I really like this idea of listing things to be thankful for. I might just start up a mega list in my house for my kids to contribute to. Maybe a binder? Something we can revisit together and contribute to.
Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful
81–90 of 349 posts
Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google "The Enclosures". In Britain people had their right to subsist off common land removed by Parliament[1]. You can argue that the move from agriculture to industry, from countryside to city, would have happened anyway. What is indisputable is that for many people, the possibility of subsisting in the ways they had before were systematically removed by the state (at the time under the complete control of the prop…
Would enclosures not have happened if industrialization didn't? IMO this was inevitable because peasants simply lost the leverage that they had received after the black plague. Countries like the US had no such laws, yet they all went through the same industrialization occurred all the same.
I don't know. Impossible to tell, I guess. I'm just pointing out that choice didn't come into it for many people. What choices they would have made had history gone differently, I can't say.
Whatever might, hypothetically have happened in another timeline, as a matter of historical fact it was not a peaceful, free-market process of people voting with their feet.
Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful
#83Thank you, a lovely list. 7, 23, 24 were driven by the common unusual political occurrence of fair economic opportunity. These rare times where a balance of power occurs, by special circumstances, between the former autocratic rulers and everyone else. In Britain (7), domestic Royal monopolies were abolished etc creating an economic and legal environment where entrepreneurs would be rewarded. So people started invest…
To be picky, the timescale/locations of #23 is way off: Socrates (Athens= 470–399 BC Plato (Athens) 423-348 BC Aristotles (Athens) 384–322 BC Archimedes (of Syracuse) some 2-3 centuries later 287-212 BC Euclid (of Alexandria) was active in Alexandria around 300-270 BC Hyppocrates (of Kos) 470-360 BC Pytagoras (of Samos) 570–495 BC Thucydides (Athens) 460-400 BC Herodotus (of Halicarnassus) 484-425 BC Aesop (?) 620-56…
Also, the capital of a major economic/military power will usually attract the ambitious people from the surrounding regions. Its equivalent to saying "wow, so many famous actors lived in Hollywood!"
Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful
#84I'm thankful for Hacker News and internet cultures that support and share articles like this. Things that are intellectually gratifying without being overly specific, topical, or focused on any particular goal. Just interesting thoughts for the sake of their interestingness.
Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful
#85Thank you, a lovely list. 7, 23, 24 were driven by the common unusual political occurrence of fair economic opportunity. These rare times where a balance of power occurs, by special circumstances, between the former autocratic rulers and everyone else. In Britain (7), domestic Royal monopolies were abolished etc creating an economic and legal environment where entrepreneurs would be rewarded. So people started invest…
To be picky, the timescale/locations of #23 is way off: Socrates (Athens= 470–399 BC Plato (Athens) 423-348 BC Aristotles (Athens) 384–322 BC Archimedes (of Syracuse) some 2-3 centuries later 287-212 BC Euclid (of Alexandria) was active in Alexandria around 300-270 BC Hyppocrates (of Kos) 470-360 BC Pytagoras (of Samos) 570–495 BC Thucydides (Athens) 460-400 BC Herodotus (of Halicarnassus) 484-425 BC Aesop (?) 620-56…
Some of those haven't been reported to sit foot or have much to do with Athens!! At least Archimedes and Pythagoras.. Even Aristotle was a foreigner to Athens, although he learned a lot from his Athenian counterparts! Herodotus wasn't Athenian either!!
Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeast are not bacteria. They are eukaryotes.
I‘m thankful for nerds who make corrections so I can learn some interesting fact.
Actually, yeasts are unicellular fungus. I believe that fungus are the most important life-form in this planet by far.
Pretty cool, huh? :)
Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful
#87> meaning that people with a sweet tooth can avoid the large, known harms of sugar with minimal exertion of willpower Aspartame tastes so awful I can't see how that's going to make me thankful.
Diet sodas to me taste awful, but lately I've been putting a single packet of Equal in my coffee with some vanilla and it tastes great. Lord knows I can cut out the sugar wherever possible.
Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful
#880. That some HN commenters rush to call bullshit out when they detect a lot of it.
Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would like to see evidence, that people were pushed into the factories. I was under the impression, that many went into the factories, because working in agriculture was not easy, as machines were not common. And once factories were there, humans improved working conditions there. While in agriculture, well, way more difficult to do, as the work had to be done.
In seeing what has recently happened in China, I would agree. A gigantic migration has occurred in the past few decades where Chinese peasants moved from rural areas to the cities to work in factories. I thought for a long time "Why would so many people do this? This factory conditions are quite horrible, or at least the definition of soul-crushing monotony. I watched a pretty good documentary about this, and the ans…
> Why would so many people do this? This factory conditions are quite horrible, or at least the definition of soul-crushing monotony.
Another part of the answer is that their lives in agriculture were not all that great either. Many of them could have moved back, but they did not, because as bad as this was, it was still better or comparable. The factories made them earn more money and regular money.
People tend to romanticize the agricultural or even hunters-gatherers lifestyle. In ideal conditions, it can be good. But conditions are not always ideal.
Re: Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Why would so many people do this? This factory conditions are quite horrible, or at least the definition of soul-crushing monotony. Because, as horrible as the factory conditions might seem to modern eyes, they weren't, in general, as horrible as being an agricultural stoop labor peasant (either in the west in premodern or Victorian times, or in China today). Serfs were running away to the cities way back in the M…
But on the other hand, the Enclosures provoked a number riots[1], so I don't think everyone agreed with you that "free" city life was better than rural serfdom, with common rights intact. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure#Enclosure_riots
Of course everyone didn't agree. People don't work that way. Even today, there are people who prefer living in cabins without electricity or running water somewhere out in the Brooks Range of Alaska. However, most people don't do that (though a large number claim to aspire to something like that, few actually do it, and of the ones who actually do it, even fewer stick it out once the realities set in).
The point is that the migration to the cities was in progress long before the Enclosure Acts came on the scene.