I don't think it has much to do with material abundance or status consumption as much as it is simply inequality. The productivity vs. real wage gap[1] that began in the early 1970s is well documented. Productivity gains since then have been largely captured by shareholders rather than workers. Quality of life is relative. While a poor person today may personally have more material abundance than a King in the 1300s or a middle class clerk in the early 1800s, their quality of life is still worse because it is measured relative to everyone else today.

1: https://www.epi.org/publication/understanding-the-historic-d...

I would tend to agree with this with the addition of the fact that labor rights have degenerated too.

The relationship between working people and let's say "capital" used to be more tenuous. This had ramifications for political stability in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but by the middle of the century we had a decent balance of power between laborers and companies, mediated by the government.

Union membership + secret societies were a huge building block of everyday life. If you haven't ever walked through a graveyard, I encourage you to do so. Look at the headstones of people who died before the 1980s. A huge number belong to a secret society or trade union group (for the sake of simplicity let's ignore the uncomfortable racial aspects many of these organizations may have had, they were still pillars of community even if they were racist pillars of community)

Contrasted with up until very recently where the norm was about bragging how hard you work (for someone else). Rugged individualism, not collectivism, is what some would consider to be the highest virtue today. Not to say this is a root cause, but just an example of change that can be analyzed in some weighted equation.

If it's an incomplete theory, it's been incomplete for the 400-500 years or so it's existed. No more excuses then, the "theory" needs to be fixed and practiced before the whole planet goes to an early grave.

Can't agree that the improvements since the 70s have been marginal. The internet is one of the greatest quality of life improvements humanity has ever created, especially relative to its cost.

I posted this comment elsewhere, but I think the marginal utility of our advancements is definitely decreasing.

The internet itself is just a method of getting information, most of which is garbage.

To use an analogy, let's say the telephone just got invented. Hey I can call my brother in Tampa, this rocks! But now you get spam calls every day, every time you try to use your phone you have to listen to an ad to call your brother. People call you at random times of the night telling you they are going to kill you.

Hyperbole, but you can see how a QOL of life improvement can also just be another vector for the bullshit you already have to put up with every day.

Certainly the internet brings new problems that we have to grapple with, but overall I can't agree that it's net negative. Riffing on your phone example, are you really claiming that dealing with spam calls is bad enough to counteract the huge gains you get from being able to talk to your family and friends whenever you want? Imo that's not even close to true.

There's certainly a lot more bullshit to deal with today than there was in the past, and I can respect how leads to some level of existential angst and mental health issues, but I can't agree that it has overall made life worse.

I do think that life is better with the internet, but a counterpoint I'd like to make is that humans are very quick to adapt to material change.

Someone who goes from making $600 to $8000 a month will see their stress levels reduced but the $8000 will quickly become just a number for them.

To use another analogy, programmers will always quickly squander the gains made by the chips. I bitch and moan about webpack and React because I've never written a GUI in C, the intermittent gains are invisible to me.

Now for kids born after the internet's invention, they don't even understand the benefits of having the internet. Those are invisible. The negative effects are crystal clear though.

In my example, I am not saying webpack made life worse, but that it's easy to see what's wrong with it and hard to see what's right.

On the whole I would disagree.

1. Humans seem to do best in social groups of ~50 people. Connecting everyone to everyone doesn’t seem to be working very well from a societal standpoint.

2. https://www.theonion.com/report-90-of-waking-hours-spent-sta...

Does the internet make us more productive? Sure. Does this improve the human condition? Not clear. Will the sum total gains eventually outweigh the costs? Maybe. But then again, it may also destroy civilization. Generative AI distributed over the internet has the capability to unravel everything.

This is the shift from "capitalism efficiently allocating resources to fulfill needs" to "capitalism manufacturing wants".

Would appreciate reading recommendations in this area if anyone has any.