I'm pretty sure Rockefeller would have turned down the offer to instead be a single mother living on $10,000 in rural Mississippi. And would I prefer to have the wealth and status of Rockefeller in 1916? of course.
So, given that bit of common sense, what makes this argument pointless and/or irrelevant? Should I just descend into complete and abject despair over the nice stuff we'll have in 2116? There's something obviously wrong with this line of reasoning.
Maybe it's the fact that regardless of how much nice stuff we have today, our class and wealth still largely determines what we do with our lives and our relations to others, and those can be arbitrarily hellish regardless of the material comfort involved.
This sort of argument is as miserable as that Fox News segment a few years ago that tried to downplay how miserable poverty can be by citing refrigerator and microwave ownership rates. Not surprising that a paleocon pseudointellectual like George Will would latch on to such a shallow and frivolous argument.
That was one of the central arguments of the article. Even the poorest of us have a lot of nice things that even Rockefeller didn't have access to, such as access to penecillan which was discovered in 1928. If you are taking the other side of his argument, you are saying "I don't care about like penecillan, being richer than others is worth being without them".
Yes I'd take those odds because of the mind boggling social power and freedom that comes with being a billionaire. Although yes, penicillin and vaccines are the best argument for living now than then.
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I'm pretty sure Rockefeller would have turned down the offer to instead be a single mother living on $10,000 in rural Mississippi. And would I prefer to have the wealth and status of Rockefeller in 1916? of course.
So, given that bit of common sense, what makes this argument pointless and/or irrelevant? Should I just descend into complete and abject despair over the nice stuff we'll have in 2116? There's something obviously wrong with this line of reasoning.
Maybe it's the fact that regardless of how much nice stuff we have today, our class and wealth still largely determines what we do with our lives and our relations to others, and those can be arbitrarily hellish regardless of the material comfort involved.
This sort of argument is as miserable as that Fox News segment a few years ago that tried to downplay how miserable poverty can be by citing refrigerator and microwave ownership rates. Not surprising that a paleocon pseudointellectual like George Will would latch on to such a shallow and frivolous argument.
You would prefer to live in a world without penecillan if it meant being richer than everyone else?
Somehow my choice precludes the development of penicillin? What exactly are you trying to ask?
That was one of the central arguments of the article. Even the poorest of us have a lot of nice things that even Rockefeller didn't have access to, such as access to penecillan which was discovered in 1928. If you are taking the other side of his argument, you are saying "I don't care about like penecillan, being richer than others is worth being without them".
Yes I'd take those odds because of the mind boggling social power and freedom that comes with being a billionaire. Although yes, penicillin and vaccines are the best argument for living now than then.