I love the wonderful circular arguments of those of the "progressive" persuasion. According to them we are living in the worst possible times (to quote Charles Dickens) and most of them, despite serious differences in their "causes" (socialist, race, feminism, veganism ext) all seem to agree that it is "capitalism's" fault. But when a classic liberal or capitalist points to the successes of free market and capitalism, such as production, life expectancy, roads, (to paraphrase "life of Brian":) then the goalposts move to "but we were healthier, happier and better" as cavemen eating roots and killing one another. Sorry this is where Steve Pinker, Niall Ferguson and Thomas Hobbes agrees, life was short and brutish, and the establishment of the state and free market was a brilliant idea and has done an awesome job of making life better, and even saving the planet.
