John D. Rockefeller

I usually hate stories with headlines that use the “y” word, but you are richer than he was:

You could neither listen to radio (the first commercial radio broadcast occurred in 1920) nor watch television. You could, however, afford the state-of-the-art phonograph of the era. (It wasn’t stereo, though. And – I feel certain – even today’s vinylphiles would prefer listening to music played off of a modern compact disc to listening to music played off of a 1916 phonograph record.) Obviously, you could not download music.

There really wasn’t very much in the way of movies for you to watch, even though you could afford to build your own home movie theater.

Your telephone was attached to a wall. You could not use it to Skype.

Your luxury limo was far more likely to break down while you were being chauffeured about town than is your car today to break down while you are driving yourself to your yoga class. While broken down and waiting patiently in the back seat for your chauffeur to finish fixing your limo, you could not telephone anyone to inform that person that you’ll be late for your meeting.

People take too many things for granted.

15 thoughts on “John D. Rockefeller”

        1. Cool. Dentistry and plumbing? Could the same sedation used for a colonoscopy be used at the same time to crown a couple of teeth the dentist has under “watch” for cracks?

  1. He mentions it there, but for me the medical issues are overwhelming. Outpatient cataract surgery, hip replacements that actually work, pacemakers, etc.

    1. Antibiotics, vaccines, minimally invasive surgery, MRIs, emergency medicine, etc. The list of medical advances over the last 100 years is very long.

  2. What is wrong with “you” in a headline? Is it because it sounds clickbait-y, or is there there some other reason? I still use Strunk & White as my style guide, so I obviously need help..

  3. And if they’re not clickbait-y, I also find “you” headlines preachy. Which annoys me, particularly on my more curmudgeonly days.

    1. Sure, Capitalism has brought us lots of comforts but not everyone can enjoy them so we need socialism to bring them to the masses. And also, those comforts are really pretty terrible when you think about it so we need to get rid of them for our own good. It might a chaotic switch so we need some top notch scientifically minded technocrats to oversee the change over. Anyone with a degree in the social sciences should do.

      1. To bring luxuries to the masses, the primary requirement is that their cost be driven way down. That is done by innovation and relentless optimization, which means capitalism, not socialism.

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