Believe it or not, this is the best time to be alive

[whatthehey]

21. Humans have a terrible time with aggregates and universalization

It takes an unusual knowledge of analytical techniques or an even more unusual degree of dispassionate circumspection to say the world is getting better when yours is getting worse.

Add to that this perverse Kunstlerite doomerism that pervades much of this site, where large numbers triumphantly predict the total collapse of capitalism any day now while naively believing in the fairy tale that a socialist utopia might replace a collapsing market economy, when the only things that ever have are brutal autocracy or destructive anarchy, and this piece is unlikely to be well received.

People in bad circumstances seek three things generally speaking. Help, blame and company. Nobody is interested in tales of plummeting UE rates when THEY can't get a job of their choice, because they fear both external and internal recognition that their plight is not universal and invincible and unconnected to their own choices.

Humans also have a tough time reacting to trends rather than absolutes. How many times have we seen morons respond to any news of improving GDP or UE or initial claims or whatever with variations of "well that's bullshit because everything's not perfect and wonderful. The factory in my town shut down last month"? They seem incapable of differentiating between improvement and perfection. If you weighed 400lbs, losing 30 still likely makes you massively overweight, but it also means you are rapidly solving your problem. Thus we see true, valid seachanges in violent crime "rebutted" with anecdotes of school shootings etc, and great improvements in global human rights abuse "rebutted" by real, but both parochial and themselves improving, instances of racial injustice in the US. Misery loves company indeed, but it also hates others being saved from misery.