… is from page 6 of Jean-Philippe Delsol’s excellent essay – “The Great Process of Equalization Continues” – which is Chapter 1 of the new (2017) English-language translation of the volume of collected essays edited by Delsol, Nicolas Lecaussin, and Emmanuel Martin, Anti-Piketty:
Our view of human history is often biased by a historical effect of position, a kind of 21st-century glasses, undoubtedly amplified by the persistent myth of a precapitalist golden age, populated by cheerful people, eating their fill and living free, healthy, and long lives. In reality, the daily life of an average person before the advent of capitalism was much crueler than even the images evoked by Balzac of the 19th-century industrial age, which have haunted our conscience since adolescence.
Our view of human history is often biased by a historical effect of position, a kind of 21st-century glasses, undoubtedly amplified by the persistent myth of a precapitalist golden age, populated by cheerful people, eating their fill and living free, healthy, and long lives. In reality, the daily life of an average person before the advent of capitalism was much crueler than even the images evoked by Balzac of the 19th-century industrial age, which have haunted our conscience since adolescence.The post Quotation of the Day… appeared first on Cafe Hayek.