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If I was being cynical I'd say that this is just an article designed to get clicks by confirming people's biases. To anyone who disagrees with me, ask yourself

If I was being cynical I'd say that this is just an article designed to get clicks by confirming people's biases. To anyone who disagrees with me, ask yourself. What is the most important thing in your life? I can with certainty say that it doesn't have a "price" associated with it. If you can comprehend that then you can accept the premise that life can get worse as material conditions improve, especially when the marginal utility of those increasing material conditions is already low. Are touchscreens really a 10x improvement in quality of life when penicillin has been invented?

majormajor 4y ago
> To anyone who disagrees with me, ask yourself. What is the most important thing in your life? I can with certainty say that it doesn't have a "price" associated with it. This shows one of the wrinkles. Some people will be able to put a very specific price on that most important thing, straight from their health/insurance bills, because they would be dead without types of care that existed even in the 50s. We should be happy we've improved potential material conditions for people, but unhappy that it's distributed so poorly and that we've also introduced other technologies that rub those differences in people's faces. The headline is ludicrous because what the fuck does "objectively worse" even mean about quality of life. Humans have emotions, not just objective material sensor evaluators.
falcolas 4y ago
> What is the most important thing in your life? Security - food, transportation, housing. All have huge price tags associated with them. My wife being able to follow her passion - taking care of her family. Which means I have to make enough to account for her lost income for all the above.
- green_man_lives 4y ago
  It sounds like the things you listed are prerequisites to having a family. Something people have been able to do for hundreds of thousands of years without transportation or high-paying tech jobs. That's the point I was making. Our material gains are only true quality of life improvements when they increase the access to things that are "meaningful" like relationships. GDP increase could mean you are capable of producing one extra Jurassic Park sequel each year, while people's ability to start a family stagnates.
  - falcolas 4y ago
    Those weren't the goals asked for by the parent. But to address this individually, yes, they are required for any kind of a family - single or married or with 55 children. And it's harder to do than it has been for the hundreds of thousands of years before now - it's not something you just "get" for working, for being part of a community, anymore. In other words, being hale and working all of the sunlit hours week is no longer sufficient to provide for a family. Something relatively new in human history. EDIT: $7.25 (US federal minimum wage) * 8 hours * 365 days/year puts you right at the poverty line for a 3 person household. A quality of life which may theoretically be better than that of a caveman, but hardly what I'd call "providing" for your family.

majormajor 4y ago

> To anyone who disagrees with me, ask yourself. What is the most important thing in your life? I can with certainty say that it doesn't have a "price" associated with it. This shows one of the wrinkles. Some people will be able to put a very specific price on that most important thing, straight from their health/insurance bills, because they would be dead without types of care that existed even in the 50s. We should be happy we've improved potential material conditions for people, but unhappy that it's distributed so poorly and that we've also introduced other technologies that rub those differences in people's faces. The headline is ludicrous because what the fuck does "objectively worse" even mean about quality of life. Humans have emotions, not just objective material sensor evaluators.

falcolas 4y ago

> What is the most important thing in your life? Security - food, transportation, housing. All have huge price tags associated with them. My wife being able to follow her passion - taking care of her family. Which means I have to make enough to account for her lost income for all the above.

green_man_lives 4y ago
It sounds like the things you listed are prerequisites to having a family. Something people have been able to do for hundreds of thousands of years without transportation or high-paying tech jobs. That's the point I was making. Our material gains are only true quality of life improvements when they increase the access to things that are "meaningful" like relationships. GDP increase could mean you are capable of producing one extra Jurassic Park sequel each year, while people's ability to start a family stagnates.
- falcolas 4y ago
  Those weren't the goals asked for by the parent. But to address this individually, yes, they are required for any kind of a family - single or married or with 55 children. And it's harder to do than it has been for the hundreds of thousands of years before now - it's not something you just "get" for working, for being part of a community, anymore. In other words, being hale and working all of the sunlit hours week is no longer sufficient to provide for a family. Something relatively new in human history. EDIT: $7.25 (US federal minimum wage) * 8 hours * 365 days/year puts you right at the poverty line for a 3 person household. A quality of life which may theoretically be better than that of a caveman, but hardly what I'd call "providing" for your family.