Comment

Comment by philwelch

You can have whatever fantasy world you want, but it’s still fundamentally incompatible with human nature. Even in the absence of material constraints, human beings will still compete for relative status. If you live in the United States today, you are incalculably wealthier than even the aristocrats of old, but this has not managed to alleviate envy.

Also, class difference has been decoupled from material wealth for centuries already. Just like a prosperous burgher from an Italian city-state in the early modern period was never considered the equal of an aristocrat who held a fraction of his wealth, a successful arctic fisherman, electrical lineman, or oil field worker is still in a lower social class than a less wealthy Ivy League graduate.

parent philwelch 3 years ago

Discussion

Live from the official Hacker News API

A modern reader for Hacker News · SvelteKit + Skeleton