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To illustrate the scale of the tragedy there are around 1.1bn people living in poverty. If those people had been afforded opportunities similar to those availa

To illustrate the scale of the tragedy there are around 1.1bn people living in poverty. If those people had been afforded opportunities similar to those available in the US their total salaries would be somewhere between $20 and $40 trillion. That's a huge amount of wasted potential - all those resources could be working on making all of our lives better - advancing medicine, computer science, engineering and other things. Instead they are living miserable lives in atrocious slums.

tokenadult 17y ago
If those people had been afforded opportunities similar to those available in the US their total salaries would be somewhere between $20 and $40 trillion. Perhaps, but affording those people opportunities similar to those available in the United States might cost a great deal of money, and might also involve controversial steps such as overthrowing corrupt governments and promoting English rather than local languages as a language of school instruction. Poor countries (I have lived in them) are interacting systems of climate, natural resource base, cultural tradition, existing economic level, existing level of education, international trade patterns, political system, and other influences, and thus poor countries don't change overnight.
- notauser 17y ago
  Indeed, which is why a small step (such as introducing a large number of cheap computers) is the only practical step. You can't wait for perfection - you have to get started with what's practical now and iterate. Equal opportunity for all is the long term goal, not something you should expect tomorrow. Fortunately whatever else the OLPC project did, it inspired the Eee and that inspired a whole generation of low power, cheap devices which are (more) affordable for everyone. That may not be the step they expected, but it's one in the right direction!

tokenadult 17y ago

If those people had been afforded opportunities similar to those available in the US their total salaries would be somewhere between $20 and $40 trillion. Perhaps, but affording those people opportunities similar to those available in the United States might cost a great deal of money, and might also involve controversial steps such as overthrowing corrupt governments and promoting English rather than local languages as a language of school instruction. Poor countries (I have lived in them) are interacting systems of climate, natural resource base, cultural tradition, existing economic level, existing level of education, international trade patterns, political system, and other influences, and thus poor countries don't change overnight.

notauser 17y ago
Indeed, which is why a small step (such as introducing a large number of cheap computers) is the only practical step. You can't wait for perfection - you have to get started with what's practical now and iterate. Equal opportunity for all is the long term goal, not something you should expect tomorrow. Fortunately whatever else the OLPC project did, it inspired the Eee and that inspired a whole generation of low power, cheap devices which are (more) affordable for everyone. That may not be the step they expected, but it's one in the right direction!