Quality Of Life

Categories: Marketing

What's the quality of your life? Do you have the basics? The next-ups? The next-next-next ups? What defines quality for you? Bling? Big private jet? Or peace and quiet...maybe a ranch of your very own? A good family who loves each other? A winning NBA team? (Yeah, good luck with that if you don't live in the Bay Area.)

QOL is an odd metric that gets inspected every generation. A hundred years ago we didn't have phones, reliable plumbing, freezers. We didn't have cars or commercial airplanes. We didn't have Hulu. But we had peace. We had more openness. Virtually no "traffic." And nobody complained about noise pollution.

Think about the quality of life of the King of France in the 17th century. His quality was demonstrably worse than that of the poorest trailer-living Alabaman, as that poor person has government-funded healthcare vastly better than whatever the King had. They have reasonable reliance against not being marauded by Huns. They have reliable heat in the winter, shelter that likely doesn't leak (much), and generally unpolluted water to drink, let alone the ability to cook whenever and however they want.

So what is QOL? Well, it is likely a composite of many things, but if nothing else, it's all relative. And not the kind you argue with at Thanksgiving, if that's your thing.



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