Originally Posted by roachboy
libertarians.
on the one hand, they'd prefer to erase all of reality since the late 18th century, while on the other they like to recapitulate the most one-dimensional kind of market ideology--all this 19th century horatio alger stuff (which of course wouldn't exist if they had their way and sent us all running back to the late 18th century.) and this all works better the less you know about what it might have been like to be alive in the late 18th century. you'd probably live 35-40 years. there'd be no running water, no plumbing, no electricity, no telecommunications--so we couldn't be having this discussion. chances are that you'd be illiterate in any event, depending of course on your family's economic situation, which would circumscribe most things about you. o sure, being some yeoman farmer might have been a grand exercise in self-definition, particularly if you could afford servants, but for the kids of most yeoman farmers, i imagine most of what they had to look forward to was being another yeoman farmer, like it or not.
unless of course you were wealthy.
but everyone wasn't.
unless you think the society of creative anarchronism style of restaging the mideval period (for example) is accurate. you know, everyone's a baron except for a couple maoists who like being peasants but no-one really talks to them.
but of course everything was better then because Grand Heroes Bestrode the Earth, Giants among men who wrote Words in the Constitution that must be interpreted in an absolutely literal fashion except for the words that set up a framework for historical development through precedent, which is of course a Bad Thing, particularly when it leads to outcomes that you don't like (take your pick) on other grounds....but whatever. fine fine fine.
life wasn't so great if you lived in most 18th century cities, so it's better to not think real hard about them because they get in the way of the notion of the Halcyon days by forcing you to look at stuff like epidemics (no modern medicine, no conception even that disease was spread by germs---miasma more like) and class and within that what tenuousness of existence really meant at the time. but hey, not a problem, leave that stuff all aside and why the hell not, it's a libertarian fantasy 18th century that we all want where everything is exactly as it is now except all the things libertarians don't like about the present have all gone away. so i assume that this 18th century is probably like some strange costume drama, sturbridge village maybe, someplace where you can take a break from dressing up as a blacksmith and being all authentic to go have a mass produced cigarette and maybe take a leak in a functioning bit of indoor plumbing and then maybe, if you're quick about it, stop and check your email or text a couple friends to see who's driving along the highways to the local watering hole where you'll get mass produced beer and engage in mass-produced conversation.
o yeah, and there weren't a whole lot of books to read. no radio to listen to, no tv to watch. no baseball to go to.
let's all scamper back.
no elbowing now.
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