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Re:I'm Wil Wheaton. I Live with Chronic Depression and Anxie... by gascan on Friday August 24, 2018 @07:18PM (#17838529)
Here is your tea, sugar, salt, and spices each for a pittance. Here are your 600 thread count sheets, your satin for a song, your comfortable house that heats & cools itself. Your telephone and computer, which do the work of an army of couriers & mathematicians. Your Netflix subscription, which can keep you endlessly entertained.

And, if you want ships and armies, you can always join the military and pursue a command. Remember, many kings of old were not just politicians with military powers bestowed on a purple cushion, they were war figures who rose to the top of the bloodshed. Think Andrew Jackson, Washington, Grant.

Re:I'm Wil Wheaton. I Live with Chronic Depression and Anxie... by petermcneeley on Friday August 24, 2018 @07:37PM (#17838633)
Perhaps my tastes are too low but for food there is nothing better than cooked meat of which the kings had in abundance. Netflix is a (virtual) substitution for real drama, real romance , and real violence. If your gonna count the netflix you might as well just say The Matrix is material utopia.
Re:I'm Wil Wheaton. I Live with Chronic Depression and Anxie... by gascan on Friday August 24, 2018 @07:49PM (#17838679)
OK, but you can eat fresh corn-fed beef, grass-fed beef, chicken, bison, venison, kangaroo, turkey, tuna, salmon, halibut, duck, swordfish, pork, lamb, sheep, eel, clam, oyster, mussel, lobster, crab, ... shall I go on?
Re:I'm Wil Wheaton. I Live with Chronic Depression and Anxie... by petermcneeley on Friday August 24, 2018 @08:00PM (#17838718)
I myself have a pretty basic palate but the kings did enjoy quite a variety of foods. http://www.picturebritain.com/2012/11/whatdidhenryVIIIeat.ht...

Either way the point is that Materially the kings were exceedingly wealthy and if you just translate what they had to today they still remain so.