This post seems reflect a confabulation between “utilons” and “wealth”, as well as a confabulation between “utilons” and happiness.
We have orders of magnitude more wealth per person than our ancestors.
We are not particularly good at turning wealth into happiness.
This says very, very little about how good we are at achieving any goals that we have that are unrelated to happiness. For example, the world is far less dangerous than it used to be. Even taking into account two world wars, people living in the twentieth century were far less likely to die a violent death than people living hundreds of years before that. Infant mortality has decreased dramatically, and average life expectancy has been increased. Even if we haven’t managed to buy happier life with our wealth, we’ve definitely managed to buy more life.
This post seems reflect a confabulation between “utilons” and “wealth”, as well as a confabulation between “utilons” and happiness.
We have orders of magnitude more wealth per person than our ancestors. We are not particularly good at turning wealth into happiness. This says very, very little about how good we are at achieving any goals that we have that are unrelated to happiness. For example, the world is far less dangerous than it used to be. Even taking into account two world wars, people living in the twentieth century were far less likely to die a violent death than people living hundreds of years before that. Infant mortality has decreased dramatically, and average life expectancy has been increased. Even if we haven’t managed to buy happier life with our wealth, we’ve definitely managed to buy more life.