‘What was easier to do 100 years ago than it is today?’ – 17 things that have got more difficult with time
Thanks to technological innovations, our modern standard of living is far better than the one endured by our ancestors. At least, it is in most ways.
That’s because certain ways of living have only gotten harder as society has progressed. To give you an insight into how life was surprisingly smoother a century ago, FishingVirtual513 threw this question out to the folks over at r/AskReddit:
‘What was easier to do 100 years ago than it is today?’
Now some of these changes are for the best, obviously. Others, less so …
1.
‘Faking your own death and starting over.’
-HandsLikePaper
2.
‘Getting away with murder.’
-Dingo8MyBabyMon
3.
‘Keep your privacy.’
-LucyVialli
4.
‘See the stars. Too much light pollution now.’
-UsuallyAnnoying324
5.
‘Being unreachable – No phones, no social media, no constant notifications. You could just disappear for a while without explanation.’
-Elegantreese
6.
‘It was 1925. Only 1 in every 6 people owned a car. So it was much easier to step in horse shit.’
-Listening_Heads
7.
‘Buy a Thompson sub machine gun in a hardware store.’
-jakeblutarski
8.
‘Earning money from just trading goods from one place to another. For $1000 – $2000 you could buy a truck, buy apples from Philadelphia, drive them go NY, buy textiles in NY and return to Philadelphia to sell them. Repeat, scale the business to have multiple trucks and employees, repeat.
‘$1000 in 1925 is about $18k in 2025, so achievable for someone to start out doing this after working for a few years in a factory.
‘Now everything is monopolized and to do any kind of real good commodity trading requires a huge upfront cost.’
-al_gorithm23
9.
‘Concentrate’
-INTJinx
10.
‘Know your neighbors’
-TinyConfection7049
11.
‘Changing your identity. There were barely any photo IDs in 1925, and Social Security numbers didn’t exist yet. And written proof of identity was rarely—if ever—requested of most people.
‘It was a relatively simple thing to move to a different area (especially if it was fairly rural or remote), just claim you are now John Smith, and most people would accept that. You didn’t have to provide ID to rent/buy a house, open a bank account, or apply for a job. You could just slip into that new identity, and no one would ever have reason to question it.’
-putsch80
12.
‘I would say get measles….but uh….’
-waffles4us
13.
‘Avoiding plastic and food additives.’
-efreeme
14.
‘Run to Mexico and hide out if you committed a serious crime. My father did that around 1934 after a string of crimes. He lived there 2 years with money he had robbed from a preacher and stayed till the money ran out.’
-Birdywoman4
15.
‘Support a big family on one income.
‘Achieve success without tertiary education.
‘Lie about your identity.
‘Commit bigamy.’
-cewumu
16.
‘Pay for a baby’s birth in a hospital.
‘We found the hospital bill for when my mother was born. I don’t recall the exact amount but it was ridiculously low, way below $100 for a three-day stay. They charged something like 25 cents a day for baby care. That hospital still stands today, 100 years later.’
-Jimxor
17.
‘Make a mistake. Between cameras, phones and internet access to news and documents, even a stupid mistake can follow you.’
-NotTobyFromHR
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Source: Reddit, Image: Screenshot