Of the rich living just like we all did, and what makes it possible

A look at one of the least discussed outcomes of "modernity" and "innovation".

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There has always been some members of the elites who lived frugally, spending and showing off, at least for some things or moments, much less than the masses. The most famous example may be King Charles, who's been wearing the same coat for 40 years and even recycled a 67-year old coat from his father. In the last ten or twenty years, however, the trend has been expanding in subtler, but in more interesting ways, for one common, equally interesting reason, or so it seems to me. Let me explain, by summarizing what's happening in several spheres of life.

Frugal clothing and accessories

This guy must be really poor, he only has one t-shirt.

Once upon a time, most rich people made sure their dresses showed how much money they have, while the poor carried along with a few indistinguishable rags. Today, the masses run after cheap, extravagant that's as colored and fast as it is polluting, while the Zuckerbergs and those who can afford it sport "quiet luxury" by always wearing "the same (real plain) outfits every day, or not buying covers for their smartphones.

REAL food

In darker ages, the poor ate whatever they could get their hands on straight from the land, while the rich killed themselves of gout by guzzling as much heavily "processed" food as they could. Today, the rich can and want to eat less but pasture-feed, free-range and all that. The rest of us would have to make do, after AI-managed fast food, with synthetic beef or other lab-made food that may even be impossible to grow at scale.

Parenthood

Once upon a time, most of the poor produced as many children as their bodies could afford, by ignorance or as labor force, while many rich people made an effort to have less, in order to preserve their wealth.

Today, it's the masses who give up on parenting altogether. For some, it is a actually free, actually thoughtful choice, that nobody should criticize or disrespect. But for too many it's half because they are working poors, and half because they've been convinced by "market" forces that, since it would leave them free to spend whatever they can on endless products or services, not having kids is the smartest thing they could do.

At the same time, individual with so much money they can believe they could survive on Mars have 12 children, and elite couples promote (their own, self-) "breeding to save mankind" in perplexing ways including really expensive fertility techniques, for perplexing reasons.

Elon Musk, with as many kids as a poor farmer in the 1800s (image source).

Offspring access to tech

The gap on parenthood is just as wide among people who do become parents. As recently as one or two generations ago, even rich children could access real computers, never mind computer networks, only in special places, with adult supervision.

Today, unlimited, uncontrolled access to state-of-the-art personal tech is granted to, if not forced upon, unprivileged kids, who are abandoned to addictive apps, the more the better, to be convinced as soon as possible that such an imitation of the rich or, even worse: such a "living through the rich" is all it takes to be a sane, cool adult. tech is for poor kids only, who are abandoned to addictive apps, the more the better, and even convinced that this pretending to live like the rich or, even worse: live through the rich is all it takes to be a sane, cool adult.

Rich kids, instead, go to exclusive schools capable to deliver “state-of-the-art, cutting-edge technology resources, along with the knowledge and skills to use these tools in a meaningful way.”

The really rich kids, by Steve Jobs or Bill Gates-level parents get even more freedom from addicting tech than their poorer peers, be it "tech-free dinners and no smartphones past 10 pm, sometimes no cell phones period, or "banning screens from class altogether".

That is, children of poorer and middle-class parents risk being raised by screens, (in UK, and surely elsewhere), while rich children are much more likely to keep maturing on human-written books instead of AI-generated shit full of errors. Over time, that divide will extend to communication methods and skills: "In a post-literate era, those who continue to read and to practice critical thinking skills will increasingly be unable to effectively communicate with those who don’t" (source).

This will be a result of another reversal, i.e. rich kids using the Internet much like poor kids used to eat real meat: as an opportunity, or privilege, to be taken in small doses. Modern poor kids will be handicapped by using the Internet like rich pupils of the past used expensive wines or cigars to waste themselves, that is "mindlessly". It really seems only rich parents get, or can afford to get, that the real solution to this problem is the simplest.

Tech-free living, and human contact privileges

Of course, the same divide on tech is present among adults, and flipped in the same way. Once upon a terribly recent time, owning and personally operating anything electronic beyond Casio watches used to be an actual status symbol, or the prerogative of exclusive, well respected jobs like astronaut, physicist, computer scientist... Now, the status symbol is being able to not touch such devices, and is just accelerating, as Geordie on Mastodon, said really well:

I genuinely reckon the hallmark of being rich in the future will be that you can opt out of AI and “smart” computational shit. Someone doing alright will have a phone that can take the “best” image from a photo, and a watch that gives notifications and be able to pay for stuff by blinking at a scanner, but a RICH person will have a camera that takes a nice photo, a watch that’s very well made and just tells the time, and a really nice leather wallet.

For the record, that's a comment about a single real spouse, that faulty AI turned into three impossible ones:

From remote controlled vibrators to surveillance delegated to robodogs or face recognition, and software actually counterfeiting humans, so much contemporary technology just "frees" everybody from ever being close or just talking to other human beings that one suspects that's its actual and ONLY purpose.

Of course, that's a purpose, or more exactly a condition, that only the rich can really opt out of. I have been thinking for years that THE only real privilege of people with way more money than one may ever spend sensibly is not material wealth, but the capability to choose exactly which other real human beings can be around them in any moment. Or, as the New York Times put it, human contact is now a luxury good. Even the off-grid life that once was the curse (or not?) of hillbillies is now "a boon for the wealthy, a burden for the rest".

What all these reversals have in common

Possibly the main, likely the most important thing that's behind every reversal I've mentioned is digital technologies. Certain things are not new, of course. But nothing I described could happen so fast, everywhere, without being digitized in one way or another. I see this as another confirmation that, rather than being "INNOVATION!!!" in and by itself, always, digital technologies are "just" something that seriously amplifies everything it touches, good or bad it's the same.

My working slogan for almost twenty years now.

Point is, in the long run, letting all these "amplifications" continue will result (or is resulting?) in the emergence of two separate species, less likely (or able, see “post-literate” above) to interbreed than the Sapiens and Neanderthals of yore. After all, even without reversals, dating digitally enhanced by apps or by the self-segregation power that's the core of "social" media already amounts to self-inflicted eugenics.

Final, obvious questions: If giving up parenthood, offsourcing children to uncontrollable tech, spending as much as possible on dumb tech or dresses and generally being lonely... had real value, why would so many of the people who got the highest freedom of choice exactly by offering those opportunities... do just the opposite? Why shouldn't we start imitating the supposedly sharpest tools in the box now, at least in the easy cases where it would even save us money, instead of just making them even richer?