There is a great difference between the way I live in San Francisco, Tokyo and Tel Aviv in the year 2013, and the way everyone lived on the planet in the year 1713.
That is the core of my rant about pro-commerce. I feel that I am pretty much alone in seeing a dramatic difference. And understanding that the difference is due to one single thing: the emergence and success of commerce.
In 1713 nearly everyone in the world faced daily hunger. Most people died of hunger and disease. When there was food it was constantly the same food day after day. There was very little variation in daily eating. In most of the world nature presented daily problems in the form of weather that was too hot, too cold, too windy, too dry or too wet. Each of these forms presented hazards from floods, famine or worse.
None of this was as serious and frequent as the daily emotional pain of death to family members, to close friends and to both friends and family when traveling.
Death and the threat of death was everywhere among humans. Survival depended on proper familial and class relations. Everyone needed the protection of his Lord, his large family, his cousins and everyone else in their social network simply for survival.
Now on top of all this world of terror, that much of the world still lives with, everyone faced incredible pain from their own bodies. The simplest and most frequent bodily pain was teeth. Everyone had abscess and root canal problems The more persistent were disabilities that came with birth such as bow legs, deformed feet, hunchbacks, vision and hearing problems as well as very common skin problems. Bathing in fresh water was rare or non-existent. There are dozens of diseases that I can't list because they are gone and their horror is not appreciated. But you still see them in Third World countries.
The most common problems around the world have been declining for a century. Polio, TB, the childhood diseases with lifetime consequences such as measles, mumps, rubella, and all the associated infections.
Why do I mention all of these problems.? Because it is hard for people to see, first that almost all of these problems have disappeared in the modern commercial world and second that we have commercially invented treatments for all these malignancies. They can’t be clearly seen as the sole inventions of the commercial world because they have been transmitted around the world by foundations, government and goodwill to every Third World country.
When I hear a Lefty bemoaning the triumph of commerce of big business of corporate success I hear that ignorant person blindly attacking the world that has removed all of us moderns from this unimaginable misery and pain.
Did medicine and the associated technology come from something other than commerce?
If it didn't, why did India look the way it did in 1960? It didn't have much commerce other than what the British brought.
Where was modern medical technology in Central America or the Congo in 1960? It wasn't there because medical technology, health aids, sanitation and the resulting longevity all come from commerce.
So does long distance instant communication, transportation, safe housing and the variety of life choices we now have available.
The most important part of this rant is that whoever we are today is because of the nearly millions of choices that commerce has created in the world of occupations, skills paying work functions. Virtually none of this is available in North Korea or Cuba. Our choice of who we are, our decision as to who we can become….. is the byproduct of booming commerce.