Not only life, but the good life. 90% of people today live a much better life than lords and kings lived 500 years ago.
I'm not sure this is true. For one, you can't really compare lives, and for two, happiness seems to be determined by social factors in ways that would make this untrue.
Being able to play music whenever I want is a power that kings could only dream of, but if they had it they would get bored of it probably pretty quickly.
If I could trade all my modern comforts for a minor lordship in the medieval era I would do so in a heartbeat. I'd have good friends, no need to worry about political plots, a good social circle, access to whatever resources I needed, plenty of time to do things I want - a lot of the population doesn't have these things, and modernity doesn't give them to you.
You'd have to worry about what you leave to your kids. "Prime and Prejudice" comes to mind. If you didn't have a male heir, your estate might go to some distant relative. Even if you had, your kids who were not your first born son would only inherit a tiny fraction of your wealth. One or two generations down the line, their offspring will be destitute.
Also, who's to say the world isn't zero-sum now? I'm certainly feeling squeezed, even with all this supposed growth and modernity.
Famous last words…
Does this take into account the difference in medicine between the two time periods?
> not only has the human population grown like gangbusters, but the level of affluence per person has soared by an even larger factor. The impact on our planet scales as the product of these two
He just spins it as a bad thing.
He has, essentially, 3 actual graphs (GWP, extinction rate, CO2 emissions). The others are all subsets or proxies of those three or based on too few data points and fit to a curve that flatters his point.
This population explosion apocalypse is as old as time and each version of it fails to come true.
I guess lords and kings didn't have anything as entertaining as a $30 smartphone from Wal-Mart though. Lords could get killed by any of a variety of Malaria-like diseases back in the day, too, so maybe they weren't that much better off than a sub-Saharan African today..
But moreover they (and many lower stations) had security, free time, and a lack of precarity that is unavailable to roughly 90% of the population today. This is worth far more than better circuises and ranks about as highly as things like medicine and refrigeration.
What about the people living horrible lives out in rural India or Africa, though? I think they fall under the 90% of people that the comment above was talking about
In fact I would say their entertainment was far better and more wholesome than what we have today. Imagine going on hunts in lush untouched wilderness, or watching men fight to the death in an arena, or slithering off to your harem of beautiful women and having your way with whichever ones you fancy that day.
Indeed, I would say the best lifestyle would be a combination of this and our advanced medical techniques that allow us to live longer and more comfortable lives.
Indeed, but lets not forget that this luxury lifestyle is possible only by exploiting non-renewable resources, i.e. by stealing from future generations. I doubt history (if there will be one) will look kindly on us.
For example the top 6 materials produced by the world industries are: coal, oil, natural gas, concrete, steel and fertilizers. By 2050 the first 3 will be a tiny fraction of what we are consuming today. Concrete is not made of renewable materials, it's made primarily of sand, gravel and cement, which in turn is made out of limestone. All those can be considered as essentially infinite resources. Steel is one of the most recycled materials (in the US more than two thirds of all manufactured steel is recycled). Fertilizers are currently made primarily out of fossil fuels (natural gas), but that's a historical accident (fossil fuels only contain carbon and hydrogen, not nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus; they are simply the feedstock for hydrogen). Once we can produce green hydrogen, we'll remove fossil fuels from the fertilizer manufacturing process.
Bonus: next most produced material is plastics. Produced from fossil fuels today, can be produced from green hydrogen and carbon captured from CO2.