The "good old days" bit at the end was a bit obtuse. Clearly life expectancy and quality of life has gone up. People are less likely to die a horrible death. Even if there are more violent crimes driven by new money and disparity between classes, if it isn't just increased connectivity and a huge amount more news making more people hear about violent crime more often, then people are still better off.
But it seems like everywhere people are driven by their crappy human risk assessment system. The west has been inundated with the stats about crime rates going down but the "fear of crime" going up (seems like the fear is more correlated to the news cycle than the crime rate but that's besides the point).
So the irrational "good old days"/out of proportion fear of rare events thing seems be another common American and western trait. I guess he's inadvertently supporting his premise with this misunderstanding as well.
The "good old days" bit at the end was a bit obtuse. Clearly life expectancy and quality of life has gone up. People are less likely to die a horrible death. Even if there are more violent crimes driven by new money and disparity between classes, if it isn't just increased connectivity and a huge amount more news making more people hear about violent crime more often, then people are still better off.
But it seems like everywhere people are driven by their crappy human risk assessment system. The west has been inundated with the stats about crime rates going down but the "fear of crime" going up (seems like the fear is more correlated to the news cycle than the crime rate but that's besides the point).
So the irrational "good old days"/out of proportion fear of rare events thing seems be another common American and western trait. I guess he's inadvertently supporting his premise with this misunderstanding as well.