Алармисты.

Сейчас невозможно открыть интернет без того, что бы не прочитать про то, что "все пропало, все полимеры просраны, мы все умрем". Поэтому вызывает резонный интерес такой вопрос - а как с этим делом обстояло раньше?

А с этим делом, как и полагается, и раньше все обстояло хорошо, вот что, в частности, пишет Франклин в своей "Автобиографии":

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There are croakers in every country, always boding its ruin. Such a one then lived in Philadelphia; a person of note, an elderly man, with a wise look and a very grave manner of speaking; his name was Samuel Mickle.

This gentleman, a stranger to me, stopt one day at my door, and asked me if I was the young man who had lately opened a new printing-house. Being answered in the affirmative, he said he was sorry for me, because it was an expensive undertaking, and the expense would be lost; for Philadelphia was a sinking place, the people already half-bankrupts, or near being so; all appearances to the contrary, such as new buildings and the rise of rents, being to his certain knowledge fallacious; for they were, in fact, among the things that would soon ruin us.

And he gave me such a detail of misfortunes now existing, or that were soon to exist, that he left me half melancholy. Had I known him before I engaged in this business, probably I never should have done it.

This man continued to live in this decaying place, and to declaim in the same strain, refusing for many years to buy a house there, because all was going to destruction; and at last I had the pleasure of seeing him give five times as much for one as he might have bought it for when he first began his croaking.

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Время другое, страна другая, а настрой - тот же самый.