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The people at the time were able to feed themselves, clothe themselves, and so on. I have a hard time thinking of this as a less than $1000 equivalent existenc

The people at the time were able to feed themselves, clothe themselves, and so on. I have a hard time thinking of this as a less than $1000 equivalent existence, but maybe it is... This also reminds me that GDP isn't a measure of overall wellbeing, and the article doesn't claim it is. I'd be interested to see a map of relative wellbeing. I don't think people then were 1/100th as happy as us on average.

Synaesthesia 9y ago
People did not work for salaries generally, that is a relatively modern phenomenon, David Graeber talks about it in Debt: The first 5000 years.
mac01021 9y ago
> I don't think people then were 1/100th as happy as us on average. Your user name is oddly appropriate for that topic. In ancient Greece, the Epicureans (a form of Hedonist) supposed that people's pleasure and pain depend on the satiation (or lack thereof) of their appetites. Related is the idea of "Hedonic Adaptation" which has it that people's appetites tend to adapt to conform to their expectations and that, as a consequence, different people in wildly different circumstances tend to be about equally happy. Perhaps you knew all of that already. But you seem to be rejecting the idea of the Hedonic Treadmill without properly mentioning it.
sandworm101 9y ago
>> I don't think people then were 1/100th as happy as us on average. I'm not so sure. Actual starvation, death due to lack of food, is extremely rare in the modern world. Far less than 0.1% of the human population actually starves to death today. But in Roman times it was not uncommon. It was a relatively normal occurrence for a region to starve should the weather not play ball. Add in all the various diseases and I'm open to the idea that the average Roman was far less happy than the average person today.
- majormajor 9y ago
  Does anyone have historical data on suicide rates? Seems like a decent proxy (EDIT: proxy for happiness, not for base needs) to check.
  - RealityVoid 9y ago
    I'm a little cautious with posting this, I know it might sound terrible, but maybe suicide data might not be a good proxy for basic needs being met. Maybe suicide has the precondition that you have enough basic security for the most basic needs to feel hopeless about the next level of needs. After all, there are plenty of examples of people that had a lot of things and opportunities that elected to commit suicide. And maybe lack of struggle might be a prompter of this action. Jeez, this sounds horrible.
    - majormajor 9y ago
      Sure, updated my comment to reflect I meant proxy for happiness. I think "living in poor condition thousands of years ago" probably isn't a good baseline to judge happiness by, since I've known happy poor people and am a not-poor unhappy person.
  - gwern 9y ago
    Suicide rates are surprisingly bad proxies for both happiness and base needs; for example, Scandinavia is notoriously high ranking for suicide, among other big anomalies: http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/15/depression-is-not-a-proxy-for-social-dysfunction/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/15/depression-is-not-a-pro... Or closer to home: > But American whites have higher rates of depression than blacks. There are the usual contradictory studies and arguments about how to adjust for which confounder, but I’m pretty sure this is something like a consensus position right now. More solidly, white Americans have much higher suicide rates than black Americans.
    - tokai 9y ago
      >Scandinavia is notoriously high ranking for suicide, Why do you perpetuate this myth, even when the source you posted yourself talk against it?
ThrustVectoring 9y ago
I don't think you have an appreciation for how difficult it was to clothe yourself in those times. A piece of clothing was double-digit percentages of your annual income.
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago
  If you're thinking of that article a while back about how it takes hundreds of hours of work to make a medieval shirt, I believe it was semi-debunked: they were describing the process for making an extremely high-quality garment, fit for a nobleman. Peasant clothing was still very labor-intensive, but not quite as bad as they made it sound.
- Spooky23 9y ago
  Remember that income didn’t mean what it did now. My neighbor had a 1600s era farm in upstate NY. The original taxes were denominated in pigs, chickens and wheat. Cash was rare for normal people until recently.
  - Tuna-Fish 9y ago
    This depends greatly on when and where. The Roman economy was extensively monetized -- normal people did typically get most of their income as cash.
    - Spooky23 9y ago
      Not everyone. A large minority of the population were slaves.

Synaesthesia 9y ago

People did not work for salaries generally, that is a relatively modern phenomenon, David Graeber talks about it in Debt: The first 5000 years.

mac01021 9y ago

> I don't think people then were 1/100th as happy as us on average. Your user name is oddly appropriate for that topic. In ancient Greece, the Epicureans (a form of Hedonist) supposed that people's pleasure and pain depend on the satiation (or lack thereof) of their appetites. Related is the idea of "Hedonic Adaptation" which has it that people's appetites tend to adapt to conform to their expectations and that, as a consequence, different people in wildly different circumstances tend to be about equally happy. Perhaps you knew all of that already. But you seem to be rejecting the idea of the Hedonic Treadmill without properly mentioning it.

sandworm101 9y ago

>> I don't think people then were 1/100th as happy as us on average. I'm not so sure. Actual starvation, death due to lack of food, is extremely rare in the modern world. Far less than 0.1% of the human population actually starves to death today. But in Roman times it was not uncommon. It was a relatively normal occurrence for a region to starve should the weather not play ball. Add in all the various diseases and I'm open to the idea that the average Roman was far less happy than the average person today.

majormajor 9y ago
Does anyone have historical data on suicide rates? Seems like a decent proxy (EDIT: proxy for happiness, not for base needs) to check.
- RealityVoid 9y ago
  I'm a little cautious with posting this, I know it might sound terrible, but maybe suicide data might not be a good proxy for basic needs being met. Maybe suicide has the precondition that you have enough basic security for the most basic needs to feel hopeless about the next level of needs. After all, there are plenty of examples of people that had a lot of things and opportunities that elected to commit suicide. And maybe lack of struggle might be a prompter of this action. Jeez, this sounds horrible.
  - majormajor 9y ago
    Sure, updated my comment to reflect I meant proxy for happiness. I think "living in poor condition thousands of years ago" probably isn't a good baseline to judge happiness by, since I've known happy poor people and am a not-poor unhappy person.
- gwern 9y ago
  Suicide rates are surprisingly bad proxies for both happiness and base needs; for example, Scandinavia is notoriously high ranking for suicide, among other big anomalies: http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/15/depression-is-not-a-proxy-for-social-dysfunction/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/01/15/depression-is-not-a-pro... Or closer to home: > But American whites have higher rates of depression than blacks. There are the usual contradictory studies and arguments about how to adjust for which confounder, but I’m pretty sure this is something like a consensus position right now. More solidly, white Americans have much higher suicide rates than black Americans.
  - tokai 9y ago
    >Scandinavia is notoriously high ranking for suicide, Why do you perpetuate this myth, even when the source you posted yourself talk against it?

ThrustVectoring 9y ago

I don't think you have an appreciation for how difficult it was to clothe yourself in those times. A piece of clothing was double-digit percentages of your annual income.

PhasmaFelis 9y ago
If you're thinking of that article a while back about how it takes hundreds of hours of work to make a medieval shirt, I believe it was semi-debunked: they were describing the process for making an extremely high-quality garment, fit for a nobleman. Peasant clothing was still very labor-intensive, but not quite as bad as they made it sound.
Spooky23 9y ago
Remember that income didn’t mean what it did now. My neighbor had a 1600s era farm in upstate NY. The original taxes were denominated in pigs, chickens and wheat. Cash was rare for normal people until recently.
- Tuna-Fish 9y ago
  This depends greatly on when and where. The Roman economy was extensively monetized -- normal people did typically get most of their income as cash.
  - Spooky23 9y ago
    Not everyone. A large minority of the population were slaves.