People who claim that modern industrial tech and advancements have not benefited society is arguing that they are not being disproportionately benefited.
Industrial automation did create the 2hr weeks - only that it's the people who paid capital and and invested in their creation that got those 2hr weeks.
But everybody else got the benefit as the general access and availability of many more goods and services than otherwise would've been possible.
But having a lot of easy to access food certainly does. Or what about clean water, or electricity? Or cheap transport? When has there been in the past, before the advent of industrial automation and technology, that people could just travel on a whim somewhere more than a day's walk away?
Just because some symbol of luxury like the iphone is what you think of as "more stuff", doesn't mean it is. "more stuff" is _everything_, and while it does include the iphone, it also includes the cheap phone that makes it possible to communicate almost for free with almost anyone close or far.
The tickle down has been happening for the past 70 years, and the regular people have been benefiting so much that it looks normal now. I would use the analogy of boiling a frog, but somehow this doesn't quite suit.
>The tickle down has been happening for the past 70 years, and the regular people have been benefiting so much that it looks normal now.
This is just not true based on the data. The rich eat well - but food insecurity is still RAMPANT because of greed.
Food is less healthy now than ever and the majority of the population is malnourished - that is to say eating the wrong thing - despite us having enough capacity to produce quality food for everyone.
Food deserts ensure that the poorest people get the worst food.
Because they don't have as much money as other areas so people follow the money with where they provide services
>tend to lack education, including knowledge about healthy foods
This is also true and again structural - see above. Poor areas don't get school funding because school funding is based on county property taxes and thus, do more poorly than rich areas
It literally all boils down to structural inequality
Because they quality is so bad and the prices are so cheap.
Having lived in these areas for most of my life I can tell you it's often only specific low quality chains (Church's, Grannys, Jack in the Box etc...) or these "chicken wing/chinese food" shops that basically just fry up the worst meat and slather it in sugar sauce.
I recall in high school, peers of mine would simply eat a bag of Doritos for lunch - as even the classes like Home-economics were largely just holding cells for teenagers until graduation.
I'm not denying any of these improvements but there is also evidence that walking with this constant distraction and being bombarded by social media / news is bad for mental health and our ability to focus.
Because what would've been my self-sufficient tribe that needed nothing more than food, socialization, and shelter has been obliterated by various, human-made forces, and I now have to try and fill in the void by spending money.
Partly the social void via digital communication, and partly ancillary emotions generated by having something nice that makes my sisyphean pursuit just a little bit easier.
If I was able to live a life where I could see my friends and family, and be a part of a community, without any threat of that way of life being destroyed, I would not be working a job in a first world country.
Nor would I be stuffing my metaphorical and physical face with: entertainment, food, various media like video games, etc. Good company is enough to stay entertained for hours -- and it's free; but past a certain age becomes annoyingly more difficult to find as people get loaded on responsibilities, and time-commitments, and other things they believe are prudent for their "success."
I'm an extreme extrovert. My biggest gripe with capitalism is that it's alienated and killed the souls of all the people around me -- and now I have to spend copious amounts of money just to try and fill that void.
How about moving to Amish county? You always have a choice. Just don't expect to find there a social utopia where "everybody is free and everybody has at least 6 slaves", people are the same everywhere, with iPhones or not.
Yeah it’s like saying that if only we all had 800 hammers we’d all live like kings. Technology does not automatically make life better, only different. Better is a value judgement.
Why is the premise that a "better life" is one where we work fewer hours per week? Surely there are other dimensions on which to measure quality of life. Or maybe you'd prefer to live in Medeival Times? After all, you'd work fewer hours per week! Sure you might die at the age of 35, have your leg gruesomely amputated due to sepsis, or be burned at the stake for suggesting the earth spins around the Sun. But think of all the free time!
> Serfs in medieval Europe had very little free time. They were required to work long hours, usually from sunrise to sunset, and often had to work on Sundays and other holy days as well. Their work consisted of farming tasks such as plowing, planting, harvesting, and tending to livestock. In addition to their agricultural work, serfs were also required to perform labor for their lords, such as building and maintaining structures, repairing roads, and providing military service.
> Plowing and harvesting were backbreaking toil, but the peasant enjoyed anywhere from eight weeks to half the year off. The Church, mindful of how to keep a population from rebelling, enforced frequent mandatory holidays ... In fact, economist Juliet Shor found that during periods of particularly high wages, such as 14th-century England, peasants might put in no more than 150 days a year.
Oh, interesting. Isn't it only off from farming? I thought that's where making roads and dying in wars came in. But it's also true they had to have at least some free time to mate.
People are ditching their phones which to me proves their value isn't universal and probably isn't that great of a benefit to anyone other than business.
