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Comment by jjoonathan | Hacker News Reader

Right, but it probably sucked. We heavily romanticize it today, but we romanticize all sorts of things that were actually not so great.

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Like the middle ages. All of it sucked.

The one constant throughout time is that things sucked if you were poor and rocked if you were rich.

I'd rather be middle class in a developed country now than any king 200 years ago. No amount of wealth could have gotten me modern medicine, especially anesthesia(!). Even stuff that's now trivial like pretty fresh tropical fruit or good food from other countries in general would have been very hard to come by. I have way more knowledge and entertainment at my finger tips than any medieval king could have ever dreamed of.

To each his own. But look at all the wonderful things that medieval kings commissioned to keep themselves occupied. Art, music, cathedrals, palaces, sports, plays, libraries, etc. The impact of a (generous) medieval king in terms of things others could eventually enjoy far outpaces this age's netflix consumption.

Tell me you've never had medical problems without explicitly saying you've never had medical problems

Ask Henry VIII if he wouldn't give all that up for some gout medication.

That the same Henry VIII who shut down all the monasteries, which for most of the population were the only source of anything resembling medical and social care? Karma's a bitch.

IMO it's an interesting topic if the kings were in fact "generous" when they commissioned these things. I think there is an argument that these investments were mostly for their own legacy and that the resources could have been spent more efficiently to raise everyone's standard of living or reduce poverty. IMO just spending every cent possible on research to get non-terrible medicine would be far and away the highest priority. But of course I only say that because I know from today's perspective what is possible.

Poor people today live better than the medieval rich people.

Nah, throughout most of history, things sucked if you were rich, and sucked even more if you were poor.

wrong. some of it sucked maybe even the majority of it (if you insist) but most of it is not all of it.

The Black Death sucked.

Most of the middle ages probably wasn't that bad, but the civilization-destroying plague destroyed civilization, and Renaissance-era propagandists exploited the living memory of the plague to make themselves look better.

Generally agree, but humanism and spaces between words are pretty okay.

One time HN linked an article romanticizing pickpocketing, with the expected reaction from me:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6065434

Wait until you find out about bank heist films?

In fairness, in those cases, when they romanticize the thieves, they usually try to make clear that they're only taking the bank/casino's owners and are careful not to hurt anyone.

HN never relents on its cultish techno-optimisms.

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