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By that logic, being the chieftain of a hunter-gatherer tribe, or an ancient Assyrian king, would be preferable to living in the modern age; in other words, any era has technological improvements that seem impressive at the time. If people in 2125 have it better than we do now, then it's preferable to live in the future. But we don't know what things will be like then. We do know what things were like in the 1950s, and just because they seemed amazing at the time, they were objectively worse on almost every metric. In 1900 it would have been a big deal to have electricity, the telephone, and the phonograph record. In 1850 it would have been a big deal to have access to cheap textiles and mass-produced farming implements. But go back to then and you get a worse standard of living than people in the poorest parts of the world have today. If you think that the standard of living for a rich man is preferably, that can be achieved for a relatively modest sum of money in today's terms.
Being a hunter-gatherer of any rank would probably kind of suck, because being a hunter-gatherer sucks -- but being an Assyrian king sounds kind of fucking awesome? I guess you'd want to be a successful king so you and your family don't get wiped out in a war, but the day-to-day would have to be pretty great, no?
I suspect the luxuries of being a king would just barely pave over the jank of living in ancient Assyria, for someone who is used to the modern era. It's probably like that effect bidet users claim where you're going to hate pooping anywhere without access to a bidet afterwards. Sure, having a harem of the best concubines antiquity can offer would be great, but without penicillin, salt and adjustable faucets?
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That's the point. The two strains of argument against Scot Sumner's argument are:
That's basically the same argument that a certain type of degrowth leftist makes. If relative wealth is all that matters, then economic development in and of itself doesn't make sense because it just increases the treadmill. The only way to improve society as a whole is through fundamentals, which would include redistributing wealth to blunt the pain of being at the low end of the economic totem pole.
Yes, it is, and indeed I have a certain amount of time for the degrowth people on that basis. They're usually a lot more honest and consistent than the 'white heat of industry' technocratic ones or the 'don't worry about it, comrade, everything will work out once the revolution comes' strain. I think that their ideas are much better-founded than alternative ideologies but usually ignore the fact that:
Plus, if you have to halt growth, now may not turn out to be the best place. It might be that there's a better equilibrium at a higher tech level where all the fundamentals can be protected but everyone is more comfortable overall. On the other hand, it might not turn out that way, in which case you have to remember that mod cons are not ultimately what makes life worth living for people.
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Yep. A significant part of the damage to health and happiness comes from being at the lowest social rung - not just from having to eat ramen instead of steak. If everyone else was in the same boat, the psychosocial experience would be much less painful.
Edit: a word.
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