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Comment by vagab0nd | Hacker News Reader

Completely disagree. Let's re-use the example in the article. You need to travel 300 miles. Which one is better? Live in the mid-1700 and work 8 hours a day for 12.5 days, or live in today and work 8 hours a day for 1.25 days?

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You missed the point. In modern times it's expected that you'll travel those 300 miles. In the mid 1700s, no average person would be expected to make that journey

Of course an average person didn’t make that journey, but lots of people did. They did build roads all over the place, after all.

JS Bach is one famous example of a person who walked hundreds of miles all over Europe to visit people and find work. There were many other (non-famous) people who did the same. Lots of travelling merchants, for example. They may have had draught animals to carry their wares or pull wagons full of goods but they often did the walking on their own feet to move themselves.

Okay? The point is that 300 miles now is not 300 miles then in terms of hardship. We've shifted that hardship elsewhere, largely by expecting more productivity per hour

That's the point of the article though: very few people needed to travel 300 miles in 1750. New York to DC is only 236 miles--the very first settlement in Chicago was in 1780. The technology to travel longer distances more quickly (via e.g. railroads) is what led to the 'need' to travel 300 miles on a more regular basis. Before that the vast majority of people would be able to live their lives in a much smaller area, and representatives that 'needed' to go to DC would have the time and resources to spend the multiple days traveling for their congressional session. (In fact this is why congress is divided into sessions instead of legislating continuously as would be possible in modern times.)

> That's the point of the article though: very few people needed to travel 300 miles in 1750.

What do people need to travel 300 miles for today, that they didn't need to travel 300 miles for in 1750?

An abortion?

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