> The idea that a medieval peasant would be envious of our standard of living is doing nothing to further the point you are trying to make.
It is a fair chunk of the point I'm making - you still have the option of living like a medieval peasant if that is important to you. The option never went away. It is still on the table. People could have kept doing what they did before and maintained the lifestyle that they were used to. It is more that people choose not to do that and I've been saying a variant of that in every comment in this thread so far. The only people who chose to do it that way wouldn't have if they'd had any alternatives because the lifestyle it enabled was terrible.
Having better options available doesn't mean the old option isn't available, more that someone'd need to be either a bit stupid or very motivated to live a particular lifestyle to choose it. it has been a lousy option that led to a mean existence for all of human history. It still does. But in absolute terms, it would be a better option in the modern economy than the ancient one.
It is a fair chunk of the point I'm making - you still have the option of living like a medieval peasant if that is important to you. The option never went away. It is still on the table. People could have kept doing what they did before and maintained the lifestyle that they were used to. It is more that people choose not to do that and I've been saying a variant of that in every comment in this thread so far. The only people who chose to do it that way wouldn't have if they'd had any alternatives because the lifestyle it enabled was terrible.
Having better options available doesn't mean the old option isn't available, more that someone'd need to be either a bit stupid or very motivated to live a particular lifestyle to choose it. it has been a lousy option that led to a mean existence for all of human history. It still does. But in absolute terms, it would be a better option in the modern economy than the ancient one.