News From 1930

[Parsad]

Terrific blog by Isaac summarizing newspaper clips from the 1930's!  Cheers!

 

http://newsfrom1930.blogspot.com/

[ERICOPOLY]

Canadian government carries out aerial bombing raids on schools of porpoises blamed for predation on cod.

[Parsad]

I thought that was quite funny!  I wonder what some of our headlines today will sound like in 70 years.  Cheers!

[Uccmal]

How about this:

 

"Alberta government considers building a Nuclear Reactor to extract oil from oil sands"

 

 

[Guest Broxburnboy]

I see one of the newspaper ads has fine mohair suits selling for 25.00. In 1930 the pegged price of gold was 21.00/oz, so the old saying "an ounce of gold will always by a men's fine suit" looks approximately true. I did a quick google and found a quoted price for a (probably) comparable suit today for 350.00 pounds sterling (about 600.00US or .6 oz of gold). Looks like gold has held its purchasing power (within an acceptable margin of error) over the last 80 years.

Just an obsessive compulsive observation.

 

[value-is-what-you-get]

I wonder what some of our headlines today will sound like in 70 years.  Cheers!

 

  We all know smoking cigarettes is ridiculous although at some point Doctor's did TV commercials promoting their benefits.  So was driving around without seatbelts and dumping motor oil down the drain etc etc.

 

I wonder what we as a civilization and/or individually are doing right now that in 50 or 100 years will appear so obviously ridiculous as Doctor's promoting cigarettes was only 50 years ago?

 

Two things that spring to my mind are our complete dependence on oil and war as some sort of solution for anything. 

 

Any other thoughts from the sharp minds around here?

[rkbabang]

I wonder what some of our headlines today will sound like in 70 years.  Cheers!

Two things that spring to my mind are our complete dependence on oil and war as some sort of solution for anything. 

Any other thoughts from the sharp minds around here?

 

 

I think if I had to guess, or rather I had to hope, it will seem absurd that we put our faith in politicians and government to "fix" markets and solve world problems (the slaughter of war being just one of the many absurdities).  That in an age where we now have the ability to "speak" for ourselves to the world, we let our "leaders" speak for us as if one man can speak for 300 million. Our complete and utter reliance on, and faith in, a few men wearing funny costumes or holding lofty titles to rule over us will someday seem primitive and humorous to those who will one day speak for and rule only themselves.  And the notion that a single human being or any group of human beings can have the wisdom to know enough about the wants and motivations of millions, or even billions, of people and to have the hubris to "set interest rates" or fiddle with the money supply will seem absurd, or decide which businesses are "too X to fail"  whether X equals "big", "important", "politically connected", etc. If humanity is lucky the word "Keynesian" will bring the same reaction to the average person as the word "fascism" does today.

 

Of course this is all probably just my wishful thinking. We could be heading into another dark age where we'll let those who rule us stifle progress for another 1000 years just as what happened after Rome collapsed under the weight of its grown-too-big government and its empire it could no longer afford ... until the next renaissance ushers in a new age of increased individualism and freedom once more.

 

I've just laid out the best and worst cases, the reality will probably be somewhere in between.

 

--Eric