Comments on: The Golden Age

By: Robert

Robert — Tue, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Fear-mongering has gone on for so long that no one knows how to get along without it. "Don't take my doom away." So we blow events out of proportion and make catastrophes up out of whole cloth. And there's a lot of money in it, from the Presidential level on down to people who make millions by selling bottled tap water to people who don't trust tap water.

But I decided to break the fear habit and go cold turkey. So far, so good.

By: EJ

EJ — Tue, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

But how long do you think the current golden age will last? I think it will pass quickly, and in the perspective of human evolution (10,000’s years) it will just be a blip. Good or bad it will have come and gone all in 100 years.

By: Robert

Robert — Tue, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The answer is that, in the old days, things were even worse. People got polio just by swimming in apparently pure lakes or streams because of untreated sewage (this happened to my father). Poor tillage practices resulted in the Dust Bowl. You could get anthrax, typhoid fever, or cholera just by handling food or drinking the local water. Many people started wearing dentures in their twenties or thirties. Eggs that we would consider unfit for human consumption (grades B and C) were routinely sold in stores.

Things are much better today. Consumers have far more choices (just the options for buying water from different sources or tinkering with it via filters, distillation, treatment, etc. are dizzying) and there's far more information to guide them.

But most people aren't happy unless they're unhappy, so most of what you hear is gloom and doom.

By: EJ

EJ — Tue, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Why do you say: If you're the consumer, the answer is obviously, "The golden age is now."

Consumers now get lots of food cheap. But much of it is tasteless crap. Food related health problems are abundant from overweight to diabetes to heart disease. Of course people are living longer, in part due to better nutrition, too.

But even consumers are affected by poor farming practices albeit indirectly. Aquifer depletion, hormones in drinking water, soil erosion all these things are part of the cost of cheap food. And both farmers and consumers are soon going to have to pay the price. Not much of a golden age if the flip side is so obviously un-golden imho.