
“2014 has probably been the best year in history” - vixen99
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/11310456/Goodbye-to-one-of-the-best-years-in-history.html
======
dragontamer
People need to remember that as late as the early 1900s, the foreign policy of
world powers was described as "The Great Game". (Look it up, I kid you not).
Thousands of soldiers would march forward and die in unknown foreign soil in
the name of Imperialism and conquest.

It was under these politics of world conquest that WW1 and WW2 were fought
upon. All countries... US included, fell into the trap of imperialism.
Expanding during the Spanish American war, gaining the Philippines, Guam and
other territories.

The current world has no apatite for imperialism, although I guess this can
change quickly. But... knock on wood... lets hope the great powers of the
world continue to refuse a direct fight with each other. The worst we have
between great powers today are some economic rivalries.

~~~
maratd
> The worst we have between great powers today are some economic rivalries.

After WWII there were only two great powers left. Now there's one. It has
nothing to do with appetite. The military budget of the US dwarfs the other
countries. It would be suicidal to start a war that the US will seriously want
to be involved in. Welcome to Pax Americana.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Americana](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Americana)

~~~
dragontamer
Historically though, the great power would have declared imperialism and began
conquering the world at this point. (Mongols, Romans, Alexander the Great,
Babylonians, Assyrians... etc. etc.)

It is historically very unusual for a great power to care so much about how
others think of them. Part of it is Hollywood. The US naively wants to be
loved. A major component of the misguided Iraqi War was that we'd be loved by
the Iraqis once we toppled Saddam.

Outside of Pax Romana, I don't think any of the other great eras of peace were
characterized by this "loved by the lesser barbarians" attitude. Instead, they
were characterized by massive armies conquering the world with an iron fist.

This was of course a seriously misguided concept. But believe me, the naivete
of the Bush Administration has been recorded, and the US seems to have learned
its lesson... for now anyway.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
How many countries has Obama had bombed at this point? (hint: it's a bunch).

~~~
dragontamer
How many people did Ghengis Khan literally enslave and then raped by his 6th
year in tenure?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Khwarezmia_a...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Khwarezmia_and_Eastern_Iran)

    
    
        As usual, the artisans were sent back to Mongolia, young women and children were given to the Mongol soldiers as slaves, and the rest of the population was massacred.
    

A lot more than Obama... I'm sure.

I'm talking about historical norms here. In the great eras of single-power
world dominance (US, British, Spanish, Romans, Mongolians, Chinese,
Babylonian, etc. etc.), the US, the British, and the Romans were the most
peaceful, in approximately that order.

US wins vs Brits because we aren't using Gatling guns against spearmen and
conquering entire continents (erm... anymore).

If you disagree, name me a great period of single-power dominance and I'll
offer a counter-example.

~~~
zanny
It is about reward structure. Ghengis Khan had gold and fortune to pillage
from all the nations he conquered. He forced his ideals upon others but his
will was absolute and his moral compass never involved giving a shit about
those you crush in battle.

The US is still somewhat run by people - a lot of work has gone into
dismantling legitimate democracy in America, but fundamentally I doubt even in
the gerrymandered guaranteed seat no choice electorate system the US has
today, that the people would idly allow the American military to pillage
nations around the globe for gold and jewels.

At least, they could not do it as fast as Ghengis did. I do understand a lot
of looting happened in Iraq / Afghanistan and in a large part the motivations
to go to war there were over possessions of a different kind.

------
caente
It has been about three years since I realized this. It is awesome.

So let's make it the new bottom line. Let's say it is a awful time in history.
Internet should be is as ubiquitous as electricity, and electricity should be
as ubiquitous as having water near by; but there are places without internet,
without electricity and where you need to walk _miles_ to get some water.

I like to think of these time as a new "Dark Ages". We have internet,
electricity and infrastructures that would be unthinkable in the actual dark
ages, but is far from enough. I like to think about our governments and
corporations as the equivalent to those feudal lords and duches and sires. I
like to imagine a future that is unthinkable.

Maybe is time to start hoping for a global government, that could be no
government at all, but an efficient way to coordinate efforts. Maybe this
"global coordination" would be doomed in the event of some global catastrophe
that could destroy the necessary infrastructure . It wouldn't matter, if we
have it once, we will want it forever. Like with democracy in the greco-roman
culture.

This is crazy, far fetched, but so it was the human rights, flying, self
moving cars, etc.

We humans are inherently crazy and we like far fetched ideas. We picture an
image of the world and then try fit the actual world in it. Some times that
takes us to war and genocide, some times to the Moon.

We don’t need to know how this global future will be, we won’t know.

------
krisdol
The same article comes out every year, usually from one of these conservative
murdochy news sources, and every year hn and reddit eat it up. Every year is
the best year from someone's perspective. Hell, I'd say the 1800s were great
because land was plentiful, pollution was low, wage slavery was non existent,
people controlled their own schedule and became artisans of their trade who
passed along their vast experience to apprentices.

Quite frankly, who gives a shit what some article says about this? Was it your
best year? That's all that matters. Let's focus on things that ought to be
improved, not this lazy, pat-ourselves-on-the-back "we're doing the right
thing" circle jerk.

------
closetnerd
This is such a matter of perspective.

We would have a safe and perfect society if we were living in a society
described by Brave New World. But I'd argue that it would be worst year of
human history.

People make the argument that civil rights were a problem, which is true. But
I feel that my personal freedoms are far more restricted and no matter how
petty they maybe, I don't want to forfeit them for your brave new world.

------
vaadu
best, are they blind? There's no mention of ISIS, IRAN nearing a nuclear
weapon or Putin being a total nutcase.

~~~
gburt
> This may have felt like the year of Ebola and Isil but in fact, objectively,
> 2014 has probably been the best year in history.

They did mention ISIS ("Isil"). There's a seeming trend of these newspapers to
fail to capitalize things that should definitely be capitalized (acronyms).
I've seen at least a dozen cases of it in the last week. I don't know if
perhaps it is a side-effect of automating/technologizing the editor's role or
if this is a new style thing or what?

Edit: in this article, it is almost surely intentional:

> The Isil barbarity in the Middle East is so shocking, perhaps, because it
> comes against a backdrop of unprecedented world peace.

~~~
Fishkins
Many British publications only capitalize acronyms if you pronounce each
letter separately [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronym#Pronunciation-
dependent...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronym#Pronunciation-
dependent_style_2)

~~~
dragontamer
Crazy Brits, screwing up our American English...

------
motters
Eesh. I'm surprised that such a self-evidently whiggish article would make it
to the front page of HN. I assume that the author lives in a bubble of wealth
and privilege.

If "we've never had it so good" then why did my parents and grandparents
generations never have to attend a food bank?

~~~
josephpmay
Can I make the assumption that you're white and from a Western country?
Greater average global prosperity does not mean the lives of everybody are
better, and more equality often means that those who were traditionally
privileged no longer are.

~~~
icebraining
Even white people from Western countries had two World Wars, the Spanish Civil
War and the rise of multiple dictatorships within the lives of currently
living people.

------
pluma
Sure, if you ignore the CIA torture, the NSA mass-surveillance, the US drone
strikes, the protests in the US and Turkey, the Islamists in the Middle East,
the Israel/Palestine conflict, the NATO/Russia stand-off in Ukraine, the
lukewarm handling of the Ebola epidemic, the rising "anti-Islamic" neo-racist
tendencies in Europe and everything else, 2014 was a pretty good year. But I
guess most of these problems aren't entirely particular to this year.

EDIT: The article can be summarized with something my grandmother used to say
whenever you asked her how she was: "Good, if you ignore the bad parts".

~~~
rmah
No one says that there are no problems. The world is chock full of problems.
But, from a long-term historical perspective, the problems we face today are
relatively minor. And more importantly, fewer people live in abject poverty
and more people are wealthier and healthier than ever before. IMO, this is a
good thing.

~~~
pluma
Sure, I'm not questioning that the 21st century is doing relatively well (we
had two world wars and several major attempts at genocide in the last one --
that sets the bar pretty low). Nor that we are, all in all, doing
progressively better.

But I'm not sure that, it is meaningful to point out 2014 _in particular_ as
the best year in history. If we just go by "we're still making progress and
third world nations are still becoming better places to live", _of course_
2014 is the best year in history so far. As will 2015 be. Or any year after
that, world-wide catastrophes notwithstanding. But that's nearly tautological.

So depending on how you look at it, the article's claim is either trivial
enough not to warrant ending up on HN IMO (any point along an upward slope is
the highest point on that slope compared to those preceding it, by
definition), or it's simply inaccurate (by sweeping the real problems 2014
surfaced under the rug and just saying it's all good).

~~~
HCIdivision17
I think your point here is a great note on the topic, but sort of misses the
very large, loud group of people out there who honestly think the world's
improvement has inflected and is now going to hell in a hand basket.

As such, I prefer being reminded about how remarkably not-awful things are
versus the next pointlessly negative everything's falling apart rhetoric.
Mind, that may have to do with where I live, maybe, and I _prefer_ balanced
rhetoric. But it's useful to remind people that the general goodness of the
world is monotonically increasing (perhaps with a 10-point moving average and
a little spot of outlier filtering).

And yeah, this sort of conversation is almost necessarily a long-now topic. To
talk about it over the course of a few months or just a year is a bit silly -
there's a _lot_ of noise. But over many decades and especially centuries,
things certainly look better now. Things may be crap now in many ways, but
it's only knee-deep crap. In the bad old days people waded through crap up to
their eyeballs uphill both ways.

~~~
pluma
Fair enough. Yes, it's not getting worse overall. A lot of the stuff I
mentioned wouldn't even have been news-worthy a few centuries ago.

But for Europe and the US this was most certainly not the "best year in
history", regardless of general positive trends.

