[d4v3]

> If you think technology delivers improvements in living standards rather than all working people demanding better conditions you’re living in an absolute fantasy

Demanding better conditions does not just manufacture the technology, infrastructure, and productivity needed to provide the improvement in the standard of living. I think you're in the fantasy realm, my friend.

[andy_ppp]

Which period of the last 2000 years was good for the vast majority rather than the ultra wealthy? And are these periods aligned with technology progress?

[jdietrich]

Living standards for ordinary people only started to improve in any meaningful way after the industrial revolution, a fact which is immediately obvious if you compare across generations. Technological progress gave us all of the things that distinguish the lives of 21st century Americans from the lives of medieval peasants. Central heating, indoor plumbing, electric lighting, general anaesthesia, antibiotics, automobiles, aircraft, limitless entertainment, food so abundant that poor people are obese. If you think that technological progress is intrinsically bad because it hasn't brought about a utopia of perfect equality, then I really don't know what to say to you.

[andy_ppp]

No, you’re totally misunderstanding me, I don’t think technology progress is correlated with progress for humans at all. The point is only the post war period when taxes were 90%+ for the wealthy aligned with a growing middle class and a welfare state I.e. hospitals and housing for the poorest.

[NegativeLatency]

I didn’t die of pneumonia as a kid so that’s something.

[d4v3]

Maybe if we all just sat around "demanding" to not die from disease, then we would be healthy

[lbrito]

You're looking at it backwards. Simply existing doesn't automatically make technology accessible.