A 1700s Rich Man in Britain

The best that we have seen so far is a poor guide to what is possible. To get some inkling of this, consider the life of a rich man in Britain in 1700—a man with access to the best food, health care, and luxuries available at the time. For all his advantages, such a man could easily die of smallpox, syphilis, or typhus. If he needed surgery or had a toothache, the treatment would be agonising and carry a significant risk of infection. If he lived in London, the air he breathed would be seventeen times as polluted as it is today.18 Travelling even within Britain could take weeks, and most of the globe was entirely inaccessible to him. If he had imagined a future merely where most people were as rich as him, he would have failed to anticipate many of the things that improve our lives, like electricity, anaesthesia, antibiotics, and modern travel.