Sometimes you realize that someone, at some time, got it.
If it were true that a heavy concentration of industry is destructive to human life, one would find life expectancy declining in the more advanced countries. But it has been rising steadily. Here are the figures on life expectancy in the United States:
- 1900 – 47.3 years
- 1920 – 53 years
- 1940 – 60 years
- 1968 – 70.2 years (the latest figures compiled [as of January 1971])
Anyone over 30 years of age today, give a silent “Thank you” to the nearest, grimiest, sootiest smokestacks you can find.
— Ayn Rand, “The Anti-Industrial Revolution,” The New Left: the Anti-Industrial Revolution