Comment by TheSpiceIsLife | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TheSpiceIsLife | Hacker News Reader

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It is extraordinarily unlikely any of my ancestors were ever rich.

And even if some of my ancestors were rich, my life today as a worker is economically better of by, oh I don't know, a factor of 1000.

If we also take in to account things like decrease in child mortality, clean running water, modern medicine, the internet, Wikipedia, Khan Academy, disposable computers, my life today as a worker is better off by a factor of at least 10,000.[1]

Additionally, despite what Jubal Harshaw might have us believe[2], it is infeasible that any given person should hope to be proficient at a wide variety of tasks.

While I certainly can do most automotive servicing myself, I lack a few specialist tools that would make the tasks efficient and enjoyable, so I outsource some / most if it as I choose.

1. Deirde McCloskey bangs on endlessly about this in her book Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourgeois_Dignity

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competent_man

'my life today as a worker is better off by a factor of at least 10,000.'

Is it? I see this kind of argument in many places: "I don't have to wash clothes by hand" or "You wouldn't be saying this if you tried picking wheat for 14 hours"

But I think the issue with the argument is they are comparing against the wrong metric. We should be optimizing for human happiness. Innovation is a terrible proxy for this, as we are only marginally more happy than our predecessors in some areas. The main problem with happiness is that it is relatively indifferent to things that are unpleasant (such as picking wheat every day for 14 hours), as our brain quickly adapts and this becomes a new baseline. The things that make us unhappy in the long term (lack of exercise, lack of space, less predictable life, lack of control) are still around for almost everyone, regardless of them being saved menial chores.

You raise some good points with regard to happiness, although I don't think I said anything about happiness. I simply said better off.

As a Registered Armchair Psychologist, I'm not entirely convinced that our brains quickly adapt to unpleasantness. I've heard quite a few soldiers come back from tours of duty with quite the mental health issues, ditto victims of abuse, etc etc.

My argument, and I side with Deirdre McCloskey here, is that we, we in the modern liberal west, and some other developing countries, are better off by far than our peasant ancestors because we have more predictability in and more control over our lives precisely because we have the ability to start our own businesses, to innovate and bring new products to market, to be economically upwardly mobile, to buy better health insurance... shall I go on? Rather than half half our siblings die early from disease and war.

With regard to happiness, well I'll defer to the experts here and side with David Steindl-Rast who claims that in order to be happy on a more frequent / long term basis we ought to cultivate gratefulness[1]. And in that sense I'll agree with you in that, despite adverse conditions, some people do still manage to be happy for what they do have.

The trajectory of the income gap, the rising price of housing, and the erosion of purchasing power, I treat as a separate issue. Moving forward this certainly does look like it's going to rapidly become a problem. Perhaps.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtBsl3j0YRQ

Love it. The self-defeatist rationalization of the utterly housebroken. "At least I have plumbing", he mews as he faithfully gives half of his profits to his master.

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