As the richest man in the world's richest city, King Louis XIV was known as Roi Soleil, or the “Sun King.” France was said to revolve around him like the planets revolve around the Sun.
Every evening he took his dinner alone, and sat before forty golden plates with forty dishes to choose from. It took a shocking 498 servants to prepare his meal.
How could one man have such a selection of food every day? Because he was rich.
The king was rich because other people did things for him, and he could consume the work of other people.
Relatively speaking, you are much poorer than King Louis XIV. However, in the world of 2021 you live much better than the Sun King. Read below to consider the abundance we are blessed with today.
What does it mean to be rich?
For most of human history, wealth has been a zero sum game. The lower class held the burden of subsisting for themselves, and then providing for the various classes of chiefs, priests, and thieves above them.
In the age before the specialization, the upper class could live rich lives because they could take advantage of the labor of others, but the lower class was impoverished because they could not.
Having to provide everything for themselves limited the lower class greatly. Working hard to cook food, sew and hand-wash clothes, carry water, chop wood, plant and harvest subsistence crops, and other chores just to provide basic necessities easily took up all of their time.
For most of history, the rich could offload these chores to others. Not having to spend all of their time providing for their family liberated them to master an art or a trade, send their kids to school, talk about ideas, be entertained, start a business, enjoy leisure time, develop skills, and more to enjoy a better life.
Today, the benefits of being rich have been both improved and democratized.
How many people are ready to serve you?
A servant is someone whose work you get to use for the betterment your own life. You pay them with a small portion of your earnings, and everyone benefits.
We live in unprecedented times. Never before the last few decades has the average person been able to afford the luxury of someone else preparing their meals.
You may not have a private chef on your payroll, but you can decide on a whim to go dine at a Chinese, Indian, Italian, Mexican, casual, or any other type of restaurant nearby.
Countless teams of skilled chefs are waiting to serve your family with only a moment’s notice. If going to the restaurant is too much of a hassle, your very own driver from Doordash will even deliver your meal to your doorstep!
Consider just a few other examples of servants at your disposal:
You may not employ a personal tailor, but you have a near-endless supply of clothes to fit all sizes for all occasions available at an affordable price either on the internet or at the clothing stores a few minutes away.
You may not employ a lumberjack to supply firewood to cook with or keep your home warm in the winter, but operators of gas rigs in the Russian arctic are currently working to supply your clean and cost-effective kitchen needs and central-heating.
You may not employ personal entertainers or have your own orchestra, but video game designers, actors, authors, and artists have devoted their lives to entertaining you with content that is free or inexpensive.
You may not have a personal messenger to deliver your communications, but there is a repairman somewhere ensuring that the cell tower works so that your texts go through. If you do need to ship something physical, UPS can get it around the world in a matter of days.
You may not have your own horse and carriage, but someone designed and built you an automobile to get you around at high speeds. You can also purchase tickets to fly across an ocean and see a part of the world the Sun King never dreamed of seeing for just a few day’s wages.
Unlike the many servants who spent their lives at the beck and call of the Sun King, your modern-day servants also work for thousands of other people. As a result, we all get to benefit and enjoy a high standard of living. A standard of living that even the wealthiest in 1700 could only dream of.
The Perspective of a Rational Optimist
We live in an imperfect world, but it is a world that is improving and moving forward. Our lives comprise but a small part of the history of man, and it is difficult sometimes to step back from our difficulties and see the bigger picture.
Pessimism is perhaps the natural state of humanity, but there are more reasons to be optimistic than pessimistic about where we are and where we are going.
Today’s world is wealthier, healthier, and kinder than it has ever been for the average human being. This is because it is more interconnected than ever before.
As a result your work likely serves thousands of people in some small way, in return you are served by thousands of others, and everyone benefits.
The average person today enjoy more comforts, conveniences, freedom, and better health than even the wealthiest and most powerful people in the past.
TL;DR
It’s easy to compare our lives to those that are better off than we are today, but it is also worth keeping in mind how much better off we are than almost everyone before us.
The benefit of being rich is getting to consume the work of others. In today’s world we get to do that from the time we wake up until the time we fall asleep.
We live in a world of ever-more abundance, opportunities, and blessings. There will always be pessimists, but don’t let them drown out the optimists!
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Thanks for reading, and have a great Sunday!
Cooper