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Comment by chrisco255 | Hacker News Reader

They have access to all the world's information. They can travel across continents in a number of hours for less than two weeks wages. They can push a button on their phone to have gourmet food delivered to their house in under an hour. They can press another button on their phone to fetch a personal driver that will deliver them to any destination. They can choose to drive themselves, of course, and can travel hundreds of miles in an affordable, smooth ride that beats even a gold adorned horse drawn carriage, while streaming music from any decade or century. They can learn almost any skill. They can converse instantly with anyone in the world in a way that beats even magic mirrors of medieval fantasy.

If you had to choose between being Louis XVI or Henry VIII and a middle class American in Cleveland, Ohio, what would you choose?

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>They have access to all the world's information.

So? The Kings had access to much more information than they cared about already.

>They can travel across continents in a number of hours for less than two weeks wages.

A big chunk can't even afford to take a couple of sick days off, lest they be fired, or can't afford to retire and work in their late 60s and 70s in shitty jobs like a Walmart greeter - much less travel across continents to have vacations.

>They can push a button on their phone to have gourmet food delivered to their house in under an hour.

The King could do the same, all day, every day, with personal chefs familiar with their preferences, and without fear for the expenses...

>They can press another button on their phone to fetch a personal driver that will deliver them to any destination.

Oh, how Kings would be jealous of the magic of Uber...

Still, are we talking about the poor - for which Uber is an expense they have to consider very well, and days off a luxury, or people above that? Because I don't see many trailer park types visiting Paris or Barcelona...

>If you had to choose between being Louis XVI or Henry VIII and a middle class American in Cleveland, Ohio, what would you choose?

Depends, if the middle class American is also cherry picked to die (e.g. from some stray bullet or robbery gone wrong), I'd pick one of the Kings. As for Kings who didn't die in guillotine, that would be a no brainer. Who wants to be a middle class schmuck in Ohio, as opposed to a King? (I guess the kind of people who overestimate the magic of Uber and food delivery).

Henry VIII didn't die from violence. He died from (probably) complications of obesity at 55. I'd rather be some random middle-class female from Ohio than one of Henry's wives, though.

In fact, I'd rather be some random middle-class female from Ohio than any female in the Middle Ages, because of the dangers of childbirth back then.

Henry VIII lived in constant agony from a jousting injury. The witch doctors of the day could do nothing for him. Complications of obesity likely meant diabetes.

I don't think you've really thought about how awful the middle ages are.

> The Kings had access to much more information than they cared about already.

Royals used to have portraits painted and transported just so they could get an idea who the person their arranged marriage with actually looked like. Bet they'd like Facebook.

Louis XIV commissioned a more accurate map of france. It took 4 generations to make.

The first semaphore was so valuable it was initially reserved just for government use.

Oops, no wait, these are all post-medieval by a few centuries! Things were even worse before.

> The King could do the same, all day, every day, with personal chefs familiar with their preferences, and without fear for the expenses...

The king would be stuck with local food, in season only. At least he'd probably be able to afford some foreign spices. And they probably couldn't get food in an hour, due to the less efficient kitchens of the time, and not having thousands of restaurants already on standby to serve every kind of meal.

> Oh, how Kings would be jealous of the magic of Uber...

That device that travels twice as fast as a horse for hours without break, and at more comfort? I think so.

> As for Kings who didn't die in guillotine

England has never had a king live past 81. It's even worse if you look at medieval kings. US Life Expectancy is ~79. Even ignoring life expectancy, pretty much all illness was vastly more unpleasant. As a king, you'd likely have gout (called the "disease of kings") or an StD.

> Who wants to be a middle class schmuck

The purpose of the exercise is to determine who is poorer in terms of what is available to them. Kings are no doubt more important and powerful, but can we agree that's besides the point? I for one, would take the quality of life of said schmuck.

Pray you don't need a root canal!

People really underestimate just how hard life was in prior ages, especially due to disease.

An old person my wife once talked to said that "penicillin changed everything". It certainly did, along with vaccines and other very effective treatments (including hand-washing!) for once-deadly diseases such as dysentery, typhoid, cholera, diphtheria, whooping cough, measles, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, mumps, even leprosy.

Death was a major part of life for folks living prior to the late 1800s. Everyone experienced frequent life-threatening sickness and death of close friends, infants & children, family members, and acquaintances.

If I had a choice, and avoiding a very hard life & early death were my only criteria, I'd choose to live now rather than then, regardless of social status.

I recently received a copy of a letter with some information about my ancestors from the 1700s. Apparently they owned an inn in a small village in France (it is still there and looks like a relatively nice place to me, so…I guess they were doing ok?). They had 10 children, of whom 6 died before the age of 3. The mother died at age 39, in the last 8 months of her life 3 of her children died.

Yeah, no thanks.

At first, I was confused reading your assertions of what poor people of the US can do, things that obviously demand money - cash or credit - that a person in poverty don't have.

With your final sentence I realized you're not talking about poverty at all, but the wealthy, which in a sense clarified things, but also made me confused: what does your comment have to do with this discussion?

>>>At first, I was confused reading your assertions of what poor people of the US can do, things that obviously demand money - cash or credit - that a person in poverty don't have.

A homeless, flat-broke prostitute can turn 4 tricks in a day. Let's call them $50 each, for $200 cash-in-hand. Then they can take that $200 to Wal-Mart, buy an Android phone for $50, a SIM card for $50, and one of those loadable debit cards for $50. That leaves them with $50 cash and a $50 debit card balance. They can use their smartphone and debit card to access many of the modern amenities that the parent post mentioned, such as a delivery meal from Uber Eats, or a Greyhound bus ticket, or music on iTunes. The point is, this stuff is within the realm of the possible for the modern poor. It is NOT for a medieval king. Not at all. No matter how large his army, no matter how much gold in his coffers, Richard the Lionheart can't instantly access music from the other side of the planet while traveling across England in a climate-controlled vehicle at twice the speed of a horse.

I don't imagine many people would trade sitting on a throne in a grand hall enjoying a feast whilst watching the era's leading performers personally dedicate performances to them for the possibility of selling their body to download a superhero movie and buy a burrito and packet of cigarettes.

There are some tradeoffs where the average person doing a boring middle class job really does have better opportunity and greater security than pretty much anyone in pre 20th century history (and some forms of ancient kingship that really weren't pleasant lifestyles), but let's not take it to reductio ad absurdum levels

>>>I don't imagine many people would trade sitting on a throne in a grand hall enjoying a feast whilst watching the era's leading performers personally dedicate performances to them for the possibility of selling their body to download a superhero movie and buy a burrito and packet of cigarettes.

That "grand hall" had worse climate control than a Motel-6, and the food was dirty. We can debate the subjective utility of skilled medieval musicians vs a low-end local rock/metal concert with supporting audiovisual systems (a ticket to that can fit within the budget of a few tricks), I would charitably call that a break-even. And a $50 trick buys a LOT more than a burrito and a pack of cigs. You can get a steak dinner at Texas Roadhouse to with your pack of Newport 100s.

The "ick factor" of selling their body was just to demonstrate that even the most down-on-their-luck, homeless, destitute American has a path to access the commodity goods of our age. I don't think it's an absurd reduction to point that out.

> If you had to choose between being Louis XVI or Henry VIII and a middle class American in Cleveland, Ohio, what would you choose?

You moved the goalpost from:

> Today, America's poor have a better quality of life than medieval kings.

America's poor can't travel (it costs! even if you bus it, you need time off work, a place to stay, etc), they can't have gourmet food delivered (it costs!), they can't fetch a driver (it costs!), they often can't drive themselves (cars cost!).

They also generally can't afford medical care, child care, a wide variety of leisure activities (plays, shows, even movies cost!)

They do have access to information and music, but if I had to be a medieval king or a poor person in Cleveland, it is such a no-brainer I can't even understand how the question is being asked.

> America's poor can't travel

How do you explain the hundreds of thousands of destitute migrants tramping thousands of miles to get here?

They'll get treated for free in emergency rooms. Medieval doctors were worse than no medical care at all, ever.

> even movies cost!

During the Depression, the movie houses were full of people sleeping, as they were cheaper than a hotel.

> They'll get treated for free in emergency rooms.

Um, no, that is not free in the US. You can go into serious debt that way.

They still get free treatment, regardless of their debt. The hospitals just write off those debts, it's covered by the high prices they charge the patients who can pay.

Defaulting on a debt isn't the same thing as getting something for free.

That's exactly what it is.

If you're a rich person with stuff in your company's name, or some kind of structured impersonal assets (and ultimately, relatives to take care of you, and friends to do you favors every time you bankrupt and default Trump-style) yes.

Otherwise, there are repercusions from one that aren't there on the other - up to incoming a debt slave to your default's arrangement, not getting any credit anymore, and even ending up homeless.

You're still getting something for nothing. And in a few years, your debt is expunged.

By your logic literally everything is free, since you can borrow cash and pay for it with cash and default on the debt.

Medical debt collection and reporting is much more restricted than other kinds. You can certainly treat it as free very easily if you want to.

>>>if I had to be a medieval king or a poor person in Cleveland, it is such a no-brainer I can't even understand how the question is being asked.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_I_of_England#Death

The King of England died from a disease caused by getting shit particles in your food. Diarrheal disease deaths are barely on the radar of US fatalities. https://www.healthdata.org/news-release/despite-reductions-i...

>The King of England died from a disease caused by getting shit particles in your food.

So? Many people die from even baser diceases today too. Including homeless and poor people in the US. And they toil their whole lives before that, and are made to feel insignificant, and have no power or servants, unlike the kings.

Did you read the healthcare link I provided? Death from those sorts of diseases are a tiny fraction of fatalities in the US. They're so small that it is disingenuous to extrapolate them as indicative of the plight of "the poor in Cleveland" writ large.

But just for English kings who died of natural causes, dysentery killed 2 and food poisoning 1, out of 60 total (dead from natural causes, not 60 total monarchs....a 5% fatality rate for the most powerful people in the land. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monarchs_of_the_Britis...

"made to feel insignificant" "have no power"....I'd really like to see how you are quantifying these, and why you would weight them so heavily in a quality-of-life assessment to even mention them in the same breadth as dying of preventable food sanitation diseases.

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