has probably spent ~5,000 years with the aristocracy upgrading their dwellings to something larger and more permanent than a closet-sized hovel. Same for possession of personal conveyances larger and more capable than one's own two feet. We can debate whether it is healthy, or philosophically ideal, but it certainly isn't a uniquely American phenomenon, and shouldn't be baffling, when viewed in the context of human civilization's habits of material acquisitiveness.