You live in the era in which you live. Relativity.

I don't compare my daily struggles with those of the hunter gatherers. It doesn't mean we shouldn't be grateful for the abundance and ease of life we have but we also shouldn't be complacent and say things like "we live like royalty".

Shhhhhh you arent supposed to tell people how much better they are off then even 50 years ago!!!! Don't you know the MSM wants you to know how backwards we are?!?! Border line savages!

Sign me up for the first class—preferably with snacks and 🍺

Some get mad when I make this point. It's like denying inflation. I don't get it. Both are true. As @Undisciplined said, we could have it even better though.

I've found myself thinking about it in the past. Incredibly, the thought occurred to me while I was taking a hot shower. Yes, we live better than the kings of the past but we can't fall asleep in the shadow of this thought because centuries have passed and the standard is totally different!

In the west investment in infrastructure is not a priority- it is as the article alludes, taken for granted...and is as a result, is in decline. The neoliberal financialised economy does not recognise the importance of physical infrastructure and productivity- instead it is focused on financialisation of every aspect of the economy. In contrast the Chinese economy heavily emphasizes the importance of infrastructure- major projects such as bridges, ports, roads, rail and air travel infrastructure are celebrated by the population as symbols of an improving quality of live and increasing wealth creation in a way unimaginable to modern westerners. Engineering is no longer highly valued in the west- Britains first new nuclear power plant for decades is being built by a Chinese French consortium- once the British led the industrial revolution with their engineering- now they are incapable of constructing their own infrastructure.

people probably used to have mind-blowing technology.

high-speed air travel with no fuel. pleasant climate control without physical insulation. architecture done with 3D-laser-engraving in stone. the stone was probably levitated to hundreds of feet high. all this only a few hundred years ago. then something massive happened and A.I. rewrote history.

now people are told to stay happy with short road-trips on cheaply built roads and air conditioning in our temporary dollhouses, fully reliant on fuel and an electric grid. the textbook world is a human farm.

now, i don't know how to fly a hovercraft or carve a palace in a mountain, but i am willing to train hard and learn.

Yet, the lower class today is materially further from the upper class, as a ratio, than our ancestors from a few hundred years ago.

If we live like royalty and don't know it, the top 5% today lives like whatever god of the god of the god who created the gods.