For most of the modern era, most people in the rich world have been poor, just like their parents and their children. Social mobility was more dream than reality. Most people were born to serve, as were their children.
The ruling minority liked to imagine that the human oxen laboring in their fields and the women who cleaned their homes and cooked their meals were happy with their lot, and professed shock and horror whenever these hereditary servers sought out ways to improve their stationâââwhether that was by joining the industrial revolution or striking out for a colonized land and the promise of stolen estates and downtrodden servants of their own.
Tevye: Chicago, America? We are going to New York, America.
Lazar: Weâll be neighbors. My wife, Fruma Sarah, may she rest in peace, has a brother there.
Tevye: Thatâs nice.
Lazar: I hate him, but a relative is a relative.
Collective Action Inaction in Action
In the opening scenes of the 1971 film adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof, the narrator, Tevye, introduces us to his village of Anatevka, which is a pretty fraught place where people are unhappy and danger is on the horizon. Nearly three hours and (spoiler alert) innumerable indignities and terrors later, Tevye and his neighbors leave the village, all to go their separate ways.
(*Also Wheeelchairs, Tractors, iPhones, Toasters and Printers)
On the origin of anti-features
Theyâre called âanti-featuresâ: artificial limitations built onto the products we buy. These are limitations no customer asked forâââand indeed, theyâre limitations customers would pay to removeâââif only they could.
The first anti-features were âDRMâ (Digital Rights Management), like the âregion-locksâ on DVD players that stopped you from using a player you bought in one country to play back a disc you bought somewhere else.