We Live Like Royalty and Don't Know It | Hacker News Reader

We Live Like Royalty and Don't Know It

thenewatlantis.com

39 pointsLuc12 comments

We don't take for granted drinkable water and not freezing in our homes.

For a growing number people in first world countries now watching their public utilities fail them, either through neglect or deliberate acts of dismantlement, we really do understand how quickly it can all be taken away.

The bar on lifestyles has been raised all across the board. We live like 18th and 19th century royalty. Royalty today, which is anyone with money, have a lifestyle far beyond anyone in that time could have imagined.

The ability to fly anywhere in the world to buy a pair of shoes and be home for dinner, or summon a fleet of contractors and machines and build a new palace in a matter of months - Thomas Jefferson would have considered these god-like powers. But they're available to anyone with a net worth north of $100m - which is literally tens of thousands of people.

Moreover, 18th and 19th century royalty could afford to hire an army of servants to see to their every need. Most people today are lucky to be able to afford a house cleaner once a week. Forget about a cook or a driver.

We replaced those servants with machines. A vacuum cleaner, washer/dryer, various kitchen appliances, etc all save huge amounts of time. There was a BBC show called "1900 House" which just shows how much labor went into maintaining a large home.

I have heard about those devices yes. For people who can't afford help at home they're obviously way better than DIY. If you can, they're inferior. A washer/dryer won't fold your laundry and put it away, nor separate it and scrub out stains. A vacuum cleaner, even a robot vac, won't dust the shelves or clean the baseboards or remove cobwebs from the corners of the ceiling. You have to empty the dust receptacle without getting it all over your clothes. A dishwasher still has to be loaded and unloaded, stuck on foods have to be scrubbed off first. There's no robot for cleaning toilets or bathtubs or showers or refrigerators, or for changing bed linens. And so on.

While it's true most people can't fly around the world to shop, e-commerce brings the shops of the world right to their door.

And sure, middle class westerners don't have a lot of servants that physically work in their house, but that's a very narrow view that misses the point.

The service industry is huge, things like child care and public/private schools (replacing nannies and tutors), restaurants and takeout (replacing chefs/kitchen staff), grocery store (replacing having your own farm and farm laborers), automated home appliances(replacing maids), running water and electricity (replacing servants), computers (replacing secretaries and assistants), Uber and self-driving or even just a drive-it-yourself car (replacing chauffeurs) and of course toilets are a big one...

Many of the ultra rich can indeed afford a roster of servants, to man their yacht, for example, but many of them still prefer not to do so and even do their own cooking and laundry for the priceless benefit of not having to deal with people other than their family in the intimate personal spaces of their home.

Privacy is a luxury not to be underestimated, and illustrated by the fact that your dishwasher and lawnmower will never fall in love and run away together with half your silverware.

Shopping was an example. The point is ultra-rich people jet around the world for utterly banal, trivial reasons, like it's nothing. As you said, e-commerce eliminates the need to fly to shop, but they do it anyway.

Toilets. To not have to empty a chamber pot, nor have to hire someone to do so. Massively under-rated luxury.

I just want to point out that we shouldn’t stop imagining and pushing for better either. That’s why we’ve gotten the luxury we have today, dissatisfied people who wanted something else. The author is absolutely right though that doing this well necessitates learning more about current systems.

There was an article a long time ago about cheeseburgers and how impossible the logistics of cheeseburgers were back in the day. A tomato in winter? Nope. Ground beef? A sesame seed bun? Cheese?

Just think: there's a literal river of bananas coming from Ecuador etc that ends in every grocery store in the US. It's amazing.

And grocery stores sell them at breakeven or below cost, just to get people in the door! They don't even try to make a profit.

Many Kings murdered each over and fought wars just for the amount of vanilla extract or ground cinnamon or black pepper I just casually keep in my house. If they saw how much was in the local grocery stores or how cheap it is to buy they might think the world had gone mad.

Also, think upon the incredibly high consistency.

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