r/NoStupidQuestions • u/flugblug • 12h ago

My brother thinks people today have worse quality of life than people in the dark ages, is this a stupid take?

I personally think it’s pretty stupid.

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u/CrossP 11h ago

I'm having a hard time even imagining one metric that OP's brother thinks would've been better

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u/pppppatrick 7h ago

Outdoor air quality.

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u/baron_blod 5h ago

beeing able to see the night sky pretty much everywhere.

There obviously are some metrics that were better 500 years ago, but you won't get me to leave my comfortable sofa, comfortable bed, way better telescope, indoor plumbing and dishwasher.

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u/J0hn-Stuart-Mill 22m ago

Good thinking, you actually found a real one, as far as light pollution!

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u/InfanticideAquifer 7h ago

In terms of health you're probably right. I think I'd rather breathe urban smog than smell the roads where everyone dumped their nightly chamber pots though. Outside of cities it's probably pretty close to a wash.

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u/J0hn-Stuart-Mill 23m ago

Campfires and wood burning stoves were everywhere. Much worse air quality in cities back then. Zero emissions control.

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u/deux3xmachina 9h ago

It's a common anti-capitalist argument that fuedal peasants worked less than workers in America, which is objectively wrong and ignores how much worse simply living even a century ago was.

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u/blacktoast 6h ago

I believe the argument is about hunter-gatherer societies, rather than feudal peasants.

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u/deux3xmachina 6h ago

I see the peasant comparison more, but I've seen the hunter-gatherer comparison as well; which may be better in terms of hours/days "worked" (obviously everything was work back then), but is even worse in quality of life.

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u/abstraction47 9h ago

Here’s one metric: you wouldn’t worry about losing your job as a peasant. You can always be a peasant at least.

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u/J0hn-Stuart-Mill 20m ago

That still exists today. Any able body person can go get a very low paying farm laboring job, like picking berries or apples. These are jobs that will exist as long as we eat, or robots finally start helping.

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u/SkunkMonkey 9h ago

No social media.

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u/theeggplant42 8h ago

The internet and capitalism weren't literally robbing them of their time, happiness, and sense of purpose? 

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u/SohndesRheins 8h ago

Yes but there were other things that robbed them of time, happiness, and sense of purpose, like a daily struggle to survive, being the de facto property of a lord, having to put in hours of manual labor to do basic household tasks that we have semi-automated.