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I believe there's a fundamental assumption among many that with time, life is becoming better for all. Even if this is true right now, one day it will not be tr

by tabeth 10y ago

I believe there's a fundamental assumption among many that with time, life is becoming better for all. Even if this is true right now, one day it will not be true. Once no longer true, humanity is going to have to ask itself if the massive increases of inequality were worth it. Whether it's: 1. Global warming 2. Nuclear war 3. Mass unemployment 4. Resource depletion Or something else, I suspect the effects of the "big event" in the future, once amortized to now will be so large, that all of the supposed progress we've made now is negligible, if not counterproductive. The relevance to this particular article is that the eight billionaires "as rich as the world's poorest half" will have contributed 99.99% to what I refer to previously (compared to the poor half they're compared to), yet they and their descendants will be completely shielded from the worst of the effects. How dystopian.

maxerickson 10y ago
You have to factor consumption into the 99.99% there. Bill Gates captured ~$100 billion in wealth. A phenomenal amount. The US spent 30 times that amount on healthcare last year.
marcoperaza 10y ago
From The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: “Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western spiral arm of the galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this, at a distance of roughly ninety million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet, whose ape descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. This planet has, or had, a problem, which was this. Most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small, green pieces of paper, which is odd, because on the whole, it wasn't the small, green pieces of paper which were unhappy. And so the problem remained, and lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches. Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake coming down from the trees in the first place, and some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no-one should ever have left the oceans. And then one day, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl, sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realised what it was that had been going wrong all this time and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no-one would have to get nalied to anything. Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone, the Earth was unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass and so the idea was lost forever.”
mcroft 10y ago
If you've never come across Hans Rosling before, I highly recommend watching one or two of his videos on world statistics. His overall point is that the world is doing much better than you may think. He uses a lot of data that he makes publicly available and shows which metrics are the best measure of progress and why. Aside from that, he's also a very entertaining and engaging communicator. Here's a relevant article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24835822 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24835822
- majewsky 10y ago
  Also, going in the same direction: https://ourworldindata.org/ https://ourworldindata.org/

by tabeth 10y ago

maxerickson 10y ago

You have to factor consumption into the 99.99% there. Bill Gates captured ~$100 billion in wealth. A phenomenal amount. The US spent 30 times that amount on healthcare last year.

marcoperaza 10y ago

From The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: “Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western spiral arm of the galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this, at a distance of roughly ninety million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet, whose ape descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. This planet has, or had, a problem, which was this. Most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small, green pieces of paper, which is odd, because on the whole, it wasn't the small, green pieces of paper which were unhappy. And so the problem remained, and lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches. Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake coming down from the trees in the first place, and some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no-one should ever have left the oceans. And then one day, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl, sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realised what it was that had been going wrong all this time and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no-one would have to get nalied to anything. Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone, the Earth was unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass and so the idea was lost forever.”

mcroft 10y ago

If you've never come across Hans Rosling before, I highly recommend watching one or two of his videos on world statistics. His overall point is that the world is doing much better than you may think. He uses a lot of data that he makes publicly available and shows which metrics are the best measure of progress and why. Aside from that, he's also a very entertaining and engaging communicator. Here's a relevant article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24835822 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24835822

majewsky 10y ago
Also, going in the same direction: https://ourworldindata.org/ https://ourworldindata.org/