[jmerz]

I think most humans today massively underestimate just how absolutely shitty the life of a medieval peasant was.

You would have lived in a one room house without electricity, worked the fields from childhood (if you survived childhood), eaten simple foods without spices, watched your friends die from illness, then maybe get conscripted into a medieval war.

If you thought the people at the top had power now boy you'd really hate feudalism.

I think a lot of modern society's wealth goes into unexpected places, which is one of the things you see if you try living in places with different national GDPs. I'm in a well off European country right now, and the biggest differences I see compared to the US are things like older cars and worse appliances. The technology is older, and cheaper. Everyone having the latest SUV and pickup truck is actually a HUGE investment in wealth!

If you spend some time in lat am countries with even lower per person GDP you see older, simpler buildings, cheaper clothing, simpler food, etc etc.

If you wanted to live in the united states with a 1950s car, in an old house, with appliances from the 80s and shitty healthcare, you could live pretty cheap as well. The advances in productivity has brought us SOMEWHERE it's just not always obvious where.

[satvikpendem]

People have a profound recency bias. I wonder if it's that people don't study history enough but I'm always amazed at posts like the grandparent's, which talk about oligarchs today discounting the influence of, you know, actual oligarchs, as in those few who legitimately ruled over others.

The system we have today is the single greatest driver of human prosperity the world has ever seen.

[mort96]

Yet there are people who wield the wealth equivalent to a moderately rich country's GDP. A great deal of our collective increased value output is going straight to those individuals.

[nemo44x]

> jmerz 15 minutes ago | root | parent | next [–]

I think most humans today massively underestimate just how absolutely shitty the life of a medieval peasant was. You would have lived in a one room house without electricity, worked the fields from childhood (if you survived childhood), eaten simple foods without spices, watched your friends die from illness, then maybe get conscripted into a medieval war.

You don’t have to go to medieval times for that. The first half of the 20th century was like that for a lot of people in what is considered rich counties today.

In the cities many large families (or multiple families) shared a tenement and TB and polio ran rampage. Outside the cities many families lived inn1 or 2 room homes with dirt floors and no plumbing in many cases. This was common in Appalachia and parts of the south into the 1960s.

Millions fled many parts of Europe for these conditions in part because it was better than what was going on over there.

We are all seriously lucky to be alive today with what we have. And although these things are relative there’s no guarantee our societies continue to have such plentiful access to food, comfortable shelter, and basic medicines like antibiotics and vaccinations.

[Kye]

"It could be worse" is and always has been a garbage argument.

The problem is those oligarchs are using their outsized accumulation to lobby for and purchase a worsening world for their benefit. Sure, things got better for some people for a while. Now they're getting worse from what flows out of the discretionary spending of those oligarchs.