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I took Economy 101 and the measure of inflation seemed like it was basically made-up. One could argue that the average modern poor person in a Western country is immensely wealthier than one 400 years ago due to great technological developments but 400 years ago every single food item was fully organic, non-GMO, non-processed, free of microplastics (perhaps including different types of pollutants)... A physician at the time probably had a live-in cook and nanny to handle all the domestic work. A lot of that work has been automated but you still see billionaires pushing buttons to call elevators for some reason.
Even if you go back a couple years. Somebody who graduated in 2020 probably paid roughly the same price as somebody who has yet to graduate and spent perhaps a full year of watching essentially youtube videos and being forced to wear a muzzle and other humiliating rituals.
Entertainment is cheaper? Are the 2020s versions of Lord of the Rings equivalent to the 2000s? Are the 2010-20s versions of Star Wars equivalent to the previous ones?
Does $1 million spent in real estate in SF or NYC give you the same quality of life than 20 years ago?
Uh, 400 years ago we were subsistence farmers. Which famously leads to malnutrition and stunted growth, as we can see with height rising in europe over the last centuries. People raised on non-organic lentils and meat are mostly substantially healthier than farmers who ate organic nongmo grain.
Star Wars and LOTR are still available, and in fact cheaper. And we have anime now!
Yes which is bad but that has a specific identifiable cause (pervasive land use restrictions) rather than the economy being bad.
Who is that? The average Westerner eats processed food and micro-plastics, and drinks artificial hormones and corn syrup. European farmers were not vegans, idk where you got this idea from.
Avatar the last airbender came out in the 2000s, I'm not aware of any other successful Western-made anime. If anything the new Pixar and Disney cartoons are worse than the past ones.
The mayor of NYC blames it on immigration. City-dwellers need to learn to tackle their crime problem before they preach to others about increasing population density.
Vegan? I said their diets relied on grain, and that they had many more health problems than modern people, as demonstrated by lower heights caused by stunted growth.
The US doesn't make anime, but USians watch anime, so they aren't poorer by your standard. I don't like the current state of western media, but that's not super relevant to the point.
Yeah, he's wrong, Eric Adams is twitter famous for saying a ton of funny contradictory incoherent things.
What evidence do you have this was caused by malnutrition? I haven't taken a direct look at the skeletal remains, but royal beds were tiny by our standards. And I don't know if they meant it to be accurate, but some museums I visited opted to portray the richest men at the time as pretty short as well.
It's the scientific consensus? This is a review on the topic.
In regard to your specific objection, a recent study found that those in higher social classes were taller: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8516076/
So?
There's a trend there, but not as massive as you're implying. The gentry is about the same height as the wealthier craftsmen. Also, what you said sounded like the difference in height between people now and then comes to malnutrition, and to my knowledge that simply cannot by supported. The aristocrats wouldn't be just a few centimeters above average, if that was the case, they would be towering giants.
The (very broad) review I linked itself links to other reviews that go into the evidence for why nutrition was a component.
I imagine it saturates, you can't become a giant today by eating 4kcal/day. And I think some of the growth stunting was caused by disease.
It being a component does is not enough to prove the very broad point you were making earlier.
Yes, my point exactly.
Sure, but that's neither here nor there regarding the quality of their nutrition. No one denies the progress in hygiene and medicine.
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A physician was able to have a live-in cook and nanny because things were bad for cooks and nannies, not because things were good for physicians. It's like saying "150 years ago a physician was able to keep a slave. Quality of life has gone down for physicians", except less extreme.
Are the living conditions of the lower-class absolutely worse than a couple centuries back?
Is it worse to live in a comfortable household working for smart people than working a Walmart job (or several) you have to drive to, pay rent, pay medical bills, etc...?
Out of all the jobs one could do in the 18th or 19th century, working for physicians was probably not among the worst.
On one hand working conditions have greatly improved in many ways, with fatalities going down (at least in the West, while importing from dangerous facilities still operating elsewhere). On the other hand it seems that the general quality of many things that matter to the human experience has degraded.
Is it better for a black man to work hard in a field for a white master, who provides food, shelter and medical care, sometimes even education, or to be nominally free in a society where the food, shelter, medical care and education are still largely organized and provided by white people, but with no meaningful work, structure or community to speak of?
Is it worse to die under the lashes of an abusive master or "in mutual combat" with another "free" black man?
I'd be curious to see the rate of violent death of young black men then vs now.
I would wager that the under-class of a 100-years ago was somewhat more literate than the current one, and perhaps better-mannered. At least I'd imagine the ones that did have access to education ended up more literate than now that education is ubiquitous. I believe religion and family were more important, terrible life choices were possible and had direr consequences than now, but were actively discouraged, rather than incentivized, by society.
The most conservative Amish seem to be technologically-backward, and I don't know what economists would say about their economy, but they seem to live peaceful, well-organized, productive lives with tight-knit communities able to lift up their members in times of weakness.
Collectively, American society does extend a helping hand through government programs, churches, charities, technological innovations, but it's still hard for those who suffer of obesity, broken families, lack of meaningful employment, lack of adequate medical care, drug use, to be told that 'everything is fine, no, better than ever'.
The abusive master is far worse. Being enslaved sucks donkey balls. Fuck slavers; that dude in the ghetto is at least nominally free, he's not liable to get bought and sold like a fucking cow, and he has at least nominal rights. He may be killed by cops or something, but even if he gets murdered by really goddamn bad cops they have to at least half ass hiding the body. And this is being rather uncharitable about our hero's rights.
While the idea of freedom is an interesting one, I do not believe that there is anybody free of any master. One can only hope for a gentle master.
If it's not a literal slave to a planter, he probably is beholden to some type of landlord. Anybody living on welfare is at the mercy of some policymakers changing eligibility rules or other people's money drying up. He's also a slave to his passions (sin).
I suppose it's a matter of degree, but at least in the 'hood you're not being treated like literal livestock. Tyrone is free to walk out of the hood and go where he likes; if he wants to go to a new city, nobody will be hunting him down with bloodhounds and mutilating or killing him if they catch him.
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...which means there was a large impoverished underclass whose best option was to serve said physicians. But our very lowest today are in such massively greater material conditions that perhaps a physician could afford one or two, but that would wreck their finances.
Not having a significant portion of society in such great poverty that they would gladly live in my spare room and be my servant for a small portion of my disposable income is probably a good thing.
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Good things those are all nonsensical to worry about eh?
Well this physician has all of those, not that I'm in the West. Might not be feasible on a UK salary, but if an American doctor cared, they could afford the same too. Especially if they're a double income couple.
Presumably because it's an utterly trivial inconvenience? Mechanical lifts were likely far harder to operate safely back then. It's not like it even saves them much in the way of time to tell someone where they're going versus pressing a single button..
I suppose it's really nice that we have access to both eh? Anyone not enamoured by the current Star Wars soyslop can watch the older movies too, and cheaply.
The amount of media available for consumption only tends to increase, and faster than you can watch it all.
You have a live in cook and nanny? What are you paying them, in comparison to your salary?
Well, my parents are doctors who are quite well advanced in their careers.
I think it would be possible for me to hire one personally for about 50 to 100 dollars a month assuming you want them full time. In comparison, my salary is about 600 dollars a month. I haven't checked the latest currency conversion rates, but that's a fair place to peg it.
With double salaries, it becomes significantly easier, not that I particularly prioritize it. Labor is cheap in most of the third world.
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No they can't. Last I checked, there is not a single available legal source for the original films. In fact, they keep getting remastered even harder unannounced as time goes on.
We're also rapidly moving into an era where physical releases are no longer being considered, and streaming services regularly take down even their own original content, or edit it after the fact such that the original version can never be viewed again.
The long term goal is clear. The bean counters are slathering at the fact that you'll have to pay a monthly for your entertainment, locked in an ever present cycle of consooming. And the thought controllers are excited that you'll be forced to be exposed to their demoralization propaganda because nothing else will be available.
I know it's not legal, but you should just download the Harmy's Star Wars Despecialized Edition. I'm so glad I did.
At some point I acquired a fan edit of the original trilogy that attempted to combined the highest fidelity sources available of the original version. I know there are a ton, and I honestly can't tell you which one I got. But I can confirm I've watched it several times and no longer feel gaslit about how I remember the movie looking and feeling.
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If I parse your post as you seem to have meant it, watching original Star Wars movies is just consuming, but watching reedited ones is "consooming". Could you clarify exactly what the distinction is between consuming and consooming?
Oh, clearly I consume the things I like, and you consoom the things you like because you suck.
I'm kidding, that's a really good question. To me, there is almost a level of abuse in the average consoomer relationship. Publishers almost treat them like paypigs. Just actively shit all over them, to see how much they can get away with. Kill off their favorite characters, utterly humiliate their demographic repeatedly, all while preaching that it's important to show everybody (except you) being heroic, moral and capable.
There is an element of disposability to it all. The whole meme, near as I know, spawned from a Red Letter Media line like "Don't ask questions. Just consume product, and then get excited for next product".. The full parody video is also worth a watch. Timeless classic IMHO. Consoom RLM, ahem what?
But it's just this endless spigot of low quality, disposable, formulaic entertainment products. You aren't meant to rewatch, there is barely time, the next thing is already on the way. We went from an MCU with 6 movies in 5 years for phase 1, 6 movies in 3 years for phase 2, 11 movies in 3 years for phase 3, to a quantity of films and tv shows on such a compressed timescale it's taking me actual work to add it all up. 9 movies in 2 years, plus 8 6-9 episode tv series?! Jesus fucking christ. It's almost threatening. Like, you enjoyed this franchise. You want to be in the cool kids club and not miss out on current thing. But instead of abusing 2 hours of your time a year, they are abusing probably closer to 100 hours of your time! And it went from the price of a movie ticket to 4 movie tickets and 12 months of an online subscription service!
Maybe it's all a false distinction. Maybe I'm consooming just as much when I rewatch my hard copy of Lord of Illusions every year around Halloween, or National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation during the holidays. Maybe my sense of cultural continuity, enjoying the same "classic" films my father enjoyed, and exposing them to my children as well, is a thin veneer over generational consooming. Maybe reading the original Dune every few years, and finding new things to appreciate isn't any less consooming than picking up the latest Dune novel and giving it a go.
Oh god I think I threw up in my mouth a little bit.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel in my bones there is a qualitative and quantitative difference between consuming and consooming. Maybe phase 1 of the MCU was consumption. Maybe it was on the line of consooming. We're so far past that now in phase 5?!, there is only consoom.
I'd say the difference is personal, not in the product personally. You don't have to watch all the Marvel content. you can watch all of it if you like, or none of it if you like. You can watch the stuff that has your favourite characters and ignore the rest if you like.
I'd personally say the "consoom" prototypical example is from the 80s. Pretty much every Saturday morning kids cartoon was there to sell toys. Transformers, Action Force (or G.I. Joe), Visionaries, He-Man, Care-Bears, MASK, Rainbow Brite, My Little Pony, Thundercats, Gobots, Centurions and probably more. Compared to the shows I watched in the 70s they were much more product focussed I think. To the extent in Transformers that except the main characters, most of the side characters would be left blank in the story until they knew which toy was being sold that they needed to insert. Watch show, pester parents to buy toy, and repeat with the next new show and toy.
Though of course the Hot Wheels cartoon was in 69, so all of those were just building off that.
Possible, but politically unsound.
Is it? I admit I have not noticed that. No-one seemed to care when my answer of "Have I seen the new Antman movie? was Nah, I might catch it on streaming if I have a couple of hours when I am bored one day. Or when I hadn't watched Ms Marvel as I didn't really care about her as a character.
Lucky for you. I learned some important lessons during GamerGate, and "it can't happen here" was not one of them.
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There's a phenomenon where a show is created to sell toys but the writers have free reign to do what they want as long as the toys are included in the show. That has resulted in a lot of good children's programming despite the intent being to sell toys.
I'd also point out that it just isn't true that all Marvel movies do well. If some Marvel movies are good, some are bad, and the audience is able to tell the difference and stays away from Eternals, can you really call it consooming?
And I'm skeptical that Han Didn't Shoot First counts as consooming. It wasn't Disney that originally made that change--it was Lucas. Lucas is the creator (or at least a major creator) of Star Wars, and he didn't change the scene to sell more product, he changed the scene because that was his idea, as the creator, for what the scene should be like.
Personally I thought Eternals was a good movie, better than quite a lot of their other offerings, but there we go. I am not sure the product being good insulates it from the claim in any case. Even if I really liked MASK, it seems a pretty good example of consumer culture. It was created specifically to get us to consume more, and not just to see more of the show itself.
Yeah revisions to Star Wars are their own trope, literally - George Lucas Altered Version in this case. He seems to see revising his movies as technology improves to simply be bringing them closer to his vision. He even did it to American Graffiti and THX 1138, which I don't think are great examples of consumerism.
If audiences can recognize whether the product is good or bad, and refuse to consume when it's bad, then the product may have been made to get them to consume for its own sake, but they aren't actually consuming for its own sake.
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