Posted on 04/24/2017 6:52:02 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
And to add to that, capitalism makes it expensive only at the outset, as you pointed out in your “10 to 15 years ago” comment. And sometimes it makes it, in the end, practically free. Thanks to the internet, I have very little need to see a General practitioner. I can heal myself (and have) with some savvy internet surfing. I actually correctly diagnosed a problem I had, using the internet, that a GP had misdiagnosed. It cost $6 to fix my problem...
Via anecdote, the scenario always appears to hit home. To be more visceral.
But the statistics are a different story. Everyone suffered great losses in family. From sickness and from injury (An amish guy out near me recently lost a baby because he backed over him with the tractor, for instance. That sounds horrible, but over the past 6 months 3 kids also died in drunk driving accidents while strapped into their safety seats.)
Stuff doesn’t make wealth. My wife and I now have 4 cars. This was a sign of wealth not too long ago. (Especially since among them is a BMW and a Mercedes). Our cars are basically worthless.
Today’s version of wealth is cloudy and confusing. Wealth comes in few forms:
Real Property. Land, homes. And in differing degrees of arrability and appeal.
Power. Being so busy running major projects that you need staff to run your affairs at your whim.
The rest is chaff. Our lives are full of chaff.
Are you forgetting that in 1916, there was no FR?
I’ve heard lefties say all this we have today occurred after the income tax and redistribution/welfare/government programs started...
They added on a garage. I’d like to see the interior.
There were a few intangible’s that they missed though:
1) A husband was assumed by law to be head of household, that was the natural Christian order and the law reflected that. Today ...not so much and the social situation reflects that, no to anyone’s advantage.
2) The idea that a mans house was his castle was still observed in 1916 law, there were actual areas the state was kept out of life. Police did not have SWAT teams, nor did overwhelming security state that exists today stick its nose in every bodies business. The idea that someone would be stripped searched to travel across the country in a public conveyance did not exist.
3) Because of the 90 % European stock and a resultant monoculture , in 1916 a women was much safer from a whole range of crimes than today. Many urban areas are no-go regions for folks who do not represent that particular sub culture.
4) The Justice system had not been corrupted as it is today, in those days it reflected the agreed upon values of the predominate WASP culture. Murder somebody and get caught, 30~40 days later you were likely dead. Do an extremely heinous crime and the law would pretty much allow the crowd to deal with it in the same time interval.
5) the Culture had not been debased in 1916. The idea in 1916 was entirely towards refining culture, actors were somewhat shady folks, certainly not looked to for setting standards like today. If there was light music available in public it was likely moonlight sonata or some popular ditty that was inoffensive. Today the popular music is pretty dreadful, such songs and “bitch better have my money” being the norm. How has it come to pass that degraded negro music has displaced the European classical music and its derivatives?
6) Christianity was not under attack, in an attempt to push all sort of deviant lifestyles.
Of course the above can be looked at as double edged swords, some folks would take exception to the above list. Nonetheless on reflection I think we would be better of today were the culture more in line with 1916 than with 2017, at least in most areas. So while there is no doubt we are materially much better of in 2016 than in 1916, on a cultural, legal, religious and a significant number of non-material aspects, US society is worse than in 1916.
Read ‘Spoon River Anthology,’ short poems about people in the local cemetery. Many of them died young from infections that are easily treated today or from tetanus, which is generally avoided.
It’s sad to think of the young lives cut short by the little accidents of life that we don’t give two thoughts about today.
Your post addresses many of the reasons I moved from Seattle to rural KY. And the intangibles are really everything. As I’ve said for decades, if I were a Gazelle, I’d choose the freedom and danger of the Serengeti to three squares a day in a zoo.
Our modern world is, in many ways, the latter.
My wife and I like to visit the small and old cemeteries around here. There are many that have, sometimes, ten or more graves from the SAME FAMILY, all of infants that died within the first year, or even week, of infancy.
But in those days there was also a stronger Christian conviction that this life is only temporary and quality was more important than length. People accepted that life was risk, but temporary anyway.
It is that mindset that would cause people to homestead the west, living hours (or even days) from the nearest other non-indians. And evry now and then, the indians, like a drug cartel, would come through and wipe them out.
Modern Americans can’t even imagine the mind set of such people who would take such risk. Most can’t, anyway. It’s why I get annoyed by people that judge our forefathers based on modern sensibilities.
6) Christianity was not under attack, in an attempt to push all sort of deviant lifestyles.
I would go back - but would take a large box of antibiotics with me.
Well said. It all depends on what your criteria are, as to whether life was better 100 years ago.
I’ve had similar discussions with people about how life was in the ‘50s. And in those discussions, invariably someone brings up how Jim Crow was still in existence then, and how women weren’t found in professional careers in big numbers as they are now. They would talk of social pressure especially for women, to get married and have children. They talk of how homosexuality was in the closet. They mentioned how people lived in fear due to the cold war and threat of nuclear war.
In any discussions such as this article, it all depends on your criteria, as to what your comparison to today and the old days will be.
On the one hand, we have much better healthcare available, much greater comfort in everyday life due to air conditioning, much less air pollution in our cities. On the other hand, we have a debased culture in which big numbers of children are not being raised with important values, and are not being raised in an intact family unit.
So who can say are we better off now? It depends on what criteria you are measuring.
My wife and I like to visit the small and old cemeteries around here.
The author conveniently ignores the fact that as a billionaire you could bed pretty much any woman you desired. For that reason alone, this analysis is worthless.
I just found the 24/7 Downton Abbey Roku channel; I’m catching up and it’s quite realistic and representative of the era.
Didn’t follow it as I assumed it’d be unending leftist propaganda; it’s not.
Looking at things from today, the choice seems obvious, but keep in mind, if you lived back then you would not KNOW what was to be invented In the future. Surely if I lived in 1916 knowing what exists today I’d never consider choosing to live without what we take for granted today. But those folks didn’t know about any of this.
I went the other direction, left the sticks for piped natural gas, and good running water.
I now live on the edge of a city with open lands minutes away, kind of split the difference.
Loved the Travis McGee series. Every title had a color in it. Oh, and Travis McGee is a FReeper.
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