(Not) envying future persons

Tim Harford suggests that it's better to be an averagely wealthy person today than a colossally rich one in 1900, on the reasonable grounds that no amount of wealth in 1900 could have bought antibiotics or mobile phones.
It's a good point.
But let's turn it around. Let's assume that people in the future will be much richer than us, and have access to many more new technologies, perhaps even near-immortality. They might look back on us as we look upon 1900ers, with pity and relief. And yet we do not envy them, even though we might envy today's rich who are much worse off than future persons. Nor do we really wish we were born later. Why not?
A lot of potential answers seem inadequate.
It could be because some things - housing, education - will be more expensive in the future. But then, housing was very cheap in the past, and yet this doesn't make us prefer to have lived then. 
I don't think it's because we don't know what the future holds and are ambiguity-averse. I'm glad I'm not a student today, even though today's students have advantages I didn't: central heating, the internet, en suite showers and many more girls*.
Nor is it, I think, because our preferences adapt to our circumstances and so we don't want the impossible. Even if I try, I don't really want to be born in the future rather than not exist now.
Nor is it because if I were born in the future, I'd be a different person and so the very question "what era would you rather live in?" is illogical. This doesn't stop us trying (maybe badly) to imagine living in the past - even though we could only do this by being a different person too.
So what is the answer? It could be a variant on this last point. Most of us are happy being who we are, and don't want to be the different person we'd have to be if we lived in the future instead. Or, similarly, we value friends and family so much as to prefer them to the random draw of different ones that we'd have if we lived in the future.
Even so, I'm a little puzzled. Why don't we envy future persons? And could the reason we don't also explain the Easterlin paradox, which is that the atrocious poverty (by today's standards) of past generations didn't seem to have made them miserable?
* When I was at Oxford, women were in a minority and almost all were either scary feminists, Christians or ugly. Don't ask for a Venn diagram. 

Comments

[tomslee]

Something about these comparisons with the past raises a red flag for me. I think it's because they are usually thrown up as a way of saying that today's less-well-off-people shouldn't complain and get all uppity - if they only realized how lucky they were (compared to 1900) then they'd shut up, smile, and serve the next customer.

Hartford doesn't go that way, of course, but I still react to it as if he did. Your "think of the future" is a good antidote.

I recommend a very short story in David Eagleman's enjoyable collection "Sum" about someone choosing to live their next life as a horse. Let's just say it turns out not to be a good idea.

[tomslee]

"today's students have advantages I didn't: ... many more girls*."

Isn't that a disadvantage to half of today's students?

[Andrew]

"Nor do we really wish we were born later"

... speak for yourself

Oh

- you just did

[Sean]

I envy future persons.

[Tufty]

We adapt and we imitate - it's what we do. So our preferences must adapt to current circumstances. We can't adapt to circumstances that don't currently exist.

[Matthew]

I think perhaps to remove some of the issues you raise it would be fairer to say 'Would you like £70,000 a year to live in 1960 or £70,000 a year to live in 1880'

I don't really disagree with things have got better, more than perhaps official lets on. But it's much easier to note what we have gained (jet travel, internet) than know what we have lost.

[Leigh Caldwell]

tomslee: '"today's students have advantages I didn't: ... many more girls*."

Isn't that a disadvantage to half of today's students?'

Presumably having much greater access to university is in fact an _advantage_ to women. Which I suspect far outweighs the minor disadvantage of reduced access to 19-year-old men.

On the main topic, I think there are many people who envy those born in the future; though a lot of them may be science fiction fans. For others, I think it's a salience issue - it's much easier to imagine what it would have been like to live in Dickensian London than in Heinleinian Mars.

[john malpas]

Why compare now with the past when you can compare now as as a Dubai aristo and now as a old age pensioner ( white) in london.
It might be wise to review the contempt many seniors have for you youngsters.
yet you think you are the bees knees.
And yet they are the past.

[RH]

Well, if you believe some one by the name of Mary Ann Sieghart in The Independent today, we folks are enjoying a surfeit of democracy; and she thinks too much of demcoracy is a bad thing. I do not know howmuch is too much, but that is besides the point.
Wonder whether the enormously rich in the 1900s enjoyed such luxury?

[Cliff Tolputt]

Intriguing, isn't the future already upon you, though riches are hardly an imminent prospect?

[Charlie]

Perhaps the future person to be envied is too counterfactually remote. Here's what I mean:

Counterfactual A: someone alive today has certain advantages which you yourself might enjoy.

Counterfactual B: there is a future person who you yourself might become.

To envy future people is to combine these: i.e. you yourself might become a future person who might enjoy certain advantages. My suggestion is that this doesn't fall easily into the imagination.

[judith weingarten]

Easterlin's paradox is a bit dubious, imo, but this statement is surely false: "the atrocious poverty (by today's standards) of past generations didn't seem to have made them miserable". I envy the historian who has good happiness data on impoverished people, serfs, slaves, or broadly lower classes of previous generations. Our total ignorance in this case may be confounded with bliss.

[MarinaS]

Loving your priorities there!

When I was at Oxford, women were in a minority

"Which was not much of a problem, except to me, because..."

and almost all were either scary feminists, Christians or ugly.

"Which was just terrible, I tell you! Terrible! For, you know, me!"

With such clarity of vision, I'm suprised you haven't cracked this already.

[Brett Anderson]

I think I'd rather be a colossally rich right now. I think there are pros and cons for both scenarios. Some days the lack of technology/radiation might be nice but other days I love the benefit of technology.

Also, the advances in science and medicine are areas where advancements have greatly enhanced our lives.