Quote:You must speak for yourself. I don't see that many happy people in my life. There is no free lunch, and life didn't suddenly get easier to live.Not suddenly, gradually. Where and when would you rather have been born? If you were just a random child, coming into this world today, you have something like a 95% chance of being worse off than the average American, and about a 50% chance of being far worse off, to the point of halving your lifespan. If you were born at a random point in history, that's something like a 99% chance of being far worse off, probably to the tune of being a subsistence farmer somewhere or another who pays almost all their surplus production to the classes above them.
You live at a comfortable time. Medical technology has never been better. People live long. Your chance of being murdered is far lower. The rule of law is universal and non-corrupt in a way that you could not possibly expect in most countries even today, and certainly not anywhere in the world two hundred years ago. Computing technology has revolutionized our lives, from education to gaming to this discussion we're having right now.
You may not think life is comfortable today, but for pretty much all of recorded history, it's been a hell of a lot worse.
Quote:I'd disagree with everything on your list. I see less freedom, mountains of public and private debt, lowering standards of living. As far as dangerous, well I don't think the crime rate is better for my generation than my fathers, and water, soil, and air contamination is much higher.Or engage in better diplomacy.I don't know when your father's generation was, but I'm going to assume somewhere between 1940 and 1970. Lower standards of living is simply laughable - real GDP per capita has grown enormously, to the order of nearly tripling since WWII, and more than ten times since the beginning of the 1900s. That's actual purchasing power. We are overwhelmingly richer, and if we're further in debt, we also have far greater ability to service that debt.
War and peace looks a lot nicer today, at least in the first world. We don't have world war two, or world war one for that matter. The Soviets are no longer around to point nukes at you. If water, soil and air contamination more than make up for the staggering advances in science and medicine that have us living longer and enjoying better quality of life by far, then I'm not sure what to say except that I disagree, and so does all the data.
Quote:As far as slavery. There were horrible abusive masters, but I'd bet 90% of slave owners were pretty decent to their slaves. They probably treated their slaves as good as their horses, or other livestock.Sure. They were fed enough to survive, fattened when they were needed at market, beaten when they were unruly, caged, forced to work, forbidden to leave the land, and their descendants belonged to their owners. They, or their relatives, were used as sex slaves. They had their franchise both stolen and devalued, and were usually considered as innately inferior. Aside from all that, I'm sure there life was just peachy - the kind of thing you'd totally compare with your situation today, what with having to pay *taxes* and all.
Quote:Just try to figure out a life without them, and at every turn in our lives they have inserted themselves as a requirement.It's kind of like roads. Once an economy grows beyond a certain size, it's really, really hard to make it work without some kind of legal, corporate company structure. I'm no big fan of corporations, but good luck turning back the clock on that one.
Quote:How much of our 10 trillion dollar debt went directly into the pockets of corporations, and in fact those corporations that favored particular politicians and their rise to power? But, the citizen, is given only the illusion of freedom with the only means of escape from bondage being not to participate in the society at all.And yet, you still have a vote. You can still accumulate wealth, and invest it more or less as you please. You can work in whatever job you choose for yourself, if you can earn it. The American dream is still alive and kicking, and still looks really good to people who didn't have the privelege to grow up thinking middling tax rates constituted serious oppression.
Quote:What have my sons done to deserve carrying their share of the burden of 10 trillion dollars of debt? Your advice is to tell them not to whine, and that the injustice and dearth of freedom is worse elsewhere.What does a Bangladeshi child do, to deserve a life where American technology, citizenship, public goods, education, medical care, rule of law, and everything else your sons enjoy just for being in the good old US of A, are all out of the question? Children do nothing to deserve their fates. They are simply born into them - this is possibly the single largest reason I am *not* a libertarian. Too much about us is a context we never chose, but were born into anyway.
-Jester