... who's constantly marveling at everything from Big Macs to fidget spinners, pretending that those things actually emerged from free markets (which we don't have), etc.
But I do want to put in a good word or two for the modern era.
My wife wears a particular type of light wrist and thumb brace which is not particularly durable. It's made of silicone and its function is just to kind of hold stuff in place because she has Musculoskeletal Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and tends toward e.g. unpredictable thumb subluxation. She goes through a pair every few months.
I don't even know when this particular product came into existence, but if there was anything even remotely like it 30 years ago, you'd probably have had to go to some inconveniently located medical supply shop to get it, or else find a specialty mail-order catalog and wait four to six weeks for delivery, and the price would have likely been very unattractive.
Now you can pop on over to Amazon and, inside of five minutes, have a pair on the way and arriving tomorrow for $13.99.
I don't make the mistake of believing that Amazon arose in, or operates in, a free market. It emerged from decades of, and between some gaps in, "progressive" regulatory rule.
But I still dig the whole "my mom was born in a log cabin, her family didn't have a motor vehicle until she was in her teens, and it was a five-mile walk to the store -- I click a button and stuff arrives the next day if I don't happen to feel like getting on my electric bike to go out" continuum.
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