[incomingpain]

We are living in the best times in human history. 200 years ago, the wealthiest kings in the world didnt live in such luxury.

We are pulling people out of poverty like no other era has ever been able to do.

In my lifetime I expect we create a food factory that takes clean water, atmosphere, and electricity in. Automation happens, no humans, and it produces foods. We can simply build as many of these as we please, anywhere.

Literally everywhere I look things are going fantastically.

[adrian_b]

You must be very lucky.

My grandparents were not rich at all, but they still owned houses and land that I will never be able to buy from the salary of an engineer or programmer. I own my apartment, but its true value is far less than of the big houses and ample lands on which my grandparents lived.

Moreover, while there is an abundance of cheap and reasonably healthy food around me, I cannot find at any price food with a comparable quality with that which I could eat at my grandparents, which was produced by themselves, from their cultivated land and from their animals.

There is an abundance of cheap clothes, cheap enough that there is no need to worry about repairing them, like in the distant past, but anything that I can buy in a normal shop has a much worse quality than the clothes that were available many decades ago. At least unlike with food, I can still find good quality clothes, but only if I order them online from various countries and from a different country for every kind, as there is no place where everything is optimum (e.g. I buy some things from Sweden, others from Scotland, others from Ireland, others from Austria, and so on).

There are of course things that are much better, mainly those with electronic components, but there are already many years since the prices of these have been growing almost continuously, so they have become less and less affordable.

In conclusion, while there are plenty of things that are much better than when I was young, there are also a lot of things that are much worse. It hard to say which is the balance between bad and good, especially because the things that have become worse are essential necessities, while those that have become better are mainly optional things, useful for research or entertainment.

[greygoo222]

You can most likely afford to buy a viable homestead in a rural area if you wanted to. Your problem isn't that you can't afford a house, it's that you can't afford a house in San Francisco.

I sincerely doubt that you can't find food better than your grandparents' by any objective measure. I suspect this is just nostalgia. I've lived and ate at rural family farms before, and while they often have better tomatoes than a typical supermarket and other tiny perks, if I had to pick between getting my food from the family farm and getting my food from a supermarket every day, I'd pick the supermarket without question. And I can always go to an upper-end market or a farmer's market if I really craved high-quality tomatoes.

I have never had any complaints about the quality of my clothes, including clothes bought at physical stores. I'm not sure why ordering clothes online is a downside.

[incomingpain]

>You must be very lucky.

No i wouldnt agree. Post birth surgeries, then age 4 infectious disease that is now taught in Med universities because of how badly that went, one of the few people ever in history. I had my own icu area after surgeries. After I recovered, I did start grade 1 like a normal kid. I made my first ever friend, who then got hit by a car and died.

few years later I had a particularly bad ragweed season and nearly died. Ended up a bubble boy for months. Few years after that the catholic priest thing happened to me.

Ya, I wouldnt say im lucky.

>My grandparents were not rich at all, but they still owned houses and land that I will never be able to buy from the salary of an engineer or programmer. I own my apartment, but its true value is far less than of the big houses and ample lands on which my grandparents lived.

I dont know where you live but in north america there's tons of opportunities like this. I could probably buy and renovate a house in Detroit for a few months salary.

>Moreover, while there is an abundance of cheap and reasonably healthy food around me, I cannot find at any price food with a comparable quality with that which I could eat at my grandparents, which was produced by themselves, from their cultivated land and from their animals.

Homesteading in north america is hard work but very rewarding. The governments practically pay for you to do it. But it is a ton of work.

>In conclusion, while there are plenty of things that are much better than when I was young, there are also a lot of things that are much worse. It hard to say which is the balance between bad and good, especially because the things that have become worse are essential necessities, while those that have become better are mainly optional things, useful for research or entertainment.

When i read your post, it reads like you're doing all the right things but are in the wrong place.

Consider the same water bottle but in different places.

At costco is .25cents.

At restaurant is 1$.

On a flight is 2$.

Middle of a desert, no other store for 50km, 5$.

On the spacestation its 10$.

[greygoo222]

It's crazy that you accuse the person you're replying to of being lucky, when your comment is the epitome of privilege. Since the year 2000, child mortality rates declined over 2x in Africa and Asia. That is millions of children who, in another era, wouldn't have had the opportunity to grow up.

I don't think your complaints about your life are true, see my other comment, but even if they were they make no impact in the big picture of "has the world gotten better or worse."