I really never have believed times improved, and i am almost positive things will only get worse.
30 years ago we had a future to look to, the unshittified internet, great music, affordable land/housing, affordable durable cars, people actually interacted in real life, no social media trash. Now, we have billionaires and LLMs. I don’t see how anyone can possibly think times are better or going to improve.
Yes, everyone will say “civil rights improved” and yes thats maybe the only thing that has changed, however it’s getting taken away every day again so I don’t think you can even use that point anymore.
Billionaires aren’t new. I also don’t really think LLMs will be as impactful as they get hyped or feared to be, and actually think AI as a whole outside mere chatbots will be positive if not the revolution it gets hyped as.
Honestly I do think there has been an improvement. It might not seem like that when viewing the past, but the past is easy to overestimate- we don’t have to live it anymore.
As to civil rights, it should be pointed out that while recent years have seen regression in the US, its not always a regression to the point that things were at back then, and more importantly, the rest of the world does not necessarily share the political woes of the US.
Actually billionaires are a new thing. There were like 2 of them in 1992. Now there’s what, over 15? I forget.
Because of inflation and such, but the important aspect of them is being super rich compared to everyone else (hence we don’t count people that have a billion of some much less valuable currency), and that’s a very old problem.
The American oil magnate John D. Rockefeller became the world’s first confirmed U.S. dollar billionaire in 1916.
Edit: Five years after the introduction of the Forbes 400 List, the magazine launched its famous World Billionaires round-up. Forbes highlighted a total of 140 billionaires in 1987, including 96 outside of the US, which means that between 1982 and 1987 the number of American individuals with 10-figure-plus fortunes grew from 15 to 44.