01-07-2017, 12:36 AM
(01-05-2017, 02:55 PM)David Horn Wrote:(01-05-2017, 12:54 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: I remember people making those arguments, but to be honest I don't really see any parallels as of yet, and it is a period of history of which I am quite fond.
I'm very skeptical of comparisons made across the Agricultural Age boundary. Something changed when the basic economic model was disrupted by industrial processes that made long held assumptions less valid or simply invalid. One basic necessities could be manufactured rather than fabricated by hand, the Maslow needs hierarchy of the masses started shifting away from survival to higher order implied needs. That's only migrated further in the 200 years since.
I'm not certain we are totally the same creatures we were in the 18th century, though some of us (very few) could survive there quite well. If that's true, then the history of those earlier times may relate less directly to us today than, say, the 14th century to the 17th. Most people today have what only the elite had then, and many things they couldn't even imagine. How impactful is that?
Does economics really matter in this case?