There is no meaningful 'best time to be alive' distinct from psychological reality. If people are not adapted to their environment and either don't value it or aren't valued by it, it doesn't matter how much material comfort is available. There is a reason the suicide rate jumps during industrial revolutions.

The suicide rate was never accurately measured before the industrial revolution so we can't make any claims about it one way or another.

The industrial revolution was not a single event. There is enough data since then to say that economic uncertainty is correlated with suicide and that technological upheaval is correlated with economic uncertainty.

The period we are living through is a time of rapid technological change, whatever you want to call it, and suicide rates have been increasing for the past 25 years. Although I would take any studies and statistics on this with a large grain of salt I think it is not unreasonable to consider these things are related.

This is like arguing that politicians don't need to be corrected by non-politicians, or that people with no understand of programming can't criticize the tech industry.

No one is arguing that being a computer programmer gives a person unique insights here.

False equivalence. Politicians aren’t scientists, and people do criticize programmers all the time. I got at least 3 complaints at work today about bugs in our software.

Saying that economists are scientists and therefore above reproach from non-economists ignores the way that ideology and research become intertwined whenever public policy is involved. Saying "trust the science" at all times, even when the scientists in question are neoliberal technocrats is how you end up with the populist backlash against "trusting the science" that America is presently going through.

Obviously people criticize can and should criticize programmers, that's the point.

Would you say he's holding it wrong?