Most of us would like the technology of 2024 and the social/cultural environment of 1960, at least on some metrics.
I see no reason to credit the people who fucked up the culture with the technological progress a bunch of nerds they probably hate made during that time.
I agree, I would prefer to live today rather than the 1970s. Yet I think there's something to the criticism. As you've pointed out, economics got overmathed and that has had some negative impacts. A couple recent items:
Deaton on his changing views. I agree with the first part very much, the second not so much. Econ too focused on optimization and not enough on philosophy/ethics
"If you spend any significant amount of your life around people with lower IQs than yours, you can't help but notice how many of them are better people than you in qualities that you value, including the virtues. This is not idealism. It is the empirical reality of life outside the cognitive elite's bubble."
Murray’s quote sounds like the old Russian socialist peasant worship. It absolutely is idealism. There is a set of moral traps set for low IQ people and a different set for higher IQ people.
Yes, both groups have traps. But being in the lower cognitive group is a marker on only one dimension and that dimension is not a measure of 'goodness'. The largest trap for both groups is 'othering' of the other. The large expansion of the "upper middle class" is good for those people in it. But one result is the greater ability to live in a bubble both culturally and materially.
I mean every book Charles has published basically paints the low IQ as moral degenerates getting worse by the day, but whatever.
I don't see any high IQ people moving into low IQ neighborhoods to enjoy this good moral living. The census track Charles lives in has a six figure median household income, it ain't fish town.
You are either seriously misreading Mr Murray or relying on the negative press his work gets for that. The main thrusts of Murray's work are that cognitive differences among humans are a real thing, not an artifact of socialization or access to education, that we are increasingly dividing economic gain based on cognitive levels, and probably most importantly, that the 'luxury beliefs' of the UMC who are the cognitive and economic elite have highly negative impacts on the members of society that have less resources. Being Murphy Brown and having a kid out of wedlock has a way different trajectory than Kenisha from the 'hood doing the same thing. His point is usually that we need to accept people with lower cognitive levels are neither the victims of systemic injustice nor are they going to pull themselves up to UMC levels by their bootstraps.
Sometimes Murray talks as if the dim are equal or better than the brights in some objective level moral living. I don't think his work backs up that claim, it seems like the opposite.
Sometimes Murray talks as if the poor should "be graded on a curve" and that we have noblesse oblige to try to help better them. That's certainly possible but also subjective. How should the curve be constructed? What is the grading criteria? What is the nature of our obligation?
It's a lot more complicated question then "who divorces and is violent and ODs more often, rich or poor."
> Sometimes Murray talks as if the dim are equal or better than the brights in some objective level moral living. I don't think his work backs up that claim, it seems like the opposite.
Let's cut through the rhetoric: do you believe it to be a fact that the dim ARE NOT morally objectively superior, in at least some ways?
I remember when Steve Forbes used to go on about environmentalists, and urge that all federal environmental regulation be shut down, I would remind myself that he lived in a town with a 120-page list of preservation measures. Apparently, Bedminster, NJ couldn't just leave it to the private sector for some reason ... nor, it seems, could he, since he chose to live there.
"Economists say that your embrace of contemporary technology reflects “revealed preference.” You must get satisfaction out of it, or you would not be using it."
Well, there is satisfaction and there is satisfaction. If my lower leg itches (as it does now) and I scratch it, I will get satisfaction. But soon after, it will itch again. If I scratch again, I begin another cycle. In fact, if I scratch enough, I actually make the itch worse. My immediate satisfaction has turned into long-term dissatisfaction.
There's a hell of a lot in modern life that is like that, often on a much longer time period and often much less obvious. I suspect there have always been things like that. Today, technology is so advanced and we are so rich, we can experience more of that.
I have become increasingly annoyed at the way economists use the words "satisfaction" and "satisfy" as if the first meaning (immediate satisfaction) automatically leads to the second (long-term improvement in affect).
Economics does a good job of predicting how people behave (revealed preference). It does not do a very good job of predicting what makes people happy. But then psychology doesn't either; look at the literature on "subjective well-being".
Indeed! CDs were a big step forward, as were portable tape players (thanks, Sony). I'm married to an esoteric audiophile, so we've noticed that the biggest problem with MP3 & streaming is terrible audio quality, worse, yet different than vinyl's noise & inconvenience.
What I cannot fathom about the human race is that we have all this economic and technical progress, but so many humans are "buying" bad ideas that just cause misery from the people who are selling bad ideas that just cause misery. The human race's wisdom is not improving.
"Something like this apparently has occurred. In 1970, there were 0.4 million people over the age of 90 in the United States. As of 2020, this figure was 2.8 million. That increase in people living to age 90 has been offset by adverse trends among younger people."
I had no grandparent living that long - three died in their 70s, one at 82 - and certainly never spoke to them about anything "heavy" nor do I make any great claims for them - but from the way in which they lived, I do not believe for a second that any of them would have been smugly content knowing that the younger generation was foundering, but it's all good because "medical tech has kept me going until past ninety".
The only other thing I would add - my elderly parents' brains have clearly deteriorated with age, but nonetheless I am thankful they don't have dementia. The number of their friends receiving dementia diagnoses seems to be growing apace. And yes, many if not most of the *numerous* friends (probably their total number of friends is fifteen times mine) over their lives have preceded them in death - but they always have new friends coming along. It's a 50s-teen thing, I think. Their generation were great socializers. They never stopped. It is their normal.
I like not having to stand by the side of the road, waiting for an unoccupied taxi to come along. I also like Google sounding out directions to me as I drive, rather than me try to piece together what turns to make when from a paper map that I can't even fold up again properly once unfolded.
Excellent piece. Gioia is a wonderful music critic. But I find his economic and technologic concerns too pessimistic.
The truth is that technology has expanded exposure to the arts tremendously. I would never have imagined as a child being able to call up instantly virtually any recorded album of music or work of literature. Of course every technology has its downsides, but the question is ultimately whether those are outweighed by the benefits. And those decisions, in my view, should be a personal, not societal, ones.
Gioia has expressed concerns about where this leaves musicians economically. But in the past, distribution was concentrated in relatively few large record companies and only the chosen few who received contracts would prosper. Now, anyone with musical talent and a computer can produce their own music and get public access. I would call this progress.
On food, I cannot help but notice that many people do have a strong preference for organic, local, or otherwise unprocessed foods. Whole Foods has been around for awhile, farmer's markets have been around for awhile, and these tend to be more expensive than processed food. Given the prices and/or time commitments for these, it seems like a lot more people would like to afford organic food than are able to afford it.
As for medicine, while I have a lot of sympathy for the trials of medical professionals within the mess that is the US health system, I can pretty confidently say that I would prefer 1970s health care because I or my family members have received health care overseas and it has always been better than the US. Whether China, Costa Rica, India, Ecuador, or elsewhere, every...single...time we were seen, immediately, by a qualified doctor, given 30 minutes to 2 hours of treatment, at trivial cost. Meanwhile, in the US, with a great job and top-tier health insurance, I regularly spend over a hundred hours a year "screaming" on the phone to insurance reps trying to get my longstanding prescriptions refilled, to the point where it's become a question on job interviews: "Does you company provide insurance through X?"
I don't want to completely demean US health insurance, AIDs seems to be effectively cured for example, but I cannot help but notice that no Mexicans are crossing the border into the US for healthcare while Americans frequently cross the border into Mexico for prescription drugs and procedures.
As for social media on your phone...I'm terribly sorry but every single human has a revealed preference for heroin as well if we're exposed to it.
I don't want to say Giola is right here, I sympathize with him but numbers are numbers, but I think he/this issue deserve a more serious response. This feels very...unserious and offhand.
I cant come up with a charitable take on his argument when there are just such glaring inaccuracies in the big picture. There are, literally no statistics to capture something approximating the amount of needless human suffering that we’ve worked our way out of.
Its not just that hes full of it when hes talking about farming using methods from the Middle Ages, hes glossing over that life was hell for 99 percent of the people who lived in the middle ages. And most of human history. But its not now. Like… go read up on those stories about mass graves at turn of the century era orphanages. And compare to now when a big chunk of the world’s population no longer lives in poverty.
Another stimulating post. I look at progress in a different way.
There is little doubt, despite Gioia’s misgivings, that humans have benefited from technological advancements. Of course, as you say, with the gains there are also some losses, e.g., automobiles greatly assist with transportation but they do emit pollution, etc. So, humans have mostly benefited from technology but have *we* progressed? For example, is our behavior as a species getting better towards one another? (Consider any set of positive behavioral attributes (kindness, truthfulness, compassionate, disciplined, honorable, etc.). Or are we basically the same creature that we were 50,000 years ago? A line chart showing human progress and technology progress up to present would have a hockey stick in the last 400 years for technology but the human line would essentially be flat, IMHO. Hooray for technology.
Josephine, Napoleon's first wife, had "poor dental health." It is unknown exactly how many teeth she was missing, but apparently, it was significant. At the time, tooth-extraction was performed with a "dental key," often by a Blacksmith. There is one on display at the Science Museum in London (picture in the link below). Josephine pre-dated anesthesia, but not sugar. Once you understand how the tool was used, you will never again disparage creative destruction!
In other words, does technological progress = human welfare progress? Of course not. But they are positively correlated because we are destined to question, explore, and invent, not only out of simple curiosity, but to improve our lives. Excellent post.
My grandmother was 64 in 1970. I believe she was just retiring or recently so from the schoolteaching she had taken up when her youngest child was a teenager.
The material blessings of the postwar period had been enjoyed by my grandparents - but in a careful, not careless way. Things were treasured - the dream house their friend built for them in the late fifties (would look like a garden variety rancher now). The cars. The "living room suite" sometimes covered in plastic (yes, I've read Paul Fussell). The beautiful wool sweaters with her initial monogrammed on them; yes, the family called her Marilyn, for her figure.
She belonged to several women's social clubs. She regularly played bridge. They played for little prizes which I think the hostess purchased.
She went to the Baptist church each Sunday and for Wednesday night supper.
She was no crafter, but she did the usual amount of sewing for a woman of that time.
The last two of her grandchildren were born in 1970. Visits with her two kids' families were regular, though much more with the ones who lived closer, versus the daughter (my mother) who had moved away (and whose husband didn't participate).
She and my grandfather, who would be retiring in a couple years, had just begun to travel in company with couple friends. (Earlier, in the fifties, for instance, the *only* trip beyond those to the family homeplace/reunions in Missouri, they ever took that I'm aware of is when they drove with Mother out to California to see my uncle who was stationed out there in the Marines; they went to Knox Berry Farm.)
They very much enjoyed a visit to Washington, D.C. circa 1970. Who wouldn't? There was so much to be proud of/in awe of.
The country had plenty of wonders for those who would never know international travel, and was easy to get around in. The interstate system had not yet been ruined.
She may have worried about my mother some: other than that, clear skies.
Loneliness, anxiety, personal emotionalism about politics - these were not her troubles.
Her son had been born in 1930 - so she had no personal stake in Vietnam.
Having been the second-youngest of nine or ten in a farm family, she certainly didn't have what I recently heard the younger people call "Main Character Syndrome".
Maybe life is more exciting when you are afflicted with "Main Character Syndrome".
When I was a child I thought her life seemed wonderful. In fact, I shamefully regret to say - there was a widow lived across the street from her - and when I found out what a widow was - I thought that sounded like the best life of all - a house to yourself and no one shouting, ever, and no one to bother you so you could read.
ETA: I should add that both her husband and her son worked in the "tech" of their times - but signally, in a hands-on way: the laying of telephone lines in my grandfather's case, oil and gas drilling in my uncle's.
So the men in her life were pleased and contented with their work.
"People generally have the option of rejecting new technology." That may be the crux - the difference between the perceptions:
1. We would be better off without technology X.
2. I'd be better off without technology X, in a society where everyone else uses technology X.
People may feel 1 is true but 2 is false because of network effects. Or 2 may be regulated away (cheap healthcare or small houses) even if you want it.
That said we often do underestimate the benefits of progress, especially over the long run a la Tyler's crusonia plant.
To me the term network effects seems rather ambiguous but one issue is akin to shared commons, such as everyone having large houses instead of small. Another is secondary affects, such as from smoking, gambling, drugs, social media, etc.
Are We Making Progress? For any reasonably educated, reasonably sane, citizen of any Western nation – anyone with even the most basic grasp of history and flimsiest awareness of what are currently the worst places on earth – it would be curmudgeonly not to recognise that life for us is pretty good and has been for a good long time. The more reflective might ponder whether the quantity of human happiness does actually expand to fit the quantity of propitious circumstance or whether happiness is more in the way of a self-levelling constant......https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/are-we-making-progress
Most of us would like the technology of 2024 and the social/cultural environment of 1960, at least on some metrics.
I see no reason to credit the people who fucked up the culture with the technological progress a bunch of nerds they probably hate made during that time.
make that 1980 and I'm in
I agree, I would prefer to live today rather than the 1970s. Yet I think there's something to the criticism. As you've pointed out, economics got overmathed and that has had some negative impacts. A couple recent items:
Deaton on his changing views. I agree with the first part very much, the second not so much. Econ too focused on optimization and not enough on philosophy/ethics
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2024/03/Symposium-Rethinking-Economics-Angus-Deaton
And Charles Murray on cognitive elites:
"If you spend any significant amount of your life around people with lower IQs than yours, you can't help but notice how many of them are better people than you in qualities that you value, including the virtues. This is not idealism. It is the empirical reality of life outside the cognitive elite's bubble."
https://x.com/charlesmurray/status/1772383210455880151
Too much efficient sorting of society.
Murray’s quote sounds like the old Russian socialist peasant worship. It absolutely is idealism. There is a set of moral traps set for low IQ people and a different set for higher IQ people.
Yes, both groups have traps. But being in the lower cognitive group is a marker on only one dimension and that dimension is not a measure of 'goodness'. The largest trap for both groups is 'othering' of the other. The large expansion of the "upper middle class" is good for those people in it. But one result is the greater ability to live in a bubble both culturally and materially.
I mean every book Charles has published basically paints the low IQ as moral degenerates getting worse by the day, but whatever.
I don't see any high IQ people moving into low IQ neighborhoods to enjoy this good moral living. The census track Charles lives in has a six figure median household income, it ain't fish town.
You are either seriously misreading Mr Murray or relying on the negative press his work gets for that. The main thrusts of Murray's work are that cognitive differences among humans are a real thing, not an artifact of socialization or access to education, that we are increasingly dividing economic gain based on cognitive levels, and probably most importantly, that the 'luxury beliefs' of the UMC who are the cognitive and economic elite have highly negative impacts on the members of society that have less resources. Being Murphy Brown and having a kid out of wedlock has a way different trajectory than Kenisha from the 'hood doing the same thing. His point is usually that we need to accept people with lower cognitive levels are neither the victims of systemic injustice nor are they going to pull themselves up to UMC levels by their bootstraps.
I've read most of Murray's work.
Sometimes Murray talks as if the dim are equal or better than the brights in some objective level moral living. I don't think his work backs up that claim, it seems like the opposite.
Sometimes Murray talks as if the poor should "be graded on a curve" and that we have noblesse oblige to try to help better them. That's certainly possible but also subjective. How should the curve be constructed? What is the grading criteria? What is the nature of our obligation?
It's a lot more complicated question then "who divorces and is violent and ODs more often, rich or poor."
> Sometimes Murray talks as if the dim are equal or better than the brights in some objective level moral living. I don't think his work backs up that claim, it seems like the opposite.
Let's cut through the rhetoric: do you believe it to be a fact that the dim ARE NOT morally objectively superior, in at least some ways?
I remember when Steve Forbes used to go on about environmentalists, and urge that all federal environmental regulation be shut down, I would remind myself that he lived in a town with a 120-page list of preservation measures. Apparently, Bedminster, NJ couldn't just leave it to the private sector for some reason ... nor, it seems, could he, since he chose to live there.
"Economists say that your embrace of contemporary technology reflects “revealed preference.” You must get satisfaction out of it, or you would not be using it."
Well, there is satisfaction and there is satisfaction. If my lower leg itches (as it does now) and I scratch it, I will get satisfaction. But soon after, it will itch again. If I scratch again, I begin another cycle. In fact, if I scratch enough, I actually make the itch worse. My immediate satisfaction has turned into long-term dissatisfaction.
There's a hell of a lot in modern life that is like that, often on a much longer time period and often much less obvious. I suspect there have always been things like that. Today, technology is so advanced and we are so rich, we can experience more of that.
I have become increasingly annoyed at the way economists use the words "satisfaction" and "satisfy" as if the first meaning (immediate satisfaction) automatically leads to the second (long-term improvement in affect).
Economics does a good job of predicting how people behave (revealed preference). It does not do a very good job of predicting what makes people happy. But then psychology doesn't either; look at the literature on "subjective well-being".
Well said. To mention just one thing that stood out for me - I was very happy to leave behind vinyl records and turntables.
Indeed! CDs were a big step forward, as were portable tape players (thanks, Sony). I'm married to an esoteric audiophile, so we've noticed that the biggest problem with MP3 & streaming is terrible audio quality, worse, yet different than vinyl's noise & inconvenience.
What I cannot fathom about the human race is that we have all this economic and technical progress, but so many humans are "buying" bad ideas that just cause misery from the people who are selling bad ideas that just cause misery. The human race's wisdom is not improving.
"Something like this apparently has occurred. In 1970, there were 0.4 million people over the age of 90 in the United States. As of 2020, this figure was 2.8 million. That increase in people living to age 90 has been offset by adverse trends among younger people."
I had no grandparent living that long - three died in their 70s, one at 82 - and certainly never spoke to them about anything "heavy" nor do I make any great claims for them - but from the way in which they lived, I do not believe for a second that any of them would have been smugly content knowing that the younger generation was foundering, but it's all good because "medical tech has kept me going until past ninety".
The only other thing I would add - my elderly parents' brains have clearly deteriorated with age, but nonetheless I am thankful they don't have dementia. The number of their friends receiving dementia diagnoses seems to be growing apace. And yes, many if not most of the *numerous* friends (probably their total number of friends is fifteen times mine) over their lives have preceded them in death - but they always have new friends coming along. It's a 50s-teen thing, I think. Their generation were great socializers. They never stopped. It is their normal.
I like not always having to walk everywhere
All the medical advances have to overcome the fact we don’t take 15-20,000 steps per day anymore.
Except for knee and hip replacements... that works in the opposite direction there.
I entirely agree yet we would be better off in many ways if more of our trips were via foot.
I like not having to stand by the side of the road, waiting for an unoccupied taxi to come along. I also like Google sounding out directions to me as I drive, rather than me try to piece together what turns to make when from a paper map that I can't even fold up again properly once unfolded.
Excellent piece. Gioia is a wonderful music critic. But I find his economic and technologic concerns too pessimistic.
The truth is that technology has expanded exposure to the arts tremendously. I would never have imagined as a child being able to call up instantly virtually any recorded album of music or work of literature. Of course every technology has its downsides, but the question is ultimately whether those are outweighed by the benefits. And those decisions, in my view, should be a personal, not societal, ones.
Gioia has expressed concerns about where this leaves musicians economically. But in the past, distribution was concentrated in relatively few large record companies and only the chosen few who received contracts would prosper. Now, anyone with musical talent and a computer can produce their own music and get public access. I would call this progress.
and the sound quality of vinyl was always iffy, no matter how careful one was.
I think Giola deserves a more serious response.
On food, I cannot help but notice that many people do have a strong preference for organic, local, or otherwise unprocessed foods. Whole Foods has been around for awhile, farmer's markets have been around for awhile, and these tend to be more expensive than processed food. Given the prices and/or time commitments for these, it seems like a lot more people would like to afford organic food than are able to afford it.
As for medicine, while I have a lot of sympathy for the trials of medical professionals within the mess that is the US health system, I can pretty confidently say that I would prefer 1970s health care because I or my family members have received health care overseas and it has always been better than the US. Whether China, Costa Rica, India, Ecuador, or elsewhere, every...single...time we were seen, immediately, by a qualified doctor, given 30 minutes to 2 hours of treatment, at trivial cost. Meanwhile, in the US, with a great job and top-tier health insurance, I regularly spend over a hundred hours a year "screaming" on the phone to insurance reps trying to get my longstanding prescriptions refilled, to the point where it's become a question on job interviews: "Does you company provide insurance through X?"
I don't want to completely demean US health insurance, AIDs seems to be effectively cured for example, but I cannot help but notice that no Mexicans are crossing the border into the US for healthcare while Americans frequently cross the border into Mexico for prescription drugs and procedures.
As for social media on your phone...I'm terribly sorry but every single human has a revealed preference for heroin as well if we're exposed to it.
I don't want to say Giola is right here, I sympathize with him but numbers are numbers, but I think he/this issue deserve a more serious response. This feels very...unserious and offhand.
I cant come up with a charitable take on his argument when there are just such glaring inaccuracies in the big picture. There are, literally no statistics to capture something approximating the amount of needless human suffering that we’ve worked our way out of.
Its not just that hes full of it when hes talking about farming using methods from the Middle Ages, hes glossing over that life was hell for 99 percent of the people who lived in the middle ages. And most of human history. But its not now. Like… go read up on those stories about mass graves at turn of the century era orphanages. And compare to now when a big chunk of the world’s population no longer lives in poverty.
Another stimulating post. I look at progress in a different way.
There is little doubt, despite Gioia’s misgivings, that humans have benefited from technological advancements. Of course, as you say, with the gains there are also some losses, e.g., automobiles greatly assist with transportation but they do emit pollution, etc. So, humans have mostly benefited from technology but have *we* progressed? For example, is our behavior as a species getting better towards one another? (Consider any set of positive behavioral attributes (kindness, truthfulness, compassionate, disciplined, honorable, etc.). Or are we basically the same creature that we were 50,000 years ago? A line chart showing human progress and technology progress up to present would have a hockey stick in the last 400 years for technology but the human line would essentially be flat, IMHO. Hooray for technology.
Josephine, Napoleon's first wife, had "poor dental health." It is unknown exactly how many teeth she was missing, but apparently, it was significant. At the time, tooth-extraction was performed with a "dental key," often by a Blacksmith. There is one on display at the Science Museum in London (picture in the link below). Josephine pre-dated anesthesia, but not sugar. Once you understand how the tool was used, you will never again disparage creative destruction!
https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co98254
In other words, does technological progress = human welfare progress? Of course not. But they are positively correlated because we are destined to question, explore, and invent, not only out of simple curiosity, but to improve our lives. Excellent post.
I would happily return to 1970, but only as 4 year-old me- not as 58 year old me.
My grandmother was 64 in 1970. I believe she was just retiring or recently so from the schoolteaching she had taken up when her youngest child was a teenager.
The material blessings of the postwar period had been enjoyed by my grandparents - but in a careful, not careless way. Things were treasured - the dream house their friend built for them in the late fifties (would look like a garden variety rancher now). The cars. The "living room suite" sometimes covered in plastic (yes, I've read Paul Fussell). The beautiful wool sweaters with her initial monogrammed on them; yes, the family called her Marilyn, for her figure.
She belonged to several women's social clubs. She regularly played bridge. They played for little prizes which I think the hostess purchased.
She went to the Baptist church each Sunday and for Wednesday night supper.
She was no crafter, but she did the usual amount of sewing for a woman of that time.
The last two of her grandchildren were born in 1970. Visits with her two kids' families were regular, though much more with the ones who lived closer, versus the daughter (my mother) who had moved away (and whose husband didn't participate).
She and my grandfather, who would be retiring in a couple years, had just begun to travel in company with couple friends. (Earlier, in the fifties, for instance, the *only* trip beyond those to the family homeplace/reunions in Missouri, they ever took that I'm aware of is when they drove with Mother out to California to see my uncle who was stationed out there in the Marines; they went to Knox Berry Farm.)
They very much enjoyed a visit to Washington, D.C. circa 1970. Who wouldn't? There was so much to be proud of/in awe of.
The country had plenty of wonders for those who would never know international travel, and was easy to get around in. The interstate system had not yet been ruined.
She may have worried about my mother some: other than that, clear skies.
Loneliness, anxiety, personal emotionalism about politics - these were not her troubles.
Her son had been born in 1930 - so she had no personal stake in Vietnam.
Having been the second-youngest of nine or ten in a farm family, she certainly didn't have what I recently heard the younger people call "Main Character Syndrome".
Maybe life is more exciting when you are afflicted with "Main Character Syndrome".
When I was a child I thought her life seemed wonderful. In fact, I shamefully regret to say - there was a widow lived across the street from her - and when I found out what a widow was - I thought that sounded like the best life of all - a house to yourself and no one shouting, ever, and no one to bother you so you could read.
Anyway, I'm certain she was happier than I am.
ETA: I should add that both her husband and her son worked in the "tech" of their times - but signally, in a hands-on way: the laying of telephone lines in my grandfather's case, oil and gas drilling in my uncle's.
So the men in her life were pleased and contented with their work.
"People generally have the option of rejecting new technology." That may be the crux - the difference between the perceptions:
1. We would be better off without technology X.
2. I'd be better off without technology X, in a society where everyone else uses technology X.
People may feel 1 is true but 2 is false because of network effects. Or 2 may be regulated away (cheap healthcare or small houses) even if you want it.
That said we often do underestimate the benefits of progress, especially over the long run a la Tyler's crusonia plant.
To me the term network effects seems rather ambiguous but one issue is akin to shared commons, such as everyone having large houses instead of small. Another is secondary affects, such as from smoking, gambling, drugs, social media, etc.
Are We Making Progress? For any reasonably educated, reasonably sane, citizen of any Western nation – anyone with even the most basic grasp of history and flimsiest awareness of what are currently the worst places on earth – it would be curmudgeonly not to recognise that life for us is pretty good and has been for a good long time. The more reflective might ponder whether the quantity of human happiness does actually expand to fit the quantity of propitious circumstance or whether happiness is more in the way of a self-levelling constant......https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/are-we-making-progress
5 years ago no one would go back in time. Now? Lots of people would go back a lot farther than 50 years